Senate Standing Committee on Local Government

The Senate Committee on local government will come to order, and good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us for the first committee of the Senate Committee on Local Government in 2025. The Senate welcomes the public in person and we are holding our committee hearings here in the O Street Building. The Senate welcomes the public--I'm sorry.

We have an action-packed, action-packed agenda for you today. The first order of business will be an informational hearing on the state's open meeting requirements for local governments, affectionately known as the Brown Act.

Following that, we will adopt the committee rules, a copy of which was emailed to your offices on Friday, and appoint Sophia Reynoso-Lopez as our new committee assistant. Yay. She takes the place of our beloved Itzel Vargas, who is now consultant for the committee. Congratulations, Itzel. Yay. And the other of you, still here.

Anton and Jonathan, thank you all. Thank you all very much. So we will have our first bill hearing at, at the end after the informational. We have four bills on the agenda. We're going to establish quorum for the bill hearing proceeding the--we don't have a quorum? Okay. We don't have a quorum. Never mind. Okay. Thought we had it.

So let's begin with the informational hearing, and here we go. I want to thank everyone who, who came in for the, the panels on this. This is about our community voices in local government meetings. Local governments are extremely important. That's the level of government closest to the people.

The committee will hear from various community groups to identify strategies to improve the Brown Act to maximize our public input. We will turn then at the end of that to public comment. We hope to provide an opportunity for the public to call in, but unfortunately, the Senate no longer offers that capability.

That is pretty ironic there in having a hearing on public meetings where we ourselves can't offer remote public comment, only remote testimony from our witnesses. However, we did not have a choice in the matter. So any public comments that can't be made in person can of course be sent to the committee.

With that, housekeeping out of the way, let's turn to our first panel, starting outline of the Brown Act, recent major legislation, and what makes effective public meetings. We have Mark Numainville. Is that correct?

Yes.

City Clerk, the City of Berkeley and Dr. Dominika Bukalova, Assistant Professor, School of Public Affairs, San Diego State University. Good morning to both of you and thank you for coming here and being here. Now we'll get your--what's the outline? What is the Brown Act that everybody talks so much about?

Well, good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Mark Numainville, and I've been the City Clerk for the City of Berkeley for the past 13 years. I also serve on the Legislative Committee of the City Clerks Association of California, where we have been a collaborative partner with state lawmakers in helping shape important changes in the Brown Act. Thank you for inviting me me to testify today. It's a pleasure to be here.

The Brown Act has served as California's open meeting law for over 70 years. The act sets the rules for meeting, noticing, and participation for California's local legislative bodies. The rules for participation cover both the public who attend the meetings and also the officials who serve on the legislative bodies.

These rules can be boiled down to the public's business must be conducted in plain view and not behind closed doors. The act also has specific regulations for how to preserve transparency and uphold the public's trust. Some of these specific transparency rules are related to the content of each meeting's agenda, the timing for posting agendas, public comment procedures, meeting disruptions, emergency meetings, closed sessions, teleconferencing, remote participation, complaints for compliance, and how to cure a violation.

As a representative of the Municipal Clerk statewide organization, my colleagues and I are responsible for administering Brown Act meetings for our local agencies. This consists of making sure that we are following the letter and spirit of the Brown Act provisions I've just mentioned.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we learned a lot about the ability of legislative bodies to be flexible and meet the needs of our local participatory democracy while upholding transparency standards through the use of technology.

In fact, during the pandemic, our city saw increased participation by several groups of people, including people with disabilities, parents, and persons with caregiving responsibilities or just people that otherwise were unable to physically attend the meeting. After the executive order allowing fully remote meetings was rescinded, maintaining that high level of public engagement has been a little bit challenging.

We saw a rise in the resignations from our commissions and had some more difficulty in filling some commission seats, which lessens the quality of the decision-making and narrows the voices that are represented on those commissions.

Many cities and special districts have opted into using hybrid meetings since the pandemic based on what is best for their individual community. When our city conducts a hybrid meeting, there is a high level of participation both from in-person and remote attendees.

This is critical as meetings can often run late into the evening and people are increasingly unable to participate the later the meeting goes. The same is true for the members of our city council and our other legislative bodies. Remote participation has allowed members to serve the public while meeting family and caregiver responsibilities.

In addition, since the pandemic, everyone is more cautious about communicable illness and members are wisely choosing to stay home when not feeling well. Recent changes in the Brown Act have provided some relief in this area, but with some limiting conditions which diminish the effectiveness. As CCAC is currently reviewing several Brown Act proposals, I can say that I am fortunate in my city that we have the resources and personnel to handle some of the increasingly complex Brown Act requirements.

However, I know, based on the feedback from our members that many other cities and special districts throughout the state may have difficulty putting new proposed requirements into practice. Many local agencies have a single person in the Clerk's Office and may have limited resources to implement complex new laws.

We're at a crossroads when it comes to the Brown Act. We have greater technology and we have the experience of our remote meetings during the pandemic. Yet we are caught in a transition phase between the 20th century version of the Brown Act and the 21st century version of it.

CCAC supports modernizing the Brown Act in a way that balances increased public trust, confidence, and access to public meetings within the fiscal and operational constraints of local governments. We are very pleased to be a part of this process and to continue working together to prove the public's experience with local government. I very much appreciate the committee allowing me to testify on this important policy matter. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Can you--Dr. Bukalova? Bukalova.

Yes, thank you. Good morning, Senator Durazo and committee members. I have a brief PowerPoint here to accompany my remarks. I'll just pull it up. Thank you for your patience. Thank you very much for inviting me here and giving me the opportunity to provide testimony on this critical topic.

My name is Dominika Bukalova, and I'm an Assistant Professor of Public Administration in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University, and I've been asked to come here today and present the key takeaways from my research on local government public meetings that has been done in partnership with my colleagues, including Elizabeth Maland, as well as more recent work with Dr. Joshua Channen at San Diego State University.

And drawing specifically on an article from Public Administration Review, I will propose considerations to help address challenges relating to local government public meeting administration. This work builds on prior research, much of which paints a complex picture of local government public meetings. While they're considered a key democratic responsibility, they're imperfect, but they remain nonetheless valuable as a critical tool for public participation.

A key takeaway that informs my recommendations and suggestions today is that navigating the evolving nature of public access in California demonstrates that there's a gap between what is administratively sustainable and politically acceptable. There are increasing challenges relating to the administration of local public meetings, as we just heard, and that's illustrated by the experience of local government leaders and managers across California.

However, navigating and ultimately reforming the public meeting process could present some political challenges. And specifically, the work of local leaders and managers has been shaped by these new technologies, the evolution of enhanced meeting accessibility that we've seen over the years, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

It further exacerbated many of these tensions. And now to highlight some key considerations to address local government public meeting challenges. There are opportunities to consider enhancing communication and collaboration by encouraging local government partners to offer feedback and suggestions, and today's hearing is an excellent case in point of that.

Also, in conferring with local partners, there may be opportunities to support regional collaboration efforts to identify and share best practices. Shared resources could be dedicated to identify regional best practices that could then be compiled into a guide to facilitate implementation. And what do I mean by that?

Currently, each local government is developing its own implementation strategy and some further coordination would assist with effective implementation. In the area of budget training and development, investment is needed to train department operations staff as well as elected officials and their teams.

In this area, perhaps there may be an opportunity to explore sharing resources to support the implementation of local government public meetings. Additionally, when we consider adopting new technologies, municipalities should be carefully weighing the wholesale adoption of any solutions.

Local government public meetings play a valuable role in building community and enhancing participation, so maintaining traditional forms of public access to local government meetings is critical as they may provide valuable points of access for some members of the public such as seniors, and also, in considering the digital divide, underserved populations continue to face obstacles in accessing online resources. And on a final note, I want to mention some related research that my colleagues and I are working on relating to virtual meeting participation.

In our work investigating San Diego City Council meeting participation, which we measured in terms of non-agenda public comments submitted, we found that participation was greater when those meetings included virtual participation options, and importantly, the shift from in-person to virtual meetings led to an increase in female participation and there was also a small segment of high volume repeat speakers that had an outside influence in overall participation. This concludes my remarks, and thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I'm happy to take any questions. Appreciate it.

Thank you, thank you both. Before I move on, I apologize I didn't introduce our members of the committee. Here is Senator Arreguín, Senator Laird. We have also on the committee but not present, Vice Chair Choi, Senator Cabaldon, and Senator Wiener. So thank you. We could move on. Any-- anybody want to start out with questions? Yes, Senator.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair, and first, I just want to thank you and committee staff for organizing this informational hearing today. As the former Mayor of Berkeley, it's good to see my colleague, the City Clerk of the City of Berkeley here, testifying.

I chaired our Berkeley City Council during that transition during Covid and post-Covid, so have a lot of perspective around the challenges and I think the opportunities that remote participation allows, but I think fundamentally, you know, we have to make sure that we broaden public participation, we increase transparency in public access. Trust in government is at a low, not just nationally, but here in California.

And so as we're discussing changes to the Brown Act, I think it's essential that we really commit to those tenets of looking at how we can increase participation and transparency and public access as we're considering changes to the Brown Act.

But I do think that Covid has changed the way that we do business, including how we conduct our public meetings, and it is appropriate to look at best practices and new approaches as ways to streamline and improve public participation in our local government meetings in the State of California. I do have two questions for Mr. Numainville.

One: I'm wondering if you can talk about the challenges that you have encountered in the implementation of Assembly Bill 2449. Specifically, there are limitations on the number of exceptions that can be used for members of legislative bodies to participate remotely.

The emergency exception, I think in particular, requires that the quorum has to be physically present and a vote has to be taken to invoke that particular provision, so one, if you can elaborate a little bit about, from your perspective, what have been some of the challenges in the implementation of that particular statute?

Yes, thank you, Senator. I think there's probably two primary challenges. One is the, you know, the very limited number of allowed uses per year for just cause. I mean, for our City Council, you know, we have upwards of 40 meetings a year, and you can use just cause twice during the year, which, you know, in today's world, with people being cautious about communicable illness, like I said, that's been, that's been very limiting.

And then, you know, council members are having to make decisions about which meetings they're going to skip because they want to save their just cause uses for later in the year and all that, so it diminishes the decision-making ability if council members aren't able to attend because they've run out of just cause exemptions.

And then the in-person quorum requirement can be challenging. We have standing committees of the City Council that have just three members, but of course they're a legislative body. So you know, you have to have an in-person quorum, you have to have two people there.

One member might have teleconference by having allowable teleconference by publishing their address on the agenda before the meeting, and they're remote, but then the third member gets sick at the last minute and then we can't have a meeting because we don't have an in-person quorum. So those are the two primary challenges that I think that I've seen is the number of uses and the in-person quorum requirements.

Madam Chair, I have one more question, if I may? Wondering if, Mr. Numainville, if you could talk about from your experience as a city clerk and you can share what you may have learned from your other colleagues in the State of California.

What have been some of the challenges of persons with disabilities who may serve on advisory bodies or legislative bodies for that matter, and the challenges for them to participate, particularly if they have health issues or mobility issues that make it difficult for them to be there in person. What have been some of the challenges with respect to the specific requirements of the Brown Act and how that's impacted their participation?

Well, you know, fortunately, you know, if they're able to get an accommodation, you know, from the city, that that helps quite a bit, but, you know, there's--if they don't have an approved accommodation, you know, we have, you know, the existing Brown Act rules where, you know, you have to notice your location, you have to let people into your home.

You know, it can be--it's not the best case for, for a, for a person with disabilities having to participate remotely if they don't, they don't have an approved accommodation, so that's been something that our city's been working through quite a bit. And so that's probably the primary obstacle.

And then just having the technology in place and the means for them to participate remotely if they do have an accommodation, and that's something, like I mentioned in my testimony that, you know Berkeley is fairly well-resourced when it comes to those kinds of things, but there are a lot of very small cities and jurisdictions in the State of California that may just not have the fiscal or operational capacity to have a lot of remote meetings and so people in those communities probably are somewhat more disadvantaged in participating than people in more well-resourced cities.

Thank you very much. I think it's interesting because the two committee members here are both former mayors of very rambunctious cities, and during my tenure a very long time ago as Mayor of Santa Cruz, we had people trying to shout down a budget hearing every minute of the hearing and were told we had no recourse in maintaining control. And over time, we worked on that.

Unfortunately, somebody was arrested in most meetings over about a four-month period, but it tested exactly this, and I think the balance you were talking about in terms of how people choose to come to meetings because of that is not a good situation and I hope out of this hearing there's some understanding about that that would inform any legislation or policy.

The other thing I wanted to say is the open meeting equivalent at the state level is Bagley-Keene. And so I took the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Law coming out of the pandemic and authored a bill that was signed into law. It is a sunset. We're considering that this year.

But it provides a framework that is exactly what was just being talked about because it basically says there has to be an in-person quorum, but people with disabilities that are participating remotely can't count against it. It removes the, it removes the requirement that you publish the address remotely, so that the case you cited about, people with disabilities not feeling secure about publishing their address and being remote.

It also says that if you allow remote participation, you have to allow remote testimony. And if the system goes down then the meeting has to pause. And it basically takes sort of the better part of what we learned during the pandemic and puts it there. And it was opposed by newspaper publishers and the ACLU of the feeling that this was not good sunshine in government and yet I don't think their fears have come to pass, which we will discuss this this year.

And it won't come to this committee because it's State Boards and Commissions, but we will consider that, and the real issue is the Brown Act being first enacted, I think, in the 50s, and Bagley-Keene not long after. Nobody anticipated Digital Democracy and whole other things, and I think it genuinely was and updating to where we are now.

And the one other thing about that bill is it allows a board and commission to choose to just use the old system. If they just wish to use the old system, they don't have to do this. If they choose to allow remote participation, then they have to choose the alternate and adhere to to it all. And it has been strongly supported by seniors, groups representing seniors and groups representing people with disabilities because it has enhanced participation in a way that hasn't--and it doesn't threaten them with having to publish their address.

