Assembly Standing Committee on Economic Development, Growth, and Household Impact

Is this good to go? Sound good? Okay. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Paramount. It's an honor to host this important stop on the California State Assembly's Pocket Tour. I want to thank Assemblyman Jose Salache and the Committee Members for bringing these conversations directly to our communities where the challenges and the opportunities are the most visible.

Here in Paramount, we understand the importance of building a strong local economy. Our Chamber of Commerce and business owners, large and small are the backbone of our city, creating jobs, driving innovation and supporting our residents. Today's discussion on workforce development and the impact of the current economy on micro businesses are not just timely, they are essential.

I encourage you to share your experiences, your ideas and solutions openly. Together, we can identify ways to not only address the cost of living pressures, but to create lasting economic opportunities for families and businesses across California. Once again, welcome to Paramount and thank you for being here and being part of the solution. Thank you.

Before I go informally to the meeting, I want to just acknowledge that it feels a little different being up here and not my own City of Lynwood and a different dais. I see one of my council Members here from Linux, so I think we could appreciate that.

But I want to just thank again, Mayor, for those, for the welcoming introductions. We have a couple of Members that are going to join us, you know, a couple minutes from now. I know Mr. Gibson's on his way and Ms. Pacheco are Assembly Members, but with that, we want to start on time.

So we're going to get started. All right. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Assembly Committee on Economic Development Growth and Household Impact Informational Hearing Making a sense of California's economy Real cost pressures and household impacts facing Los Angeles.

To ensure Members of the media and the public have access to proceedings today, this hearing will be streamed on the Assembly's website. And Members of the public can provide testimony in person here at Paramount City Hall. To preserve the safety of everyone here and ensure that public's access to discussion, please follow directions of our sergeants.

Thank you, Committee Members for joining me today. They're on their way to discuss affordability issue here in the state. This challenge that affects individuals, families and communities across the region. And appreciate your time and commitment to addressing it together. California's economy is not just one of the largest and most diverse in the world.

It's the driving force of innovation, culture and and opportunities shaping lives here at home and across the globe. Yet behind the headlines of success, many Californians are struggling. Despite economic strength, serious challenges persist that impact families, workers and small business every Day Today, we welcome together open minds and shared purpose.

I look forward to a productive conversation focused on realistic solutions that can make a meaningful difference in the lives of our residents in California. Before I continue, I want to again thank Mayor Peggy Lemons, the entire City Council here in Paramount.

This is our second stop of the tour we started, first stop in San Diego with some Member, Darshana Dr. Patel, and it was a great kickoff in Southern California. Now we're here in our own backyard in our district. I want to acknowledge not only Mayor Lemons for hosting us here today, the entire team here at Paramount.

I want to acknowledge that we have council Members from my district, from my very own home City of Linwood, Councilmember Munoz Guevara. We have from the City of Lakewood, Vice Mayor Jeff Wood, former Mayor Ari Pei. And then, of course, from my birthplace, Bellflower, my forever former mayor. But current Councilmember Sunny Santanas from the City of Bellflower.

I want to acknowledge them for being here and being part of this process and to all our stakeholders who have a role here in being here today. With that, can we please have the first panel come to testimony stand? Introduce yourself? With that, we have folks that are going to come.

And with that, as they come up, I want to without a doubt acknowledge one of my colleagues in the State Assembly, the honorable Mike Gibson, who not only is a neighboring Member of our state Assembly District, I want him to say a couple of words and remarks as we begin today before we start our first panel Assembly.

Gipson.

Well, I'm going to be brief. First of all, thank you very much. Good morning. Buenos Dias. First of all, to my Assembly Member. Thank you very much. Glad to be here this morning and certainly welcome and happy to be here with each and every one of you.

Very much looking forward to the robust conversation and just want to say thank you all for being here.

Thank you, Mr. Gibson, and thank you for being a partner in the State Assembly. And we have a lot of challenges faced, not only our state, but obviously Southern California. So happy to be a partner with you in these discussions. With that, we're going to introduce our first panel, household Impacts and Cost Pressures on Workers and Learners.

So with that, I'm going to have the Members introduce themselves.

Hello. There we go. Good morning, Chair Solache and Members of the Committee. My name is Saba Waheed. I'm the Director of the UCLA Labor Center.

Good morning. My name is Hina Malik and I am a UCLA alumni.

Good morning. My name is Sandra Mitchell, and I am with the Southeast LA County Workforce Development Board.

Great. So we're going to have the panel get into discussion on this important discussion and then Committee Members will have some opportunity to ask questions. And then at the end of today's panel, we're going to have an opportunity for the public to have public comment. Okay, so with that, go ahead and start. I'm happy to.

I see the UCLA connection here now. Why, there's some UCLA love, but there is also some USC love as well. So go ahead, please.

We make peace. Wonderful. Thank you so much for having us. Today I am with the UCLA labor center and we focus on conducting research really to lift up worker voices and worker experiences, particularly thinking about, you know, policy change in the agenda.