And so I find that the closer you get to your government, the more emotional people are about the government, so I suspect that on the Brown Act, there will be really strong opinions and yet I had an animated discussion with one of my colleagues because I said, 'you're talking about people coming across town.'

This is somebody--and what we discovered when we were doing committee hearings, which was scary, is when we were doing phones, somebody could be sitting on their couch in El Centro and testifying and the next person could be sitting in their couch in Crescent City and testifying, and it was great for participation, but it really became unwieldy at some point. So I just offer that as a framework for thinking about it, and I appreciate both your testimony.

Thank you, Senator.

Thank you very much. Thank you for the questions and comments, especially based on your real life experience. I just had a couple of questions and then we can move on. If we wanted to strengthen the public's role in local meetings, where should we make those improvements in the Brown Act?

Well, I, you know, the remote participation is, has worked well for us in the City of Berkeley, you know, based on our experience during the pandemic. So, I mean, that's a good place to start. And, you know, we've done pretty well with that. You know, several cities also have additional rules on top of the Brown Act.

So, you know, what's right for Berkeley isn't necessarily right for every other city in the state. But there's a lot of cities that do have, you know, open government laws or sunshine laws, and if that's what their community decides to say. In Berkeley, we publish the agenda packets, you know, well before 72 hours.

And that's, that's been helpful to get information out of there. I'm not saying that's right for every city in the state, but that's something that we've done.

So, you know, it's, it's a, it's a two way street for the, for local agencies to, to do what they can to put it out there and then for the public to, to still, you know, seek it out to become informed participants in their democracy.

Thank you. Yeah, I echo those suggestions and comments. I think that incorporating, mindfully incorporating, the virtual meeting technologies to allow for remote participation, I think will definitely would encourage public participation.

I also want to go back to one of the things I mentioned, which is really there are, and Mark touched on this as well, is that each of these jurisdictions are trying to figure this out on their own. Right.

And I think that as a participant coming to testify, for example, in San Diego, coming to the City of San Diego, going to the County of San Diego, going to Sandag, going to all these various jurisdictions across the region.

If you want to engage with your local government, you're navigating multiple systems and different approaches that each of these cities have adopted. And that can be very complicated, right?

Everything from the way in which that information is shared with the public, there are opportunities, I believe, to be able to identify some of those best practices across the region and then to share those so that there may be some consistency as well across the jurisdictions within specific regions.

And again, it's not a one size fits all model, but I do think that some jurisdictions such as Berkeley, have identified some best practices that could then be applied and used elsewhere.

So why don't we learn from some of those folks who are doing things really well and is there a way in which that we could share those practices? Is there support available for that across the state?

And I would just add one more thing is that I Think when it comes to the Brown act and rules for participation in general, you know, I think, you know, the more complicated you make the rules for participation, the harder it is for the average resident to engage.

So you don't want to put, you know, a lot of hurdles in place for them to participate. And then, you know, for the people that serve on those, those legislative bodies, you know, in Berkeley we have over 30 commissions.

You know, you want to make it easy for people to engage on that level, not just attending meetings, but actually taking the next step to serve on a board or commission. So you want to make it easy for them to be able to do that as well. And that just further develops their engagement with their local government.

But when you say, excuse me, just when you say you don't want to make it complicated or you suggest not making it too complicated or too difficult, what do you mean by that? Give me examples of what you mean by that.

And at the same time, how do you balance that out with public, I mean real public engagement with the elected body?

Well, I mean, I would say that for, you know, making it difficult for a city or legislative body to have a meeting makes it difficult for people to engage as well.

So you know, if you, if you like with the in person quorum, if you, if you notice a meeting and you put out the agenda and the public is expecting to attend and then for unforeseen reasons you're not able to meet the in person quorum, then the meeting doesn't happen and people have, you know, prepared, they've even maybe showed up, but, or there's a last minute cancellation.

So can throw up some barriers in that regard and you just, you know, I, I think, you know, proper noticing and the current Brown act noticing I think is adequate for what most people need to engage and everything is posted on the website now.

So you know, I think the rules as they are are not too complicated for the average resident to engage with.

Any thoughts?

I support, you know, I support your position here and I think that, I think that folks have done the best they can to try to figure that out and to apply it in each of their cases.

I think that my comment was a little bit different in that the participation as a member of the public, trying to navigate each of those jurisdictions, right, like pulling up the agenda, trying to figure out what kind of virtual meeting technology that jurisdiction uses. Is it audio?

What, how do you access it, at what point do you sign on to the meeting, how do you submit the non agenda public comment or other comment on the agenda? Items, you know, navigating that for each jurisdiction can be complicated. I find that myself, you know, to find that to be complicated as doing research on this.

So I think that that's what I was trying to get at is that there are some cities where that information has been presented in a way that is more accessible, that is easier to follow. Some folks are doing it really well.

And so is there an opportunity to learn from those jurisdictions that have done a great job, such as Berkeley. Right. In sharing information, disseminating that information in the posting, what are those best practices and then sharing that with others?

Is there support for that, that we could potentially create some sort of, sort of a guide or sharing system with resources for the locals?

Good. Any more comments or questions? Okay. Seeing none. Thank you both. We really appreciate you coming up.

Thank you.

As far as Berkeley.

Easy trip.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody.

Okay. All right. Our next panel is Learning From Experience: How Los Angeles Communicated Community Throughout the Fires. We have Jennifer Delwood, Deputy Chief of Staff with Mayor Bass, and Brandon Lamar, President of the Pasadena NAACP. Oh, you're on our.

Hi everybody. Nice to see you all. Jenny Delwood, Mayor Karen Bass's office here in Los Angeles. Honored to be here. I'll go ahead and pull up my slide deck if that's okay with everybody here. Can you see it okay?

Yes, go ahead.

Okay, wonderful.

So my presentation will primarily focus on after the fire correspondence and communication in a variety of forms. First off, Mayor Karen Bass has been hosting twice weekly webinars on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5pm. We've had over 5,000 Palisades residents participate in these webinars or virtual community briefings. Hundreds of residents each week and each webinar.

Topics include debris removal, public health, water and power restoration, impacted worker centers, the rebuilding process, home insurance, tenant protections, and storm preparation.

Additionally, we've sent many, many newsletters to about 10,000 Palisades residents and regular text updates to 12,000 residents in the area, providing real time information on everything from, like I said, storm preparation to the rebuilding process or new executive orders that have been issued. We've also participated in over 50 meetings.

The mayor herself, as well as, her team engaging community Members in planning the rebuild and providing key updates and information. We've also revamped LAcity.gov we thought we'd keep it simple, stick with the main website for the city, LAcity.gov we redesigned it for the wildfires.

And so everything you need to know about city services and even county resources, State resources are also available at LAcity.gov with various updates on a regular basis, a very lengthy FAQ document and many other resources available online. Of course we also have a series of storyboards that our departments have created.

The one that you see here is the Damage Inspection Dashboard which shows real time photos of homes that have been damaged as well as you can see on the right hand side, various colors. Red means completely destroyed, orange is major damage, yellow is minor damage.

When you click on those homes, you'll be able to see what the status of that home is in real time with a photograph in terms of the damage that the house has sustained or the the business or commercial property. Additionally, a storyboard was created by LA ,Streets LA, our streets Bureau focusing on the public right of way.

Any type of permit that may be required to do work in the public right of way is found on this storyboard as well as information about street trees. So street trees have become a very popular topic and folks are concerned about the lack of trees or trees being removed and so forth in the public right of way.

So if you're interested in that information, you have it at your fingertips at Streets LA's storyboard. Additionally, DWP, Department of Water and Power created a very easy to use storyboard related to water testing and the overall system to water system restoration.

We're fortunate at this point that all of the do not drink orders in the Palisades have been lifted, but this storyboard provided real time information about the types of chemicals that were tested and additionally when each of those water orders were lifted so that everybody could know when it was safe to drink their water, as well as get information about how they go about flushing their pipes and so forth to make sure that it's safe within their residential homes.

Last but not least on the online front, we also created the LA Disaster Relief Navigator. That can be found at Wildfires.BetterAngels.LA. This is a partnership between the Mayor's Fund, the Mayor's Office as well as Better Angels and Imagine LA.

This online tool asks specific information for all the fires in Los Angeles, not not just the city, also the full county. And once you put in your unique information about what fire you were impacted by, your income, where you live, etc.

You then get a specific disaster action plan that provides you the specific information about the resources available to you that could be government resources, nonprofit resources, insurance assistance, home damage mediation resources, housing solutions and more. So it's a very easy to use online tool.

At the same time, we know that not everybody wants to communicate online and therefore we have multiple centers that we've opened in person in order to best communicate and provide resources to constituents.

Of course, the most critical resources are Disaster Recovery Center. This center centralizes over 70 agencies and has already seen the West LA Center has already seen 9,000 households, unique households and over 13,000 repeat visitors in terms of those that have come in at any given point.

But 9,000 unique households at the Disaster Recovery Center we have interpretation available in dozens of languages, as seen on the screen. Further, many state entities are located there from the DMV to EDD to CalVet and more, all providing those resources alongside federal as well as city and county government agencies as well as nonprofits.

Individuals can get help signing up for programs like FEMA, Individual Assistance, the Small Business Association, Home and Business Loans, LA County and LA City, Impacted Worker and Household Funds, Debris Removal Permitting, Housing Resources, CalFresh and more. We also have our One Stop Rebuilding Center which is designed to help residents as they plan to rebuild.

This center is designed to streamline permitting and is open six days a week, Monday through Saturday. It's a centralized location for Palisadians to go for resources to rebuild their homes as well as get questions answered about the rebuild process. Walk ins are welcome, no appointment is needed and parking is available on site.

Further, we've opened four Impacted Worker Centers and Family Resource Centers throughout the city. These centers are designed to provide economic supports and support finding jobs for individuals that may have been housekeepers, restaurant workers, grocery store workers throughout the Palisades and have been impacted by the fires economically.

We are providing wraparound services, support with case management and again job opportunities, real cash assistance as well as signing people up for a variety of public assistance. And these centers are located in West LA, Northeast San Fernando Valley, Leimert Park as well as Boyle Heights.

With that, I'll go ahead and wrap up my testimony and certainly stand by for questions.

Thank you. Ms. Delwood, you don't have Mr. Lamar okay, not yet. Okay, we'll move on to questions. I just wanted to jump in. I noticed, Ms. Delwood, that you talked about the many languages that are spoken and you provided services. It seemed like a really extraordinary long list.

How did you actually make that work when there's so many languages and so much information that needed to be communicated?

Well at the Disaster Recovery Center, we're actually utilizing technology.

So there is a technology with a computer system where anybody that comes in that speaks a variety of languages is able to actually get real time interpretation through a computer service and being able to link in virtual interpreters. So that's how we're providing that service in person, but through a computer for that type of real time interpretation.

Additionally, based on technology, our webinars allow for multiple languages. We've had Spanish, American Sign Language as well as closed captioning to make sure that our webinars are as inclusive as possible.

And through Zoom, you have that ability to click on the type of interpretation that works best for you, whether that be Spanish language or American Sign Language or closed captioning.

Thank you. I know that we were talking a while ago about the ability to have the resources of going online and how limited that could be or is in certain communities. How did you make up for that?

Well, that's why we have our in-person centers. That's really critical for us. We have multiple centers where people are able to ask questions as well as get their answers and sign up for real resources in-person.

We wanted to make sure that those impacted worker and family resource centers were available throughout the city, not just on the west side, because we know that people live throughout the city that may have been impacted. And those centers also provide multiple languages, definitely Spanish and English, and then using the technology services for additional languages.

And then of course our disaster recovery center, which has been very popular, as I stated, with already 9,000 in person residential visitors. So we're trying to do both. We know that many people do want to communicate online. That's why we're communicating via text, online resources, webinar, as well as newsletters.

And then we're complementing that with our in person centers throughout the city.

Okay, and just overall, what would you say the lessons are that you learned in terms of how to communicate with the public? That's the subject that we're taking up today.

So any lessons that you could share with us about how to communicate with the public, whether it's in this emergency or just more broadly during the normal course of doing business.

I think the lesson is generally the more the merrier in regards to communications. Obviously not everybody is going to be able to be on every webinar at 5pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So we have to repeat the information and provide it in multiple forms. Like I said, utilizing text messaging, utilizing in person.

We also have WhatsApp channels that we're communicating on because we're meeting people where they are. Of course, mail is another form of communication that we have utilized. However, with the emergency in particular, mail is difficult because people are not living at their mailing address.

And so we've had to be creative and some cases, we've been told by constituents, the block captain model that has been working well for us, that, hey, you know what; a lot of people are staying over here in this Marina Del Rey hotel. You all should go and talk to people on site.

And so we've utilized those recommendations from the block captains to go meet people where they are and then open new centers where we are learning people have moved. For example, we have learned through our variety of in-person conversations that many people from Altadena actually moved to South Los Angeles.

And so we actually hosted a specific roundtable discussion with Altadena residents who moved to South LA at the Leimert Park Impacted Worker center to provide key resources and meet those specific residents needs. So those are a few lessons and insights.

Great, great. Thank you. Senators, any comments or questions? No. No. Okay. All right. Ms. Delwood, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And thank you for the work that you did and that you continue to do for these for our community.

Thank you, Senator.

Okay, we're going to move on now to. If Mr. Lamar shows up, then we will immediately have him. Come on. Local agency perspective. What works well and what challenges do local agencies face?

So if we could have Anne Cottrell, Supervisor, Napa County, Jaime Patino, City Council Member of Union City, and Ryan Clausnitzer, General manager, Alameda County Mosquito Abatement District. Really important. I don't like mosquitoes. Oh, I'm sorry. And we have one other, Esther Mejia, board Member, El Rancho Unified School District, who is on Zoom. Okay. Ms. Cottrell.

Good morning. Thank you. My name is Anne Cottrell and I am a Napa County Supervisor from District 3. And first of all, I wanted to say thank you, Chair Durazzo and Committee Members for taking up this important topic today. I'm speaking on behalf of CSAC as well as Napa County.

And as we've already heard this morning, you know, sort of the tenets of the Brown Act. The Brown act was designed to ensure that local decisions are made in the public sphere and not behind closed doors and counties.

Just like you believe that this core principle remains just as important today as it was when the law was passed. And the other thing I think that's critical about your taking this up today is post Covid we have a more understanding. Just what we heard from Ms. Delwood. More residents are comfortable being online, participating remotely.

So I think I have a special shout out from our Commission on Aging who really would love to see more remote access because so many Members of that Committee are elderly and also have disabilities. And so that's key for them. So wanted to communicate that. In Napa County, we take accessibility seriously.

That's why we go beyond the Brown Acts requirements. To ensure our meetings are open to as many people as possible. We broadcast every meeting on Zoom, YouTube, our county website, and Napa TV, our local nonprofit TV station. We also allow the public to call in to comment remotely, giving people more options to participate by phone.

I have a really rural district and several people, several residents don't have Internet capabilities to stream a meeting that way. So the phone is really critical. We provide live Spanish translation and interpretation services via a service called Wordly and have bilingual staff available to assist with interpretation services.

And we want to ensure the public knows about meetings when we have them. So we'll do press releases before them, distribute notices, and share updates on social media because people can't participate if they don't know then meeting will be happening. We're proud of everything our county does to go above and beyond the requirements of the Brown Act.

But like Berkeley, Napa County is fairly well resourced. And as Mr. Numainville pointed out, what's right for Berkeley may not be right for other county. For other cities, the same is true. What's right for Napa may not be true for other counties.

My colleague from Modoc County, you know, they're facing a different situation, different commutes and things like that. So the one size fits all model is probably not appropriate here. And right now in this moment, local governments across the state are facing severe budget challenges.

And unlike most other state mandated programs, changes to the Brown act don't come with funding from the state to help cover these costs. I just found out from our clerk, Wordley itself costs $14,000 a year.

For our county, our Zoom capability is a 15, $50,000 a year cost, which for smaller counties, counties stretched in this moment, that's impactful. So without support from the state, these counties, our counties would have to absorb those costs, whether that's for interpretation services or two way audio visual meetings.

And new Brown Act mandates bring both fiscal and practical concerns. We need flexibility to pause online participation without stopping a meeting if disruptions occur. I think, Senator Laird, this is where some of your comments were going earlier. Whether they're technological, if we lose a Zoom connection, or if they're intentional.

I know several of our North Coast counties experienced Zoom bombings in 2023, which was really disruptive. So we do need more remote meeting flexibility, particularly for advisory bodies. As I mentioned our Commission on Aging, we really see that as expanding representation and participation.

And again, one of the biggest lessons during Covid that we learned is that we can hold more meetings online without sacrificing accessibility or accountability. And we saw increased civic engagement during that time. There are many good ideas in SB707 that would improve public access and the real question is whether they're achievable and affordable for all local governments.

If the Legislature believes that services like live interpretation or two way AB meetings should be mandates, then there should be funding to support that. At the end of the day, our goal is the same, ensuring open, transparent and accessible local government.

But to get there, we need to be realistic about what's feasible and we need local governments to be part of the conversation. Thanks for considering the practical and fiscal impacts of these Brown Act proposals on counties, cities and special districts.

I believe we can find the right balance between doing everything possible to improve public accessibility in meetings without sacrificing county budgets or making meetings impossible to manage. And we're happy to be part of the conversation. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. We're going to pause for one second here so that we can do take quorum. Establish quorum.

[Roll Call]

Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, we're gonna go on now with Ms. zero, here we go. Okay. Mr. Patino, good morning.

Good morning. Chair Durazo, Members of the Senate Local Government Committee. Senator Arreguin. We worked together on Cal Cities for a few years there. My name is Jaime Patino. I am the City Council Member in Union City, California.

I also proudly serve on the League of California City's Board of Directors, the National League of Cities Board of Directors and the Cal. I am Cal City's Chair of Governance, Transparency and Labor Relations.

I am here today on behalf of the League of Cities and as a person who has experienced the Brown act, as a Council Member and as a Member of the public. Cal Cities recognizes the need to conduct the public's business in public.

And to this end, Cal City supported and was co sponsor of of the original Ralph M. Brown Act. That being said, the Brown Act was enacted in 1953 and is due for modernization. Brown Act modernization, however, must also be balanced in its approach and cannot overburden a city's ability to conduct business.

I think you alluded to that. For multi jurisdictional bodies, some advisory committees are geographically large, especially in rural areas, and make it time consuming to attend these meetings. I once was speaking with a Council Member from Santa Rosa.

She was in a part of a special district that stretched from Santa Rosa all the way up to Crescent City and sometimes they rotated the city. Sometimes she had to drive up to Eureka or to Crescent City for an hour and a half meeting. That's one example.

Some committees in areas known for heavy traffic, such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area, make it difficult to attend these meetings. For those of you from Southern California, try getting from Palmdale down to downtown LA or even Beverly Hills to downtown LA. That could be a challenge.

The Brown Act should have additional flexibility for those serving on these bodies to teleconference, teleconferencing for Members of the Body. The in person requirement to participate on local governance bodies presents a disproportionate challenge to those with physical or economic limitations, including seniors, persons with disabilities, single parents, caretakers, or those who live in rural areas and face prohibitive driving distances.

During the Covid-19 global pandemic, individuals who could not otherwise accommodate the time distance or mandatory physical participation requirements were able to participate remotely, gaining them access to leadership opportunities and providing communities with greater diversified input on critical community proposals. Two years ago, the Legislature overwhelmingly passed and the Governor signed SB544.

Noting equity issues presented by physical attendance requirements, the Bill provided teleconferencing flexibility to Members of state bodies that are purely advisory in nature. This flexibility for Members of an advisory body should be should extend to local agencies.

Unfortunately, over the past several years, cities across the state have experienced a coordinated effort to Zoom bomb and fill our council chambers with hate speech. Cities have grappled with this problem and how to address it, some having chosen to shut down remote public comment because of how disruptive the meetings had become due to Zoom bombing.

Any Bill to prescribe a required virtual public comment would be limiting a city's ability to manage Zoom bombing and hate speech at their council meeting. This needs to be part of the conversation.

About a year ago we had in our neighboring city in Newark, we had someone Zoom bomb the meeting and they said very vulgar things about a Council Member's Latina heritage and which was very unfortunately and unfortunately what we have to do is either we allow all comments, no matter how bad they are, or we have to just stop the comments.

So we need to have some flexibility there. While currently teleconferencing flexibility is better than nothing and has offered some relief, the general experience, however, has been confusion and trouble understanding how to use AB 2449 flexibilities.

Outside of AB 2449, Members of Brown act bodies would have to post their location and make it open to the public, even if it was their home and regardless of the time of day. This obviously could limit the use due to safety concerns. This is also an area that could use improvement.

Cal Cities believes in conducting the business of government with transparency, openness, respect and civility. Open decision making that is of the highest ethical standards honors the public trust. Cal Cities believes state officials and agencies should conform to the same level of transparency and ethical behavior as is imposed on local officials and agencies.

Cal Cities acknowledges that local government and state government have their own unique needs, but by and large, transparency laws applied to local agencies should apply equitably to the State of California and state officials.

It should also be noted that laws mandating cities to take on new responsibilities under the Brown Act all fall on the shoulders of local agencies. This should be considered as we modernize the Brown Act. Thank you again for having this needed informational hearing on the Brown Act and I look forward to continued conversation on modernization.

Thank you very much. Senator Durazo is out presenting a Bill in another Committee. She will be back. I'm sure she's going to pay close attention to your testimony and we will move on to Mr. Clausnitzer from the Mosquito Abatement District in Alameda County. Welcome to the Committee.

There I'm on. Thank you very much Senator and Hearing. My name is Ryan Clausnitzer.

Before my role at the Mosquito District, I was actually an employee at County of Santa Cruz, lived in Santa Cruz, a resident and I also worked for the City of Berkeley where I also attended the Goldman School of Public Policy. So it's nice to see some familiar faces up here.

But currently, I am the General Manager of the Alameda County Mosquito Abatement District, which is among other things a Member of the California Special District Association, CSDA, which I'm on the Board of Directors.

The Association is a 501c6, not for profit. Association that was formed in 1969 to promote good governance and improved core local services through CSDA's partnership with the Nonprofit Special District Leadership Foundation. Our district, which I'm going to call ACMAT, it's a long name.

Is it also recipient of the Foundation's Transparency Certificate of Excellence, recognizing the many steps our district takes to show it is available and transparent to the constituents and the customers we serve. Special districts are generally speaking formed by a community for the purpose of providing one or more specialized services in addition to mosquito abatement.

Other examples include water districts, fire protection districts, recreation park districts, research conservation districts and many more. Residents identify public services as that is in demand for local community and through processes outlined in state law may pursue the formation of a special district.

Special districts come in many forms but are largely funded by local revenues, primarily things like special taxes, assessments and fees for services. Importantly, these revenues are also the funding streams from which a district must finance its compliance with the various mandates placed on local public agencies by state law.

This includes things like the Ralph Brown act which establishes the required conduct for open and public meetings. Upholding the letter in the spirit of the law behind the Brown Act is a serious endeavor with the irreproachable goal of ensuring public access to local public agency meetings.

While mosquito abatement districts have trustees from every city in their service district, which means our board has 15 trustees which represents the 14 cities of Alameda County plus a trustee representing the county at large. About half of these trustees are Council Members which more often than not have a science background or an interest in mosquitoes.

There's some doctors, PhDs, teachers or just often just active members of the community that want to be involved in their community.

Our board meets every second Wednesday at 5:00 in our office in Hayward where besides discussing the latest action taking toward protecting the public from mosquito borne diseases, like all local governments, we discuss how to prudently manage the public funds along with other policy decisions.

We post our meetings about a week prior Thursday or Friday on our website and other locations. Every meeting we have about two to four of those 15 trustees that require remote participation due to work, family health conflicts using either the AB244 exemptions or with their location publicly posted through traditional Brown Act requirements.

Compliance with this act however, is not a zero cost undertaking. Like other local government agencies, our district has allocated significant staff time and facilities financial resources to compliance with the Brown Act. We have a permanent staff of 19 employees. With little overhead, I am the HR Director, the Finance Director, the Clerk of the Board.

I create and send out the board packet. I have to make sure we are compliant with the Brown Act and sharing materials for more attendees. I have a field biologist who takes the meeting minutes. That was a new assignment.

I used to do that before and we have our IT Director who works later to stay on for technical support. So we really have to stretch ourselves thin in there.

But having a lean and efficient organization serving 1.8 residents requires leveraging the public, often, on mosquito control practices through outreach and engagement. For example, so, you know, right now with mosquitoes mostly in backyards, we really leverage this sort of outreach to get our work, our mission accomplished.

We pride ourselves on this return on investment to residents, our properties. Our revenues from three property sources. Taxes we have $1.74, a $2.50 assessment which brings in about $5 million with the share of ad valorem.

So it's important to note that while our district takes pride in complying with all the transparency and accountability requirements, this compliance does not come at a cost. And there's no state reimbursement for these mandates available to our community. Thankfully, our district has not been subject to significant financial turmoil over the last few years.

However, we recognize that cannot be said for every local public agency. While ACMAD is a less financially in a less financially secure position. Given the nature of district finances and operations, one of the main cost containment measures the district would need to turn to would likely be to cut services.

Among the 2,000 independent special districts serving nearly every one of California's 39 million residents, some have less than a handful of staff and some have no staff at all. Some special districts, like resource conservation districts, are entirely grant funded with little to no overhead to speak of.

For these special districts in particular, it is important we be mindful of the costs associated with new state mandates. None of this is to denigrate the Brown Act.

To be clear, my remarks are only meant to speak to the challenges posed by compliance with these mandates included, but not limited to the act while being effective stewards of public dollars.

Simply put, as compliance costs rise and mandates become more complex, more of the limited funds districts oversee become dedicated to things not directly tied to the cost of services demanded by the community that formed the district.

It is a balancing act that poses a serious ongoing challenge to special districts and other local agencies bound by mandates in the Brown Act. As a state Legislator looks at the future of the Brown Act, I would encourage a carrot and stick approach.

How can we manage and encourage local governments to be the best they can to within their means? How can we provide additional funding to meet the additional mandates we are placing on them? If we don't provide the funding with the mandate, we will ultimately either push agencies out of compliance or force us to cut services.

So I really thank you for your time and allow me to provide the special district's perspective. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. And given your locations of your past service, your clearly battle tested it. We have one additional speaker on this panel, it's Esther Mejia. She is from the El Rancho Unified School District. She's coming to us by Zoom. Here she is. Welcome to the Committee. We're anxious to hear your comments.

Thank you. Good morning, Members. My name is Esther Mejia. I have served on the El Rancho Unified School District governing board since 2020, and my children, my husband, and I are proud district alumni. Our district faces declining enrollment and approximately 75% of our students are classified as socioeconomically disadvantages, disadvantaged.

These challenges and many others make serving the growing needs of students and schools at each school board meeting more important. We must ensure that the voices of our students, parents, and teachers are heard and that we have the tools to respond to those who might try to limit their input.

The top three issues that we face are striking a balance between getting the work done while providing an opportunity for meaningful input to those served by the district, 2. better alignment between the different teleconferencing rules and 3. a history of Confucian state case law. First, we need to find the right balance. School Board Meetings are business meetings.

Their main purpose is not to provide a forum for speakers. The district's ability to get the work done on the local control accountability plan, the district's budget, district policies, contracts, and employment matters is just as important as the right of the public to speak during meetings.

However, when there are disruptions by speakers, it makes it difficult for the board to do the necessary work to maintain district operations and can affect access with other members of the public. With regards to teleconferencing, there are inconsistent rules depending on the why and when a Board Member is participating remotely, depending on the circumstances.

Current law provides for several teleconferencing options, including traditional during proclaimed state of emergency, or when a Board Member has a personal emergency or just cause.