10 years ago, we actually started doing a study on young workers realizing how important they are to California's economy, how much they lift up, especially Los Angeles, but that we don't talk enough about the conditions of work for young workers.

One of the things we found in that research was that, you know, early career work impacts your entire lifetime of earnings. And so it's actually quite important for us to look at the conditions and how important those wages are for the future of California's workers. So we shifted about six years ago to focus specifically on working students.

This was our Workers and Learners Project. 82% of University students in California, I mean, sorry, in Los Angeles, go to public universities. And that should be. Public University is supposed to be the accessible option, the economic option. And yet for our working students, it's been hard to actually sustain education and then work.

So like at this point where we have, where one in two college students now have to work, you know, whether at the UC, the Cal states or at the community colleges. And then most of these jobs are in low wage industries or in jobs that pay low wages.

A lot of the positions that they are getting are in what we call frontline jobs.

So, you know, it's often the service sector, they're the ones who are greeting you in the retail store, in the restaurants, you know, in the education system, in health care, but are often in the kind of, you know, lowest wage tiers in those industries.

We also find just between some of the, you know, the many decades of disinvestment in public education, higher cost, higher tuitions, and then just the escalating, rising cost of living in places like Los Angeles, it's not just that students have to work, it's that they have to work so much more.

And so, you know, those of us who, you know, may have gone to College in the 80s or the 90s, you worked for experience. Now students work to get by to be able to survive in Los Angeles.

You know, studies have shown that if you work about 15, up to 15 hours while you're studying, it can be a great experience to your college education. It can start setting up your field, it can be providing experiences. Most students now are working over, they're working over.

They're working 20 hours 25, 30 and so on, which starts to have a negative impact on learning. And so students are working in jobs that are not related to their careers. They're working more hours. And so the impact of work is substantial.

And so, you know, being at a University, you know, we work across the, you know, public University system, we realized how important it was to capture this particular story of workers and learners and see how, you know, it looks like on the ground.

And one of the things about the UCLA labor center is we use something called the research justice approach, which is really to center workers themselves in capturing the data, in guiding our research. And so we run a class where the students develop the surveys, the priority questions, the conditions that they want to unpack.

And so I'm really excited to have here from our labor summer research program, our alumni, who, our alum who was able to conduct research last summer on workers and learners. So she's going to dig in and tell you some of the conditions that she explored in our research and from talking to her peers.

And so this is Hina.

Yeah, so I'm a first generation low income college graduate. So it was an amazing opportunity to be part of this program and the labor studies summer research program. So this past summer, I joined 28 other student researchers to dive into the lived realities of what we call workers and learners.

Students who just like me, know the challenge of rushing from class to class while also working in the summer of 2024, many of us. Sorry. We centered student workers as the experts of their own experiences over a short but intensive timeline. We conducted 139 surveys and 26 in depth interviews.

All participants attended a public college or University in LA County and were working for pay and were over 18. And while our sample over represents UCLA students, the patterns we found mirror challenges faced by workers and learners statewide. So we surveyed people from all kinds of different backgrounds.

43% were Latinx or Hispanic, 30% Asian, 20% white, 8% multiracial, 7% black, 4% Middle Eastern, Southwest Asian, North African, and 3% other. 63% female, 32% male, and then 5% non binary, gender, queer, transgender. So like we said we had an overrepresentation of UCLA students because the majority of LSRP students go to UCLA.

So this was in our circle. So what we found is clear. There's an ongoing strain on student workers for pursuing higher education means constantly choosing between paying bills and staying in school, 65% earn under $15,000 a year and among those receiving financial aid, 63% say it's insufficient and 3/3 don't have access to work study.

Nearly one third had to borrow money for essentials such as rent, food or tuition, and 43% can't cover all their expenses and one in four have fallen behind on bills. This financial pressure doesn't just affect bank accounts, it touches every part of the student's life.

Nearly 3/4 worry about covering basic needs on a regular basis, 71% have worked while sick because they couldn't afford to miss a shift, 42% report weekly anxiety and over a third experience daily anxiety just from trying to balance coursework and their jobs. Students aren't just balancing school and work, they're being pulled in two directions at once.

85% in our study are full time students and 2/3 work more than 15 hours a week, with many working over 30. Inflexible jobs often demand attendance over academics, making it risky to miss work for class or study time.

A student I interviewed in particular stated, a lot of times people complain at my work and they say that there are people lined up to fill up those roles. So it doesn't really seem like you have a lot of choices when it comes to missing work or prioritizing that over school.

Even with all that effort, the students work rarely connect to their career goals. Half of students in our study said that their jobs have no connection to what they want to do after graduation. Social sciences and STEM majors make up the most of our participants, yet only one in five have jobs aligned with those fields.

As one student put it, I have either this choice between the internship that is not going to pay me or I have this on campus job that's definitely going to pay me in spite of the fact that it's going to benefit your career in the present moment, you need to support yourself.

So we also found that 55% of student workers receive no workplace benefits and and over a third feel their school hasn't prepared them for a future job. So these findings aren't just numbers, they're representative of a bigger problem.