Many technical differences exist between them, such as when a location must be accessible to the public, when the location of the remote participant must be noted on the agenda, or when others at the remote location must identify themselves. More uniform rules for teleconferencing would be helpful to both governing boards and the public.

While SB 1100 was beneficial, some areas still need further clarification. Current case law regarding disruptions has been inconsistent. Some courts have found actions taken by boards to restore order to be lawful, such as when a speaker was unduly repetitious or when someone dumped refuse on the floor during a meeting.

Yet in other cases, speakers with disruptive actions or comments have been found to be lawful. Clear standards for what constitutes a disruption will help boards restore order necessary to get their work done while reducing the possibility of expensive litigation that arises from these cases.

I appreciate the Committee's interest in how the brown napkins better serve the state's nearly 1,000 district and county school communities and the boards elected to represent their interests. Thank you.

Thank you very much. It's a dangerous precedent for the Legislature to oppose elected officials that repeat themselves. That might apply to us as well. This would be the opportunity for Members of the Committee to ask questions of our panel. Do we have any questions, Senator Cabaldon?

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Laird. And sorry, Senate, as you know, Senate Education is meeting simultaneously. So I'm sorry to have missed the first panel, but very much appreciate the panel particular. My personal favorite being Supervisor Cottrell from my district and in Napa County. Let me see if this ends up in a question, but the.

So the Brown Act from 1953 predates most of what local governments do. We have to forget that there was no CEQA when the Brown act was enacted. There was no Subdivision Map Act. There was no Clean Water Act. Transit districts basically didn't exist. Many cities would meet monthly.

Their city manager, if they had one, or if not, their Police Chief would come and report on what the cities were up to. And the decision by the city was a decision. That is to say, if you were.

If you were considering the construction of a city pool or location of a city dump or sewer facility, you made that single decision. Since that time, though, a couple things have happened. One, the great society and then the war on poverty.

The Brown Act was strengthened and many other laws were strengthened because there was such a mishmash, mismatch between who local governments were and who the people were.

And so cities and counties and other public agencies were bulldozing community after community for highway projects and other things without regard to the people of the state, in particular, the state's great diversity. So since that time, two things have happened.

One is thanks to a lot of work here and then a lot of just maturation and political activism and demographic change, City councils and school boards in particular and county boards of supervisors look much more like their communities. So in a time when we were.

When many of the Brown Act and other laws were intended to protect communities from their democratically elected government, governments who were bulldozing them, we are now in a situation where that should be less the case, and the polling shows that it is, that the notion that the principal role of state government was to protect the people from their democratic representatives and local government, that those assumptions are not necessarily the same in terms of their validity as they might have been in 1964.

But the second is that that decision to build a pool or to site a wastewater treatment plant is now 97 decisions. And so you, you, you must acquire the land. As I said, there was no Subdivision Map Act in 1953. So you're going to have to do a lot line adjustment.

You're going to do a bunch of other. Take a bunch of actions there. It has to be, you had to be in your general plan. So you're going to do a general plan hearing, a separate hearing on the zoning, on the, on the Zoning Act, even though the zoning has to.

Is required by law to be totally consistent with that. And so the number of hearings, the number of these engagement opportunities that we've created is exponentially larger. It's unimaginably larger than it was when the Brown Act was created. And so I will say it's also a challenge for the people.

I did a quick check before today's hearing over the weekend, just of some random folks who either work for the Committee or in the community or whatever, just to see how many of us actually in the cities and the counties that we live, those of us that work in this policy area, how many of us have in the last 12 months been to, attended and spoken at a City Council meeting or Board of Supervisors?

And the answer was zero. Zero. Our fealty to participation in this form in the Brown Act form is really very much depends on having the privilege of time, the privilege of confident English fluency, the privilege of being housed. There's a lot of privileges involved. And it turns out that people with that privilege mostly don't exercise.

They don't choose to exercise their participation in democracy through attending a hearing, as most of us actually do not that support it. So I guess as you're describing, some of the impacts that you're facing at the local level, it seems to me like we're talking about how to.

How to sort of continue all of these trends, but just make them slightly easier with a, you know, a little technology piece here or a little notice change.

Our friends at the league and the special districts and CSAC thinking more fundamentally about the notion of what democracy is, what decisions are, and what an effective way to increase participation, not in hearings, but in democracy itself, in addition to the kind of technical changes that you've outlined today for the Brown Act.

I think there was a question there. So.

There was an inflection there at the end.

Up talk.

Thank you, Senator, for that frame. I think, first of all, the question, you know, about what the scope of the conversation is around the Brown Act, I think, is a very important one. I would say, to reflect on our specific experience in Napa County, things like looking at flexibility for meeting times, populations, who's there to support if we need translation. I think that is an ongoing conversation. And I think at CSAC, those conversations are happening too. Because you're right, it's not just about flipping a switch to make, you know, an incremental change with technology.

It's how do we get ongoing public participation, also incentivizing people to engage and feel like their voice matters. I think that's a really important through line to all of this. And I do want to reflect back on one of the comments from Dr. Bukalova in that first panel where she said, you know, counties, local jurisdictions, special districts, cities are experimenting with all of this. I wanted to share.

We, a number of times we'll have someone call in on the phone and it gets dropped, and we all wait, and then someone has to remind someone, ma'am, can you please turn down, you know, your radio, basically. We have something with our Spanish translation that sometimes will pop in into the audio across the room, the Spanish translation of what we just heard. So we're getting, we're working out all the kinks. So I think that's an important piece, too, that there's, the goal is not some immediate status of perfection.

It's going to be an ongoing conversation. And I think how that reflects back to some of the legislation we're talking about today is to make sure that jurisdictions have flexibility to try things out, to experiment and see what works, what doesn't work. And Mr. Patiño, you pointed out you've experienced things where the meeting just didn't work with the constraints that you had in place, and so you needed to come up with other solutions. So with that, I'll ask my colleagues here if you have comments.

Thank you, Senator. One of the things I wanted to bring up is, okay, you're saying that the Brown Act in 1953, you know, and things have changed since then. That was six years before my city was even incorporated. So, and I, and I'm a firm believer that especially when it comes to things with technology, the law should evolve with it. Right now, I'm sure many of you are tackling with, just such as we are with, with AI and what role is that going to play in government? You know, and we're still talking about teleconferencing.

We're not, we're not, we haven't, you know, we're still trying to now we have this whole other thing called AI. So law, the law should always be a living thing. It should evolve as technology evolves. And, and so what worked in 1953, what worked in 1964, what worked in February of 2020 is a lot different than where we're at now. So, and we should go in with open minds, but also have some guardrails to make sure that we don't get the hate speech that we have had on some of these zoom bomb bombing incidents. So, so yeah, thank you for the comments.

I'll just be very brief, but I think we've seen with the remote participation, our main positive is our board has become much more representative of our community. I think that's been a real bonus for us. It has challenges for me, as I mentioned. That's the other side to it though is I'm the one that posts all these. I have to make sure our 15 board members have all their certifications and all that. But I will take the, the better outcomes, the better representative, the better decision making. That's a trade off I'm worth looking at.

But again, mosquito districts are quite large, but there's lots of research, conservation as I mentioned, that don't have any staff for this. So that's what we're trying to find, that balance of allowing for better decision makers, more participation in the meetings. I'll be honest, a lot of people don't show up at mosquito district meetings, so that's not as common. But I do attend our local cities in Alameda County and elsewhere, and I do see that, that being an option. So I hope set, frame the perspective.

Yeah. If you don't. Mr., just one quick piece which is just to ask your help in thinking through this decision question. Because I was a mayor for 20 years, and the most frustrating part was watching citizens come to these hearings at a point where the hearings are still legally mandated but the decision is effectively already made. So I would vote to do an apartment complex at, you know, third and C. And then that's all the, all the courage that you know, that that takes. And then we do the zoning map change.

By the time we're at the lot line adjustment and the parking map and the under, we're still holding public hearings and people are coming out because they heard about the project for the first time, and they're angry about it and they want to stop it. And it is basically state mandated theater because we're already so far along, the 27 decisions have already been made. It's not going to be different that day.

And so the tragedy is watching people not tutoring their daughter at home that Tuesday night in algebra when she has a test in the morning, or having to take time off of work or do other things to be at a meeting where their participation is not meaningful.

But it is state mandated because, at this point, you're basically executing ministerial functions to complete an action that you've done. So I would just ask, not in this moment, but you help us think through how we can be better in state government and identifying and focusing participation where it matters and where it is meaningful and where it is efficient from the perspective of the citizen that we are hoping we will be getting engaged. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Would you like to comment?

May I comment on that, Senator?

You're leaning toward the mic.

Okay. An inflection almost. I just wanted to call out our colleague who is participating remotely, Esther Mejia from the El Rancho School District. You know, I think she framed it very well, the importance of public participation and the very high importance of the actual work they're doing, which I think is the tension that you're calling out. How do we get the work done at the same time as allow for meaningful public comment? So just wanted to give a shout out to Ms. Mejia.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Senator Arreguín.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to pick up on an issue I think the panelists had addressed, I think very thoughtfully from a variety of perspectives, which is the issue of disruptions of government meetings, which has become more common, frankly, in recent years, and I think will unfortunately continue to be a challenge. And I certainly experienced this firsthand as the Mayor of Berkeley during the pandemic and even more recently on a number of very controversial issues. And disruption happens in many ways.

If you're conducting a meeting through zoom or through some virtual platform, as was mentioned, people can zoom bomb, come on and say very hateful things or, you know, make comments with the intention of disrupting the proceedings. And it's challenging because we are not only governed by the Brown Act but by the First Amendment, people have a constitutional right to say hateful things. And I think some jurisdictions have tried to address this in a variety of ways.

Some have completely eliminated the option of having virtual participation as a way to prevent that kind of disruption and hate speech from happening. I don't think that's a good thing. That's not a good outcome. Some have adopted specific and very narrowly tailored decorum policies, but, you know, there is no clear guidance from the state.

There is no good best practice. So I think this is an issue we will have to address and really work with you all and, you know, certainly work with leg council to see how we can develop a set of guidelines to provide some direction to local governments on how to address this issue.

Because the alternative of not allowing for virtual participation or ending, taking a recess of a meeting or ending a meeting because of disruptive behavior, that's not a good outcome either. And it's oftentimes intentional. It's intended to disrupt and to delay government business from being conducted. I'll, on the other side, talk about in person disruptions, which is an issue that I've certainly dealt with on a number of occasions in my city.

And the current Brown Act Statute 54957.9 gives the legislative body the ability, the presiding office of the legislative body the ability to clear the room and to allow the meeting to proceed with no members of the public present, and if there's continued disruptions, to them meet in a separate room. Now, if you have 100-200 people that are, that are in the gallery of a meeting who are deliberately disrupting the meeting, how do you go about clearing the room without there being, you know, a huge altercation? That's just.

I mean, I think the law envisioned one person or two people, but not a large group of people who are intent on disrupting and shutting down a meeting. So we need to take a look at that. I know that Senator Cortese had a bill recently that was intended to provide some additional flexibility. I don't think it goes far enough. My City Clerk can certainly attest to this.

I interpreted the statute differently when I had a disruptive meeting where rather than actually having the police physically drag people out of the room, which I thought was not a good outcome for public safety or for public participation, I interpreted the statute to say that because this group was deliberately disrupting the meeting and not allowing the meeting to proceed, and we asked repeatedly, gave them warnings, asked them to come to order, they refused to come to order.

I interpreted the statute, and it didn't meet the exact letter of the statute, to allow us to meet in a separate room with the members of the public present and to allow people to observe and participate virtually. And I think that met the spirit of the law. It didn't meet the letter of the law, but it meant the spirit of the law. So I think we're going to have to address this issue of disruptions. And I think everyone should have a right to fully observe and participate in our local government process.

But when it prevents the government agency from doing business and when it actually intimidates people from being able to come and participate in government meetings, that's not good for our democracy. So I just want to just call out that issue. I think a number of you had addressed it, and I think it's an issue we are going to have to address because this unfortunately is becoming too commonplace in California. I just want to also address a few other issues.

I heard you all address the need for flexibility in terms of how to connect meetings, not only to allow for in person but virtual participation, to give local governments options in terms of how meetings are conducted. And then lastly, I heard you all address the issue of costs, unfunded mandates.

You know, if Sacramento is going to be putting in place new requirements, you need the resources not only in terms of staffing, but training, but also technology to be able to implement those new requirements. And you know, not every city may have the resources or the staff to be able to do that. So I think that's certainly an issue we'll have to consider as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there questions or comments from Committee Members? Let me just make one comment. I really appreciate the comments of my colleague from Berkeley because we had zoom bombs at cities in each of the four counties in my district that were really hard and difficult. Racist, sexist, homophobic.

And it is tough when you're trying to apply equal protection to have to allow for that in any way. And then there was a fleeting comment about mandates. And I always feel obligated to make a comment because when I was in the Assembly I chaired a Mandate Select Committee where we repealed or re-referred 25% of the mandates. And it is such an arcane process that whatever is done just requires payment.

There was this bill that nobody could vote against before I got in the Legislature that said American history had to include the discussion of the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, for some reason, Washington's farewell speech. It was about six things.

And school clerks would go through history books, find the pages that reference that, bill to the state the prorate a part of those pages, charges for the Clerk. And there has to be a better way to have us say there should be fair and open meetings without it becoming this massive cost because it's something that cities and counties should be doing anyway. And I know there's a balance. I know there's a balance.

And I think our job is, is to find that balance so that there is, there's adequate remuneration, but at the same time, it doesn't become cost prohibitive to require open meetings. So that, that will be a thing we wrestle with. And it just should never be construed as us just lobbing costs on the locals or not being concerned about the policy.

We just have to thread the needle on that in a way that. When I ran for the Legislature the first time 22 years ago, was elected, a local county supervisor said, you'll get there 10 minutes and you'll forget where you came from. And so it is our struggle for that not to be true. And it's in that mandates part. The Chair has graciously returned to the committee, and that completes panel four. And so the Chair could begin on panel five.

I'm sure it was fantastic. It was. I'm sure it was. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And then I'll have to leave in a few minutes. Okay. I'll introduce the next and last panel. Thank you, Senator Laird. Digging deeper, identifying strategies to improve public meetings for local governments and the public.

And we have two people here in person and three on the zoom. So the first is Angélica Salceda, Director of Democracy and Civic Engagement for ACLU. Good morning. Also with us in person is Steve Lipson, California Senior Legislator, Senior Senator.

And we have on zoom, Eric Harris from the Disability Rights of California. Arturo Carmona, President, Latino Media Collaborative. And Jacob Wasserman, North Westwood Neighborhood Council. Okay, so please try to keep this to three minutes. And first, Angélica. Welcome, Ms. Salceda.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members of this Committee. My name is Angélica Salceda, and I'm the Director of the ACLU of Northern California's Democracy and Civic Engagement Program, where I litigate cases enforcing California's public meeting laws. I'm also a board member of California Common Cause, which also works on these issues. A strong democracy thrives on transparency.

When government actions are visible to the public, trust is strengthened and accountability is ensured. Open meetings and public access to decision making processes are not just beneficial, they are essential to maintaining the integrity of our democratic institutions. Legislative bodies have a duty to facilitate, not inhibit public participation.

Citizens must have the ability to observe, engage with and contribute to discussions that shape their communities. Public meetings should be accessible to the public, both in person, remotely, ensuring that all voices can be heard regardless of barriers like distance, work schedules, or personal responsibilities.

Providing more meaningful public access to public meetings does not place an undue burden on public agencies. The cost of providing the public with a remote option to watch, listen, and give public comment is minimal compared to the benefits of increased civic engagement and trust in government.

The public deserves to see how their tax dollars are being spent and to have a voice in the policies that affect their daily lives. Our communities benefit when there's also more language access opportunities, but that doesn't always happen, and this is especially true for immigrant communities.

Instead, we've seen local governments eliminate remote options for public, reduce opportunities for public comment, cut off public comments altogether, or favoring certain public comments over others. Our legislative body should prioritize hearing from the public, not shutting them out. We need more transparency, not less. In our experience, closed session exceptions are limited but nonetheless abused.

Without proper oversight, government bodies risk operating behind closed doors, shielding critical decisions from public scrutiny. History has repeatedly shown that when transparency is compromised, accountability weakens and the potential for corruption grows.

In a case we're litigating against, the City of Fresno, for example, the city for years used a secret committee to make budgetary decisions and deprived residents of the opportunity to weigh in on how the city allocated their tax dollars. These practices need to stop, and they can only stop if we require more of government bodies, not less.

Specifically, members of legislative bodies should be required to participate in person except in limited circumstances. I think it's a reasonable expectation that when someone is making or advising on decisions that impact our communities, they show up rather than hide or avoid the public.

But whenever we hear from government bodies, they often request flexibility for their own participation, but push back when we ask for remote, universal remote participation from the public. California's open meeting laws were designed to prevent secrecy in public affairs and ensure that government decisions are made in the open.

The Legislature should build upon this foundation by expanding, not weakening, these protections. It must prioritize policies that promote transparency, reinforce public trust, and make it easier for residents to stay informed and involved in their government. Violations of open meetings do occur. We hear about them multiple times a week.

And then there are actions that are contrary to the spirit of open meeting laws and call for reform. For example, we hear about governing bodies that calling a special meeting on a 24 hour notice to address hot button issues that should be discussed in a regularly scheduled meeting.

We see poorly described agenda items, members of a governing body engaging in serial meetings, and the list goes on. We encourage you to focus on the public and call for more transparency and accountability, for more meaningful public engagement and reforms aid at curbing abuse and corruption.

Democracy works best when the public has a clear view of how decisions are made. Ensuring open access to government meetings is not just a best practice, it is a necessity. The Legislature should affirm California's commitment to transparency and take meaningful steps to strengthen public participation in the democratic process. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Sorry. Okay, we're going to move to. Mr. Lipson.

Good morning, Committee Members and fellow panelists. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Steve Lipson, and I serve as the Senior Senator for Contra Costa County in the California Senior Legislature. I'd like to begin by focusing on the core purpose of the Brown Act, open access and participation in government.

That is its foundation and that is what must be fortified and strengthened in every way possible to ensure all people can engage with their government. We also have to take a moment to understand the context of the Brown Act's teleconferencing provisions. In 1997, teleconferencing was expensive. It was an exclusive tool largely restricted to wealthy corporations and individuals.

The strict regulations around its use made sense, ensuring that those with access to the technology weren't the only ones benefiting from remote participation. It was the right thing to do at the time, in line with the spirit of government transparency. Fast forward to today, and technology has transformed access.

Teleconferencing is now a universal tool allowing anyone, regardless of financial status, age, disability, or geographic location, to engage in government meetings from anywhere in the world. But here's the issue. Current regulations have not evolved with the times. Instead of using technology to expand participation, outdated teleconferencing rules now serve as barriers.

So consider what happens when we demand that participants publicly publish their home addresses just to exercise their right to speak remotely. In ACOAs and Advisory Councils on Aging across the state, in disability groups across the state, especially for older adults, those with disabilities, caregivers, or individuals with safety concerns, this is a deterrent, it's not an invitation.

And the same technology that should be broadening access is instead closing doors. So consider what we do in practice. For an older adult, for a caregiver, for a person with a disability, you have to post your physical address and make your, you have to open your door to anyone who wants to participate.

The agendas that are published by our county require that our addresses show up there. So we are making our vulnerable populations more vulnerable just to participate in the process. It sort of defies logic. We do need to modernize the Brown Act's teleconferencing provisions without compromising transparency. The goal is simple, that we want to ensure that everyone can participate.

But we have to recognize the technology has changed the landscape, and our law should reflect that. It's not about circumventing transparency about, it's about aligning the Brown Act with its original intent, ensuring open, accessible, and participatory government for all. And in keeping with that, I would say we should seriously consider SB 239. That moves in the right direction, I believe. Thank you very much for your time and happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Lipson. We're going to move on the Zoom. We have Eric Harris with Disability Rights California.

Yes, good morning, Chair and Members. My name is Eric Harris. I am the Associate Executive Director of External Affairs at Disability Rights California. It's wonderful to be here with everyone today, and I'll go through my comments. Disability Rights California is a statewide nonprofit organization that provides free legal services for people with disabilities throughout the state.

Starting off I do not intend to get into a free speech discussion, but I'm sure many of my colleagues can have a full session of discussions on free speech. We have heard several comments about Zoom bombing, hate speech, and other negative parts of using Zoom or any other type of virtual platform.

I previously served as a staff member in Sacramento City Council, and in these meetings there were protests, there were weekly shouting matches, there were meetings that started off schedule and ran late into the evenings regularly. This would happen in person often, almost every week.

So whether it is in person or on Zoom, having folks who participate in public settings can often result in these types of incidents. I think it's important that we don't just talk about them when it's a virtual setting, but we also acknowledge that this happens in a physical setting in person as well.

Although my focus is on the disability community, remote participation helps not only disabled people, but it helps people in rural parts of the state or rural areas of given local environments, folks who have multiple jobs and family responsibilities, people who are dealing with illnesses, etc. And people who just do not feel comfortable being in public settings.

Nearly one in four people in the state have some type of a disability, and that number continues to grow. Disabled people asking for virtual have been asking for virtual participation or remote participation for years, ever since we got most of the technology that we have today.

The pandemic, of course, as many have said, led to much more access for disabled people. What we learned is, when it's a priority, we can make a shift towards accessibility. Unfortunately, over the years, of course, remote participation ramped up in 2020 and has since largely gone away.

Many government institutions, many of local government and state government have gone away from allowing remote participation, including in this hearing here today, as the Chair mentioned. For a variety of reasons, disabled people might not be able to attend in person and they might not feel comfortable because of accessibility reasons or otherwise. Government buildings aren't always accessible.

Yes, even our State Capitol and even the Swing Space are not fully accessible for all disabled people. An important piece of this disabled people often hear go get an accommodation if you need one, which is often much easier said than done. Disability is a different experience for all of us, and it is important that we educate all people, including disabled people themselves and their families, on reasonable accommodations and how they can be requested. Even with that, though, the systems in place are often imperfect and sometimes flat out bad.

And it is important that we recognize that getting accommodations is often much more complicated of a process than we would care to admit. Creating environments with universal accessibility where all people feel welcome should be the norm and the expectation. Why it is important to encourage the public and members themselves to be able to participate remotely?

This shows examples to all disabled people that not only are we a part of the public, but we can be a part of the decision making process as members and hopefully future Assembly Members, future Senators, and one day as disabled people leading the state in a variety of ways as Governor.

On a personal note, this really hits home for me as a wheelchair user and one who has worked in the greater Sacramento area for a long period of time and has now moved outside of the city, how challenging it is to find accessible parking. It is often, again, easy for us to say it, but difficult in practice.

When parking can be complicated, the buildings themselves can be complicated, getting back and forth can be complicated. So I just encourage us to add more opportunities for remote participation and virtual participation for both the public and the Members themselves. Thank you and again, I'm happy to answer any questions that any of the Senators or others might have.

...Harris. We'll move on now to Arturo Carmona.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members, and thank you for holding this important hearing on a topic that is very important to our communities. My name is Arturo Carmona, and I'm the President of the Latino Media Collaborative. The LMC is focused on building the future for Latino media and communities we serve across virtually every corner of the state. As a leading advocate for sustainable journalism, our collaborative has formed powerful collaborations with over 25 Latino networks and media outlets, representing over 100 TV, radio, digital, and print platforms across every corner of the state.

Together, we are transforming the media landscape by working to uplift Latino voices, provide capacity building support, and create opportunities for direct funding, joint media projects, and innovative storytelling. One of our major priorities is making sure that California Latinos get accurate and timely information about government policy and decisions that affect their lives.

From public health and emergency preparedness to access to benefits and services for themselves, their businesses, and their families. This kind of information is crucial to empowering residents to engage with government at all levels when decisions are being made. That engagement ensures that policymakers know and understand how their constituents are affected by the decisions they make.

That's why we sponsored Assembly Bill AB 1511 in 2023, which was carried by Assembly Member Santiago. AB 1511 sought to require California to increase the share of state advertising and outreach dollars that go to ethnic and community media.

There's been a history of disinvestment in California towards Latino and other ethnic media outlets, and this bill sought to follow the footsteps of New York City, Chicago, and other jurisdictions across the country to close that disinvestment reality that we were facing in the state government. But also we face the same reality with local governments in California.

Many people don't know this, but California governments across the state spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on outreach and advertising. In fact, during the peak of COVID 19, just the State of California spent well over 200 million in one year in advertisement. Local governments, as I mentioned, also spend resources on outreach. Unfortunately, very little is reaching ethnic and community medias and valuable information is just not reaching hard to reach in language and other diverse populations, particularly in the Latino community.

This is a missed opportunity because these media are trusted sources in our communities at a time when misinformation is rampant and Californians crave information about their government that is accurate and reliable. In a state where people of color make up a strong majority as a population, there is no excuse for partnering and supporting ethnic and community media.

Yet our research shows that only a tiny fraction of the millions of dollars California spends on outreach and advertising reaches ethnic and community media. State reports that only about 30,000 was spent directly on advertising on Latino media outlets.

We believe that there's reporting discrepancies, but at the end of the day, we're seeing that well under 10% of advertising dollars are reaching Latino communities when the reality is that over 40% of the population is Latino in the state. I should note that this is possible that it is possible that these numbers understate the true amount spent on advertising and ethnic media, but the state's reporting on its spending is not detailed enough to compile a complete assessment.

The final version of AB 1511 required state agencies to develop plans to increase this spending and to report more specifically that total amount spent on ethnic media. So we're hopeful that that vagueness and that transparency gap will be closed thanks to AB 1511.

But unlike our original proposal, the bill as enacted did not set specific spending targets for ethnic media like other states and other jurisdictions are doing. Nor did it require the kind of detailed transparency that is necessary to evaluate the state's performance and partnership with ethnic and community media, specifically Latino media.

We have been working with the Newsom Administration this year to implement the bill and they have expressed admirable commitment to the goals and to achieve the vision of it. But follow up legislation may still be needed to ensure that the state does all it can to communicate with, to communicate with Californians where they are in languages they can understand. New legislation could also apply these principles to local government.

But if that's not possible, residents in every city and county in the state should push their representatives to follow and adopt policies like this and ensure that local hyper local community media outlets make up an essential part of the communication infrastructure, not only statewide, but locally. Otherwise, large members and large numbers of California residents will be left in the dark about decisions that impact them and their families and services that would improve their lives. Thank you, and I'd be happy to welcome any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Carmona. And last we have Jacob Wasserman, Secretary, North Westwood Neighborhood Council.

Thank you so much. Yes, my name is Jacob. I am the Secretary of the North Westwood Neighborhood Council, but want to be clear, I'm just speaking personally. Yeah, thank you for allowing me to participate on Zoom relevant to the topic of the meeting. I'm expecting a kid any day now, so couldn't make the trip up to Sacramento.

Neighborhood councils, for those who aren't from the LA area, are these kind of unique bodies that are the most local level of government in the City of LA. There are 99 of them and you can vote on them and serve on them. Not just if you live in an area, but if you work in an area, if you attend church or synagogue in an area, if you're a student in an area, and if you're a member of another community organization. You don't need citizenship. You can be 16.

It's a very cool way to represent our communities in ways that traditional government levels don't necessarily do. So for instance, I work at UCLA, so I'm on the North Westwood Neighborhood Council, which is campus, Westwood Village, and Persian Square. But I live in the City of Santa Monica, but I am a voter and a member of the board of the neighborhood council in North Westwood. I want to talk a little bit about the way our neighborhood council and others across the city have really benefited from teleconferencing options.

So in 2023, after the pandemic state of emergency ended, neighborhood councils were put back into in person meeting spaces. And this was hard because neighborhood councils, unlike almost every other level of government, don't have guaranteed meeting space. So we have to pay for it. We pay almost $700 a meeting and we're subject to availability.

We are limited in the places we can meet to not just ADA accessible obviously, but ones that the city is certified as ADA accessible, which is just two in our district. And. But in late 2023 Senate Bill 411 passed, which allowed for virtual, neighborhood councils to meet virtually provided they had a 2/3 vote and the City of LA opted in. And our neighborhood council did that. And it's, it's been a boon for participation.

Our committees, which are subsets of our neighborhood council and stakeholders who aren't on our elected board but are interested, meet virtually. But we still see the importance of in person meetings. So our main board meetings are in person but hybrid. So we got a 360 camera and a projector and we have our hybrid board meetings.

And those have been great because we get public comments and board participation from both virtual and in person. And this is important because we have board members who are stakeholders who are eligible to vote and serve but may not be there in person and may have good reason to.

So for instance, we have students on study abroad getting up at ungodly hours of the morning to participate in their local government who are on our board. But they don't meet the just cause restrictions under Assembly Bill 2449 to participate. But they're still constituents, they're still planning on coming back. They still are affected by policies that happen here. And like I said, you don't have to live in our district to serve on our board. So this has allowed them to participate for just one example. And it's also allowed the media and the public to participate.

We've had Daily Bruin reporters listen on Zoom and members of the public comment on Zoom. And yes, they could have done that without the remote participation rules, but given our incredibly limited budget and scope, we're just Jerry rigging this ourselves. You know, we bought a cheap projector on Amazon and a cheap 360 camera that we could afford.

We wouldn't have been able to do that if it was just for public comment. To do it for public comment and virtual participation at the board was really amazing and an opportunity that our neighborhood council sought out. Really quickly, just some issues that we hope will be fixed.

Our council endorsed the City of LA taking action in support of Assembly Bill 467 and Senate Bill 707, which would both extend the teleconferencing provision for neighborhood councils. But some improvements we'd like to see, which are in Senate Bill 707, is we have this weird and I think unintended problem where, if there's a quorum in person, the City Attorney has ruled that you have to default to the rules that everybody else has to follow, meaning you need just cause in order to participate virtually.

But if there isn't a quorum in person, then our neighborhood council can participate virtually without an excuse. That creates a weird perverse incentive. It hasn't happened on our council, but another one I've heard about in a different neighborhood.

They were calling people, telling them not to show up in person because that let everybody participate on Zoom, even though they had an in person option, because if too many people showed up in person, then you would snap back to the just cause provisions. And so getting rid of that perverse incentive is an important step.

And as well, neighborhood councils that are struggling the most, because these are all volunteer bodies, they're mostly advisory, they need that two thirds to opt in. But some neighborhood councils have more than a third of their seats vacant, so they can't even muster the numbers to opt in. And virtual meetings would allow them to expand the pool of people who could participate. But as it is, they can't opt in because they don't have the numbers.

And so a change to lower that threshold to just a material majority vote would be welcome because it would allow those neighborhood councils that are struggling the most, some are basically at risk of being dissolved, which is something the city can do. It would allow them to continue if they can opt in and have members participate virtually. So thank you so much. Neighborhood councils are in some ways unique, but in other ways share characteristics of the other government bodies you've heard. And I'd be happy to answer questions about our operations and our virtual meetings.

Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Wasserman. We'll move on here. Do we have any questions, Members of the Committee? Comments or questions? Anybody? Yes, go ahead, Senator.

Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Madam Chair. It's very encouraging to hear some of the innovations. I was aware vaguely of the neighborhood council model in LA, and it's long been an interest of mine. And why, or a question of mine about our attachment to the idea that where you sleep is the only thing that matters in terms of our democracy and your engagement, especially given so many communities in which we see the commuters of folks going from one neighborhood in your county, certainly in mine as well, to another neighborhood to work en masse and then home.

And they have no, they have no voice in the place where they're spending 10 or 12 or 18 hours of their day working. So I think these are, it's an example of the kinds of things that we are seeing locally. Here in the general plan for the City of Sacramento. A few years back I was, I was pleasantly surprised to see them ask questions that weren't the normal questions. They weren't what do you, we normally frame up these Brown Act issues as, from our perspective.

So people of, people of the community, what do you think the floor area ratio should be at APN, you know, 6, 4, 6, 4, 8, 12, 90, 4, 18. Should it be floor area ratio 14 or 18? And then we, and we really welcome your input about something no one has any idea what that is.

And instead, in the general plan process, the questions were oriented around what is it that, that residents of the community can uniquely have views about that are not just on government's terms. And I remember the question they asked, one of the ones was what's a perfect day downtown feel like to you.

Which was not in the APA handbook as the kind of questions that were asked. And I think it gets to the question of what are we really trying to get out of public about, about the parts about public participation. We can't, we're not just fetishizing the amount of time that people spend.

I think we often think that, like how do we get more people in this room? As though the fact that they're not present is an indictment of democracy, and usually what it means that they have other things to do with their own time. And, and we've created a system where you have to participate a lot.

And so, you know, I had asked the other panel about this, but I do think the, this question of how do we figure out what the point is and create the maximum opportunities for folks to participate in ways that don't require, that requires the least of them rather than the most as the measure of our success.

We, you know, we did 1700 hours of budget, participatory budgeting. Okay, great. What was, you know, how do the people feel about it? A few years back we did a project in my city where we were trying to innovate this and we took a user perspective like not, not what we typically would use.

Like what, what, how do we, how do we make sure people's voices are heard but go out and ask them? And we left City Hall, we went, we took a walk and started just interviewing people on the street, folks, some who were unhoused. We talked to day laborers.

We talked to folks, you know, coming out of hotels, workers at the hotels and, you know. And about what their engagement in government. Because they weren't showing up at council meetings and school board meetings. No big surprise to them. And they would, when asked about the meetings, they'd never heard of them.

But they also, they weren't interested that going on Tuesday night for some of the reasons we talked about earlier. It, you know, there were folks unhoused like, I haven't had a shower in three weeks. I don't feel comfortable going into City Hall. I can understand English.

And we would say, don't worry, we have interpreters, but their confidence level and their comfort level of being in a world where they require an interpreter diminish their experience. Not to mention just that I don't have time. And I also have children in the schools, and I also don't want to get bit by a mosquito. So I can't go to City Council on Tuesday and the school board on Wednesday and the mosquito abatement. The definition of what an engaged citizen can't mean that we all spend every single night at a meeting.

And so these innovations around what participation can look like in other ways, which we don't really allow. Like there's voting, and then they're spending four hours sitting in a City Council meeting so you can talk for two minutes and go home disappointed and angry. Those are, like, the only two choices that we offer up. And so I think that, you know, this question about remote and not remote is a really important one, but it should also give us some insight. How can we.

How can we design public participation in ways that are less intense, that are more casual, that invite people to share with us their opinions, their pain in quick ways that don't demand of them things that we ourselves are not willing to do. I haven't been to a school board meeting in decades, and I don't intend to go. And so I don't. I try to catch myself before I design a state law system that assumes that we only have a good school board system if everybody, if I have to go.

So I'm encouraged by some of what we've heard in this panel and the panel earlier about how we do that and then how we can make sure that the Brown Act both adapts to new technologies and some of these sociological changes that we talked about earlier, but also that it can create space for cities and school boards and county boards and mosquito districts to innovate because we don't have all the answers about what participation could look like.

And we heard from the first panel about some, you know, some encouraging ideas and innovations there too. But how do we create space for good players, good actors to test, experiment, try some of these ideas in ways that will dramatically engage the scope of participation, even if it might not meet the, the specific terms of the law that we passed in 1953. I have no question. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. That was very good. I just want to say also with the, with regards to the neighborhood councils, I remember remotely participating in a meeting one day, and there was conversation between a homeless member of the community who lived in one of the tiny homes areas, who was raising to the rest of the community some problems that they were going through.

And they treated each other exactly alike. There was no difference between them. One of the members of the community said, well, I think we could do this to help you, blah, blah, blah. And then he responded, and it was treated exactly alike. There was no difference between them. And it was this, like you said, very informal, but it was very real. It was very, they were addressing things that mattered to that community, mattered to that neighborhood. And it was really impressive.

Where we end up with allowing ourselves to experiment, allowing ourselves to participate democratically does not mean, like you said, a formal decision making body, but we do have to hold a formal decision making body accountable because many times it has to do with our resources, our money, our tax dollars, has to do with our rights. It has.

There's so many issues that are taken up and decided, but I, I think that we ought not miss the opportunity to do things like the neighborhood council and I'm sure other examples like that. So we have a lot of back and forth to take on, and they're real challenges.

The neighborhood councils don't pretend to be the ones to decide what the LA City Council votes on every, every week and vice versa. But we need both. The question is, how do you do both in such a way that meets, you know, the requirements? So with that, Senator Choi, if you have any comments, we can move on to public comment.

Okay. As Vice Chair of this Local Committee, I need to apologize that I could not split my body into two. Being in the Education Committee and being here going back and forth and missed a good portion of hearing. But I'm glad that I caught the tail end. I get the essence of that public engagement in Democratic decision making process.

I think this is very important. We are very lucky living in this democratic system of government and putting the, getting the input we elected officials do have limited knowledge and hearing different opinions from all different sectors. I think that's a very important, but how do we utilize modern technology to engage more people in the public decision making process? Does it have to be the people physically present in the meetings, or can we allow the remote access for people to engage?

So I mean, as a local government elected official, school board and the City Council as a mayor and also having served on the Assembly, I have done many different levels of work and experience. But engaging all the people is ideal to hear everybody's, but how we can compromise and find the solution to come to engaging as much as possible.

But we the public opinions. But in this system good points and the weak points is that the good points is that the public can engage. However, not necessarily just like a Senator Cortese while ago mentioned that, Cabaldon. Right? Yeah, mentioned that. Never been to school board even myself including just a busy life.

Even though I am interested in education matters, I have not had chance to attend school board meetings for a long time, and I cannot anticipate to engage in every issues that the board is dealing with. So I don't think we can physically force them to get engaged and go out to the street.

What do you think of this issue that our local governments are dealing with? But providing the opportunity either way if they choose to engage and pay attention, yes, welcome. But finding the compromise how we can efficiently engage them at the same time with the input that we get from the public and we make intelligent, good policy decisions by the elected officials when we deliberate any policies, as we will be engaging in short moment. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none. Well, thank you all. Thank you for traveling if you had to, and those of you who didn't have to travel, we give you a break. You could zoom in. But this is all very, very important to us, and everything that you all said is going to be part of deliberating the recommendations that we make. So we're going to have public comment. Thank you very much. Public comment. If anybody is interested, please step up. If you could keep it close to a minute, that would be great. Thank you very much.

Here we go. With this chair, I have to rise to the occasion there, in a literal sense. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Kate Laddish. I'm speaking as Executive Vice President of California In Home Supportive Services Consumer Alliance, as Chair of the Yolo County In Home Supportive Services Advisory Committee, a member of the Yolo County Commission on Aging and Adult Services, and as co-founder of the nonpartisan group Democracy Winters, which is a dedicated to fostering informed engagement in local, state, and national government.

I can't overstate my organization's excitement about the opportunity to modernize the Brown Act, to remove barriers to serve on advisory bodies, and to increase public participation in local government. First, some personal experience. I've had to decline numerous appointments because of my inability to get to the meetings in person. Travel's difficult.

It costs $200 for me to get this from Yolo County for this. And even on good days, traveling within my county and attending meetings creates significant fatigue and pain, creates flare ups including incomplete quadriplegia. But when meetings are remote, no problem. I did it from the hospital the day after life saving surgery.

So in other words, people really want to serve, and I'm excited about opportunities to increase that. Allowing teleconference meetings increases access, equity, and engagement. It preserves the public access, strengthens our democracy, and decreases vehicular emissions. The Brown Act's de facto in person requirement creates hurdles to people who can't get there in person.

And so it really narrows the pool of who may serve, making legislative bodies less representative to communities and closing off a pathway to leadership for members of groups that are already underrepresented in government. In person only meetings is a huge barrier to recruiting people to serve.

Before the pandemic, the IHSS Advisory Committee of Yolo County had to cancel about one third of our meetings every year because we couldn't get quorum. During virtual meetings, we didn't have to cancel any because of lack of quorum. It was a grand experiment and it worked so well for us. AB 2449, while it introduces flexibility, it is for extraordinary and temporary circumstances, and so it actually highlights a difficulty. AB 2449 assumes that people who want to serve their community usually have the ability to meet in person.

And so it does not consider the needs of people who wish to serve, but who have significant barriers to in person attendance. On the other side of the coin, allowing remote participation, not just streaming for members of the public, is vitally important for bringing people into government.

And so limiting the public participation to in person excludes people who can't get there in person or who just don't have the flexibility in their day to wait around for their item to come up. And allowing remote commenting increases the equity and allows officials to hear from a more diverse and representative constituent pool.

Also, something like Zoom allows people who are deaf or hard of hearing to follow meetings using closed captioning, which is vitally important, since most local government meetings do not have American Sign Language interpreters. And whether a meeting is in person or hybrid, I would encourage cities and counties to consult with their ADA coordinator to maximize accessibility.

And not allowing a virtual option because of potential difficulties sort of assumes that what we have right now is working perfectly. And I think what we're hearing this morning in another discussion shows that what we have right now isn't perfect and there are opportunities for improvement. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Thank you. Thank you for coming. Again, if we could keep it close to a minute, that'd be great. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Well, first, I want to thank Madam Chair, Committee Members, staff, and the presenters today for the excellent conversation. Eric Lawyer speaking on behalf of the California State Association of Counties. I think what you've all heard today and will hear in a couple of weeks is, is a bit of a tangle of perspectives on the right way to modernize the Brown Act.

On the one hand, CSAC is a proud sponsor of Senator Arreguín's SB 239, which would expand remote meeting participation for advisory bodies. On the other hand, we have a lot of concerns with the provisions in SB 707 that would mandate new services for Brown Act meetings for local governments.

Part of the reason for that, really, the primary reason, is the fact that with the Brown Act, there's no recourse for local governments to get reimbursement from new mandates due to passage of Prop 30 and Prop 42. I just want to conclude my comments in urging the committee to consider that resource question when we're looking at Brown Act changes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Morning, Chair and Members. Dora Rose, Deputy Director with the League of Women Voters of California. We'll try to go fast. The agenda said two minutes. So I think we're all trying to scramble to cut it down. America is facing really unprecedented threats to democracy these days. As our right to are stripped away, our communities are targeted, and our institutions are weakened, it's imperative, imperative that California lead in protecting government transparency.

We've got to strengthen, not erode, a uniform and consistent Brown Act and foster broad, diverse public engagement. As we've heard today, that means improving language access and providing robust accommodations for people with disabilities. And remote access is likewise critical.

Californians should be able to watch and to participate in government meetings from home, right? Especially seniors, caregivers, working families, people from rural areas, people with disabilities and with mobility challenges. At the same time, though, public officials must be accountable. They should be required to attend in person, ensuring that the public can see them, speak to them directly, hold them responsible for decisions that impact their communities.

From advisory bodies to decision making ones, people should be able to look their decision makers in the eye, read their body language, engage their responses, their reactions, things that are only possible in person. Our historically marginalized communities, those with the least access to corridors of power, they're most in need of this option for direct engagement.

Just think about how alienating it would be for a newly engaged person, maybe a new immigrant right, to show up at a public meeting space ready to state their case, eager to confront their decision makers, and be confronted instead with a grid of officials staring out from Zoom squares. That's really alienating.

Thank you. If you could...

At the same time, we absolutely want our government bodies to be inclusive and to reflect diversity of our state. So it's important to craft exceptions to in person attendance for officials who are unable due to disability or other just cause, to appear in person. These are bread and butter issues for the League of Women Voters. They're the root of civic engagement. By protecting and enhancing the Brown Act, California can fortify democracy against rising authoritarianism through transparency, through accessibility, and through truly meaningful public participation. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for convening this discussion, Madam Chair. I'm Ginny LaRoe with the First Amendment Coalition. We're a nonprofit here in California that believes engaged, informed communities are essential to the health of our democracy. We talk to Californians almost every day about the Brown Act from a very different perspective than your very informed Members of your Committee.

What we hear are, yes, there need to be reforms, but they need to go in a different direction than what's been discussed today for the most part. We hear that people want consistent, reliable live streaming by video. They want that video be online reliably after the meetings. They want more options for public comment, including remotely. They want more access to records related to the meeting online before the meeting.

What they experience, unfortunately, is local legislative bodies that place controversial and consequential topics, topics on consent calendars, reduce public comment opportunities to the point of being meaningless, take up politicized topics that hastily set so called special meetings, abuse closed session provisions, and do important policy work in committees and subcommittees as discussed by some of our panelists today. So we agree there is room for reform. We just believe that the Legislature should put the people first in those reforms. Thank you. And thank you for all of your considerable attention to this issue. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry, I just want to explain the reason we are asking for about a minute. We have a hard stop at one and we still have the bills to take up. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Annie Cappetta, also with First Amendment Coalition. And I will be reading a written statement for a journalist who could not be here today. My name is Annie Sciacca. I am a Chair of the Contra Costa College Community Journalism Department, co-President of the Journalism Association of Community Colleges, and President of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, which represents the nonpartisan perspective of working journalists across the West Coast. I'm also a reporter with more than a decade of experience covering government.

I know transparency and accountability are the foundation of public trust. Transparency helps us hold power to account and helps to ensure that those in leadership serve the people. Remote access for members of the public as an additional option for them to participate and voice their concerns is important. Consistently live streaming meetings helps journalists keep communities informed.

But allowing government officials to participate remotely widens the gap between the public and their elected and appointed officials. I instill in my college journalism students that the importance of public meetings as a place to find and connect with public officials. It is easy, it is easy for government leaders to hide in the remoteness of our world, to not have to speak to journalists or their constituents.

It's also important for journalists to be able to learn about and amplify the voices of people most impacted by the forces that shape society, such as parents at school board meetings or impacted families at police oversight hearings. That's why I hope you will consider the policies that advance transparency and meaningful access and oversight of government. Thank you for considering my perspective.

Scott Kaufman with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. The fundamental principle of the Brown Act is the critical right of the public to directly look decision makers in the eyes and voice their opinion. The in person quorum mandates are an essential for democracy. We and the groups aligned with us have advocated for disability exemptions.

We are open to exemptions for emergencies, for distance, and many other hardships. We have supported legislation that would have genuinely increased public and remote language access, but it was opposed by some of the organizations that spoke here today.

And many of the bills currently out there claim to increase access for the public, but only if the members of the body choose, not the public. The speaker from Los Angeles noted that in person centers and services have been critical, especially for underserved communities. That's all we want, an in person requirement because it is critical. I thank the chair and the community for taking the time today.

Thank you very much. I'm stepping in the absence of the Chair.

Good afternoon. Dani Kando-Kaiser with Kaiser Advocacy. I'm providing a statement from the California News Publishers Association. CNPA represents hundreds of news organizations across California. Journalists do the important work of serving as the eyes and the ears of Californians.

And one of the ways they do that is by making sense of the work that local legislative bodies do across the state. We echo the important insights shared by the ACLU as well as the perspectives shared by First Amendment Coalition journalists, League of Women Voters, and others. This week, incidentally, is National Sunshine Week.

Voice of Orange County reporter Norberto Santana, Jr. wrote about the importance of increasing live streaming for the public while also underscoring the need for electeds and appointees to show up in person. As his reporting shows, this format encourages improved participation and transparency and ultimately will strengthen our democracy. Thank you again for convening this hearing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senators. Jean Hurst here today on behalf of the Urban Counties of California. In the interest of time, I'll just make clear to the committee that the state's 14 largest counties are very interested in working collaboratively on developing modernization approaches to the Brown Act.

We have our own challenges, even though we do represent very large and populous communities. And so we think we have some practical implementation challenges that are reflective of the communities that we serve. And so we're very open to having those conversations.

Also, on behalf of my client, the Boards of, the Board of Supervisors of the County of Riverside, just need to remind you that it is a very significant challenge to engage communities outside of the county seat when you're dealing with a very large landmass. Particularly in desert areas of Riverside County where underserved and underrepresented populations do live, it's very difficult to get their participation on an in person basis to come into town, both from a traffic perspective, time, and resources perspective. So we're here to help facilitate solutions and appreciate the conversation today. Thank you very much.

Good morning, Senators. Marcus Detwiler with the California Special Districts Association. As was mentioned earlier, we represent not only mosquito districts, but also other types of districts like fire districts, water districts, sewer districts, cemetery districts, and resource conservation districts, among others. As was also mentioned earlier, special districts are formed by a community to provide specialized services.

The unique nature of district operations and district finances make them effective providers of services to Californians. However, even the most effective providers of services must be efficient stewards of public dollars. And so, whenever we are considering the myriad types of mandates being placed on these agencies, we must be cognizant that the relative cost of these types of mandates are different for each type of local agency, each type of special district.

However, all costs are still being borne by all types of local agencies, irrespective of their size or complexity. Given the Prop 40 carve out of Brown Act compliance costs from the Prop 1A mandate reimbursement process, this presents a cost that must be absorbed by special districts and other local agencies and a cost that must necessarily come somewhere else out of a district budget.

And so, in essence, CSDA has undertaken myriad initiatives in order to promote good governance and compliance with state regulations and laws, and has partnered with the Special District Leadership Foundation in promoting its program related to the District Transparency Certificate of Excellence. Recognizing those agencies that have gone above and beyond the letter of the law.

Finish your thought please, we'd appreciate it.

CSDA would encourage Members of the Legislature to consider how to best empower local agencies, how to promote local local flexibility, and would emphasize that discussions of affordability for communities and agencies of all shapes and sizes. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

Kim Rothschild representing California Association of Public Authorities for In Home Supportive Services. You heard our first speaker traveled here with a hefty cost. We are excited about the opportunity this session to work to modernize the Brown Act on behalf of the older adults and people with disabilities who find it difficult to attend meetings in person.

We are also co author of Senator Arreguín's SB 239 as well. So I want to thank the committee. Thank Jonathan for working with us. And we look forward to the discussions on the several bills that you'll hear in subsequent hearings. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ethan Nagler on behalf of the City Clerks Association of California. We're the statewide organization of municipal clerks. CCAC supports modernizing the Brown Act and to increase transparency, access, and participation. Also want to thank the committee and staff for working with us. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Are there any other speakers? If so, please come forward to the microphone. Okay. Thank you. Well, first, thank you to all the panelists for your participation in today's informational hearing. I think it was a really great foundational discussion for the work we'll be doing this year around looking at various changes of the Brown Act and want to thank all of our members of the public who testified as well.

So with that, we're going to close the informational hearing and transition right to our first order of business, which is the adoption of committee rules. And Members of the Committee should have received those rules in advance of today's meeting. Alas, is there any objection to adopting the committee rules? Hear no objection. That motion carries. Thank you.

So we'll now proceed to our... Oh, I guess I'll make, I'll entertain a motion to adopt the committee rules. I apologize. Moved by Senator Wiener. Thank you. Is there now any objection to adopting the committee rules? Hearing none. That motion carries unanimously. Thank you.

So when I proceed to the four bills that will be taken up today, and I believe Senator Allen is present. And so we're going to take up these bills in file order. So first Bill is Senate Bill 394 by Senator Allen. And welcome, Senator. And I'll turn the floor over to you for your presentation.

Well, thank you so much, Mr. Interim Chair. I appreciate it. So this is a Bill about water and fire. We know that public water agencies are responsible for delivering safe, clean, affordable drinking water throughout California. They also, of course, have to provide water to fight fires. And we had a chance to see how complicated that process can be during the recent Palisades fire in my district.

One of the many issues I've gotten a chance to learn about in this job is the issue of water theft, which has now become a very serious, pose a very serious threat to water agencies ability to fulfill their many responsibilities. It turns out that the most egregious form of water theft is from fire hydrants.

I know we have a firefighter here. So this is where commercial entities use specialized tools to steal water from hydrants for construction, for landscaping, for farming. And this now has a lot of implications, you know, especially for the water districts.

Of course, I mean, improper connection can then, you know, cause costly damage to hydrants which then need to be repaired before they can be used again. Of course, all of us are asked to pay the cost of that. Dirty connections can contaminate water quality. Unexpected water withdrawal can lower water pressure, which affects nearby ratepayers.

And of course, you know, in the most tragic circumstances, potentially impacting emergency firefighting efforts. There's also a missing revenue challenge that's ultimately paid for by law abiding ratepayers by all of our constituents that are just doing the right thing and who we've certainly heard from as they see their rates continue to rise.

So existing law authorizes fines ranging from $1,000 for the first violation to $3,000 for the third and additional violations with a one year reset to penalties.

Now, you know, the problem is, of course, that the value of the water for some of these folks that have been routinely engaging in water theft just see those fines as the cost of doing business. It's an insufficient deterrent to prevent this criminal activity from occurring. And we've just seen repeat offenders. Oh, just give me the fine.

No problem. And of course, again, it resets every year. So this Bill, SB394, would authorize local governments to increase penalties for water theft to fines not exceeding 2,500 for the first violation, 5,000 for the second violation, and then 10,000 for the third in each additional violation.

It also removes the one year reset on fines, and it allows for local agencies to recover full damages from water theft through civil action. You know, our intent here is that through increased penalties and civil liability, you know, to.

So that we'll get to a situation where we never have to deter water theft in the first place because it'll just mean people aren't doing it. This needs to stop. It's become a major problem for our system.

And with me to speak in support of the Bill today, we have Dave Pedersen, who's the General manager of the Los Virgenes Municipal Water District, and Julia Hall, who's our Legislative Director for the Association of California Water Agencies.

Good morning. Thank you, Senator Allen, and good morning, Committee Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Dave Pedersen. I'm the General manager of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District. We're a water and wastewater agency in Los Angeles County. We serve four incorporated cities, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Westlake Village, and Agura Hills.

We also served an unincorporated portion of Malibu that was affected by the Palisades fires. Senator Allen did a really nice job to explain the need and the importance of this Bill. I'll just emphasize a couple points. As a wastewater and water utility operator, water theft continues to be a problem for our utility, and we are not alone.

Our colleagues across the state continue to have difficulty with water theft. It does happen in a variety of ways, but water theft from fire hydrants is the area that we're really most concerned about. And that's the intent of this Bill, is to focus on that.

The primary concern I have and that we have is the public health and safety issues that are related to drawing water from a fire hydrant by those who are not authorized. And as Senator Allen mentioned, it requires a special tool to operate a fire hydrant. The folks who do that, know how to do it.

And people who don't can damage the fire hydrant, either by stripping the stem so that it won't work when it's needed for firefighting, or by slamming the fire hydrant shut and it will damage the water system and cause our pipes to burst in some cases.

We want to ensure that there is adequate deterrent for those kinds of commercial operators where they're drawing water unauthorized and then in turn selling it in areas where they don't have an improved water system that is serving them. We've estimated in our water system, we lose about 20 to 50 million gallons annually because of theft.

To give you an idea of the dollar amounts, that's about 150,000 to $300,000 per year.

The other thing, as Senator Allen mentioned, when you do connect to a fire hydrant, there is a real risk that you could back siphon water, a contaminated water source, into the public drinking water system that can put all of our customers at risk. And so it's really important that we prevent that and that we have adequate deterrence.

We feel like this Bill will achieve that and help to ensure in the future that we can continue to operate our water system to support public health and safety. Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning, Members. Appreciate the opportunity. Julia Hall, with the Association of California Water Agencies, proud co sponsor of this Bill. We definitely want to thank Senator Allen and his staff for all their work on this Bill so far, as well as the Committee and their. And the Committee and the staff on their very thorough analysis.

Definitely want to echo the comments that Dave Peterson just shared, but also just wanted to focus on the Committee analysis. It was a really thorough analysis, and I just wanted to address a couple of the issues that were raised there for the Committee's consideration.

So I think first, local agencies do have some fine authority for other violations in amounts that are above what this current Bill is seeking to put in place for water theft for fire hydrants under the federal Clean Water Act, local agencies that provide wastewater services do have some authority to find prohibited discharges into the system, and the minimum threshold for that is $1,000 per day.

And we know that there are some agencies that can find as much as $25,000 a day for that kind of pollution. We also believe that the need for penalties in SB394 is really different from building code violations and fines.

The goal of building code violations and fines is to help prevent public health and safety issues down the road. Typically, when those are found, there's 30 days to correct and address those issues where with theft from a fire hydrant, the damage, as you know, Dave and the Senator shared, has already been done.

The fire hydrant may be damaged, the water system may be contaminated. So we do believe that they are different. And then just want to thank everybody for their consideration of this Bill and appreciate all of your attention and urge your. I vote. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We'll now move to other witnesses in support of SB394. Please line up at the microphone and share your name, affiliation and position on the Bill.

Hello. Lily MacKay on behalf of West Valley Water District in support. Thank you.

Good morning, Jason Ikerd on behalf of the California Municipal Utilities Association and the Rancho California Water. District also in support.

Good morning. Jamie Minor on behalf of Eastern Municipal Water District. Pleased to support. Thanks.

Good morning. Kathy Viatella with East Bay Municipal Utility District in support.

Hello. Sarah Starr with the City of Roseville in support.

Hi. Kasha Hunt here with Nossaman on behalf of Padre Dam Municipal Water District in support.

Cyrus Stevers with the Municipal Water District of Orange County and the Coachella Valley. Water District in support. Thank you.

Chloe King with Political Solutions on behalf of the California Water Association in support. Thank you. Hello.

Betsy Von Dale with the League of California Cities in strong support of the Bill.

Great. Thank you very much. Mount Move to any lead witnesses in opposition. Are there any lead witnesses in opposition? If so, please come forward. Okay. Seeing no lead witnesses. Opposition. Move on to any other witnesses who wish to provide any opposing position on SB394.

So please line up at the microphone and state your name, affiliation and position on the Bill. Okay. Seeing no other witnesses in opposition, we'll bring the discussion back to Members and move by Senator Wiener. Okay, thank you. And we don't have a quorum, so we'll keep that Senator Seyarto.

Question for the water district. So when you talk about construction needing to hook up sometimes at hydrants so that they can do their dust control and things like that, there is a current method for them to do that legally. Yes, there is. So that's not a. And that's a.

They put on a meter and it gets put on by the water district. And. And then they report that so that they can pay for the water. Correct. So there is no excuse for anybody thinking that somehow they accidentally hooked up to a hydrant.

So I am supporting your Bill because obviously, especially in areas like Las Vergines, where a lot of rural areas, nobody's around there, nobody can monitor it and, you know, hopefully you guys have some monitoring systems know when water is flowing in areas that shouldn't be flowing. Yes.

And then that way you can deter this type of water theft. Thanks.

Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments from Members of the Committee? Okay. Seeing non center. You may close on the Bill.

No. Appreciate the support. And this is an important Bill to address an increasingly problematic behavior by a lot of folks out there.

So thank you for your support and respectful astronaut. I vote. Thank you very much. I will now entertain the motion by Senator Wiener to do pass to Judiciary and SB394 and ask the Clerk to call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Okay, thank you. We'll keep the Bill on call for the Members to record their vote. And thank you very much, Senator Allen. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to the next Bill, Senate Bill 276 by Senator Wiener. And we'll wait for Senator Wiener to come down to present on the Bill.

Good morning, Senator Wiener. Good morning. Thank you so much.

I'm here to present Senate Bill 276, which is a district bill to allow San Francisco to foster our thriving street vending scene, these amazing small business owners, while at the same time addressing the significant increase in the fencing of stolen goods on our streets, a practice that fuels retail theft. Retail theft.

And that also badly undermines legitimate permitted street vending. Specifically, the bill allows the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to adopt a list of commonly stolen goods that are sold in our streets and to require a permit to sell these commonly stolen goods.

If someone sells these goods without a permit and without proof of payment, then the police would be able to cite the person, and after multiple citations, a misdemeanor could be charged. We designed the misdemeanor to avoid interactions with federal law and to make this very focused on safety on our streets.

The new criminal offenses in this Bill are very focused. They do not apply to the vast majority of street vendors. For example, they do not apply to anyone who is selling goods with a permit from the city. They do not apply even if they're selling goods on that list, if they have a permit to sell those goods.

And it does not apply to the sale of prepared food. Period. This isn't about prepared food the most. We made recent amendments that incorporate feedback from this Committee and from the Public Safety Committee colleagues for. I think I'm the only one who's here at the time, but in 2018, I think you were not here yet.

In 2018, we passed SB946, the safe sidewalk Vending act, which I supported, to try to transfer enforcement around street vending from the police to administrative agencies. And I think in many, many contexts, that makes enormous sense. However, we're seeing an unintended, I think, side effect.

I don't think anyone anticipated that it would be a situation where people would be selling, like Walgreens deodorant on the streets with the price tag on it, and the police would be unable to do anything about it.

We've seen in San Francisco, with the increase of this organized crime, selling these stolen goods, it's wreaked havoc, particularly in the Mission, but in other neighborhoods as well, we have street vendors who are in fear and don't want to be there.

We also have Department of Public Works employees who have had to wear bulletproof vests when they've gone out to do enforcement. And so it's just not a tenable situation. Our former Mayor Breeding placed a moratorium on vending on Mission street because Things had gotten so chaotic, obviously that it was an emergency measure.

But we all want the street vendors to be able to come back. And the street vendors want to be able to come back. The Bill is sponsored by Mayor Lurie and supported by our Mission Street Vendors Association and various community organizations. And I respectfully ask for an aye vote with me here today to testify they could.

Come on up. Is Gladys Andino, a street vendor and Member of the Mission Street Vendors Association and William Ortiz Cartagena.

Good afternoon. Welcome. I understand that one of our witnesses may need some additional time for translation. So we are giving witnesses two minutes to testify on the bill. But we'll afford some additional time for translation now.

Buenos Dias, Presidente Presidenta Durazo y miembro Del comite. Mi nombres Gladys soy vendedorre in San Francisco y miembro Del associacion De vendedore De La calle missio. El travajo es dificil. Ila sora son Largas P no Podemos Competir Con Los revendedores por que vendem productos a unpresio muy bajo no solo eso sinoke Las haceras no son seguras.

Hay conflictos violencia y Las call este projecto De ley esta yes.

Una Buena merida ayobaria LA ciudad abordare problema De La Reventa y legal y Almismo tiempo Beneficiaria Los vendedores este projecto De Le nos permite seguir operando nuestros negocios y araque caye seguras gracias Al senador winner y el Alcalde luri por suayuda congeste proyecto LA ley y LA presidenta Durasno porsu consideration. Gracias.

Gracias.

I'm going to translate for her. Good morning, Chair Durazo. Members of the Committee. My name is Gladys. I'm a vendor in San Francisco and a Member of the Mission Street Vendors Association. Our associates Association represents 43 active Members of vendors who been on Mission Street.

I lived in San Francisco for 45 years and been a vendor for 20. My colleagues and I work very hard day in and day out to provide for our families. The work is hard and the hours are long. But we do everything we can to earn a living and we work closely with the city to do it.

Working within the city's permitting system. But the reality is we don't feel safe doing the work that we've done on the streets today. There is fencing activity happening every day all around us. We can't compete with the fencers because they are selling items at a very Low cost. Not only that, but the sidewalks are not safe.

There is a conflict and violence that happens and the streets feel chaotic, which is why we think that this state Bill would be good. It will help the city address fencing while helping the vendors. This Bill will help us continue to run our businesses and make the streets safer.

Thank you to Senator Wiener and Mayor Laurie for your help with this Bill and to Chair Durazo for your consideration. We've been meeting with the mayor's office and Senator's office, and we appreciate them for working on this Bill for us.

We, the vendors, voted anonymously to support this Bill, and I hope that everyone joins us in supporting it, too. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you for being here today. Unless there are any other lead witnesses in support. Yes, sir.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is William Ortiz Cartagena. I'm a San Francisco Mission District native, the proud son of undocumented immigrants, and a formerly incarcerated California. I'm here in support of this Bill today to highlight the importance to implement a Bill like this in a condensed city like San Francisco, which has a very compact commercial corridor.

I also want to differentiate the differences between street vending and the crime of fencing. Street vending has always been an integral part of our culture. It has been the cornerstone of our community and our economic vitality.

The crime of fencing has never, ever been a part of our culture and community, and it has never been condoned in our community and culture. Today, the BART plazas on 16th and 24th admission are unrecognizable because fencing has overwhelmed them. It's made it impossible for our actual street vendors to sell their wares and make a living.

Fencing is. Is a problem so critical to our vendors because they threaten, they extort, and they rob and they commit acts of violence upon our street vendors on a daily basis. Street vending has literally been the cornerstone in our community.

And fencing has overtook our sidewalks with illegal merchandise, not only that they steal from national retailers, but from our mom and pop shops. Fencing also has brought other elements of crime, such as drug dealing, human trafficking, and worst of all, violence. There's been several murders on both plazas stemming from illegal fencing.

So I'm here today to implore you to support our street vendors by supporting this Bill here today and sending a loud and clear message to these organizations that fence that crime will not be tolerated and it will never be accepted in our community and culture. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We'll now hear from any other witness in support. Please come forward and share your name, affiliation and position on the Bill.

And I think we will have some other transition.

Okay, thank you.

Good afternoon. Eileen Mariano here with the on behalf of the bill sponsor, Mayor Daniel Lurie in strong support. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Milagros Lopez and a street vendor of the Mission street. And. And I support the bill. Thank you.

Thank you. Note the chairs returned, so I'll turn the gavel over to her. I believe we may have translation. Some Members of the public who need additional time for translation. Yes, sir.

Dear State Senators, good afternoon. My name is Han Xin Liu and I live in San Francisco. I urge you to vote yes on SB276. Thank you.

It honorable State Senator.

Hi. My name is Anson Lau and many of the Chinese seniors living in San Francisco All supporting SB276. Thank you very much.

Hello.

Hello, everyone. My name is and I come all the way from San Francisco. I strongly support SB276. We wish you a good day. Thank you.

Hi. His name is Tito. He's a street vendor and he supports this bill. His name is Manuel Soltero. He's also a Mission street vendor and he's here to support this bill.

Thank you.

Her name is Elsa Claudio. She's a Mission street vendor and she's here to support this bill.

Thank you.

Her name is Isalia Lopez. She's part of the Mission Street Vendors Association and she's here to support this Bill.

Muy buenos Dias. O muy buenas tardes. Mi nombres. Juan Mendoza. Soy secretario De Las Associated La Mission. Destrivendor y estoyaqui parapoyar LA ley.

His name is Juan Mendoza. He's the secretary of the Mission Street Vendors Association and he's here to support this bill. And my name is Crystal. I'm with GLECHA and here to support this bill. Thank you. Hi, my name is Olga and I am also from GLECHA. I'm here to support the bill.

Hi. Ryan Andalane. On behalf of the California Retailers Association. In support. Thank you.

Good afternoon Chair Members. Katherine Charles on behalf of the Bay Area Council. In support.

My name is Tokuk Wong. I live in San Francisco. I'm firmly supporting SB 2276. I want you to also support and vote yes. Thank you very much.

Madam Chair and Members. Mike Bellotta on behalf of UC Law San Francisco. In support. Addresses an important Issue in the tender line. Thank.

Okay, so we just went through the support. Anyone else in support? No. Thank you, Senator. Okay. We move on to opposition. Anybody in opposition? No. Seeing none. Okay. Members? Any Members? Comments?

I want to thank Senator Wiener for introducing this Bill. I think it's very thoughtfully crafted to ensure that this very serious issue of fencing, which is impacting not just the Mission District, but other commercial districts in San Francisco.

And as a native San Franciscan, even though I represent the East Bay, as somebody who patronizes the Mission often, I mean, you literally can't walk through the 16th Street BART Station Plaza or 24th Street BART Station plaza because literally all the.

The sidewalk space is being taken over by stolen goods and it is harming our legitimate street vendors and businesses in our commercial districts in San Francisco and creating legitimate public safety issues. So I really appreciate Mayor Lurie's leadership, your leadership on this issue. I think the.

The Bill is very carefully crafted to reduce the impact of criminalization, but really having clear penalties and disincentives and making sure that the implications of federal immigration law do not come into play in how this bill's crafted. So I will be supporting this bill today. Thank you.

Sounds like this is a very popular bill. And assuming that this will be, so to speak, regional pilot study, if this becomes so successful, are you willing to follow up to expand to other cities like LA and some of the big cities or even entire state?

Thank you for that question. This is really a very specifically intense issue in San Francisco, and we've spoken to folks from around the state. There are different issues in different parts of the state.

The reason that the original law was passed in 2018 was because there are some parts of the state that were trying to outlaw street vendors entirely. And so we wanted to not have that happen in San Francisco. It's a city that we have always embraced our street vendors.

Our street vendors make our city better, make our city more vibrant, and we want them to be there and to thrive. And the street vendors are very popular. People are very protective of the street vendors.

And when people see what's happening on the street in the Mission, but also in the Tenderloin, Chinatown parts of south of Market, it's very upsetting to people because they know it can give everyone a bad name, because people then sometimes make overly broad assumptions.

And we know that our street vendors, these are folks who, they're small business owners, they have permits, they're sometimes making the goods themselves or obtaining those goods legally and selling them. And so it's a specifically intense issue. In San Francisco, and that's why we're limiting it. The same Francisco.

Yeah, I understand. I'm not implying at all to override your bill or ask the local decisions. To allow street vending wherever street vending is allowed. This bill is intended for specific items. To prevent the stolen goods to be sold.