Our students aren't just learners, they're the workers who keep Los Angeles running, often at the cost of their own health. When work and education conflict, it's the students who pay the price.

And so if we want to truly invest in the next generation of leaders, we need to create pathways where students can succeed in both school and work without being forced to sacrifice one for the other.

So we have some general recommendations here to enhance academic flexibility and support through increasing flexibility and attendance and deadlines, improving communication between faculty and students, recording lectures, empowering workers and learners through workers rights training and resources. We can teach about union membership and legal protections and mandating educational modules.

More recommendations we have include strengthening financial support for workers and learners by making aid more accessible through larger grants to cover gaps between living expenses and existing aid packages, especially work study and expanding career access and opportunities through targeted internships, mentor programs, and better access to career sources in schools.

We also recommend expanding state funded work study programs so more students, especially those at public universities and community colleges, can access paid career aligned positions. We also recommend a statewide internship tax credit to encourage small businesses to hire students in their field, which can create a direct pipeline while offsetting employer costs.

Additionally, we should adjust financial aid formulas to reflect the regional cost of living data so it keeps in pace with the cost of living.

Thank you, Hohina, for that update and that report and our friends, of course, at the UCLA Labor Center.

We're going to now transition to our next panelist, which I want to just acknowledge that a lot of us in the State of sanity that represent our districts, we have workforce development boards and we're very proud of SELECO and the work that you've been doing for so many years in our communities, in our district, in our, my district.

I know, Ms. Pacheco, we share Seleco. And I know through Mr. Gipson, I know we have Hub cities as well and other parts of our district. So I just want to acknowledge the good work that and some of our council Members that serve here locally serve on these boards.

So with that, we're going to have Sandra be our next panelist.

Thank you. Am I on? Yes, thank you. My name is Sandra Mitchell and I serve as a Deputy Director for the Southeast Los Angeles County Workforce Development Board, also known as Selo. Today I am here on behalf of Executive Director Ms. Yolanda Castro. I'm honored to be joined today by two of our policy board Members.

As you mentioned, Council Member Sunny Santinez from the City of Bellflower and Vice Mayor Jeff woods from the City of Lakewood.

On behalf of Seleco, I want to thank Assemblymember Jose Luis Solace for bringing the Pocketbook Tour to the beautiful City of Paramount and creating a space to have honest dialogue on the economic challenges our families face every day throughout our region. SELCO serves eight cities Artesia, Bellflower, Cerritos, Downey, Hawaiian Gardens, Lakewood, Norwalk and Paramount.

As a workforce board, our primary job is to ensure that residents in our region have access to quality jobs. Jobs that pay competitive living wages, have stability and have the opportunity for growth even within that career pathway.

We're also working in the spirit of California Jobs first by targeting sectors that are high road the that are high paying waged and that also have the opportunity to provide worker voice, equity and sustainability. Our work is centered on collaboration and building strong sector partnerships.

Aligning employers, educators and training providers in high demand industries so that the residents we serve can step into these quality jobs. We have focused on advanced manufacturing, helping residents gain the technical skills needed for modern production, welding and fabrication careers Health care Preparing workers for roles ranging from entry level patient care to specialized allied health positions.

Transportation, distribution and logistics Connecting workers to a sector that's essential to our regional economy. Skilled trades Ensuring the next generation is ready for construction, infrastructure and green careers. We hear firsthand from job seekers, parents, young adults, veterans, career changers about the economic pressures straining their household.

Rising housing costs, transportation expenses, child care costs and even the price of groceries that make it feel like every paycheck is already spoken for before it even arrives at Seligo. We work every day to address these realities. We do it by investing in training programs so residents can compete for in demand higher wage jobs.

Designing programs and securing funding to assist priority populations such as justice involved individuals, individuals with disabilities and youth exiting the foster care system. Upskilling existing employees so that they can gain clarity certifications and be promoted and earn higher wages within the job they already possess.

Providing wraparound support services that range from transportation assistance, emergency utility payments, childcare costs to needs related payments so that people can not only get a job but keep it and grow within it. In the past year alone, CELICA has placed over 800 residents into quality jobs averaging more than $26 an hour.

Enrolled hundreds in training programs leading to industry recognized credentials. Provided over 300 youth with work experience and career exploration opportunities to help them prepare for success and enrolled hundreds in work experience and on the job training opportunities that align with the training they received. But we also know that workforce solutions can exist in isolation.

Economic development, affordable housing, access to quality education and equitable digital literacy are all part of the same equation if we want to help families not just survive but thrive we must help in connecting these dots.

The Seleco Workforce Development Board stands ready to be a convener, a DOT connector and committed to partner with state and local leaders, businesses, educators and most importantly our community to build an economy that works for all of us. Thank you again Assemblymember for bringing the tour and your leadership and commitment and the other Members here today.

We appreciate this opportunity to bring the board to the table.

Thank you Sonnet for your words and again acknowledging and highlighting the work that these work you followed boards do throughout not only our region, our local region, but throughout the State of California and the importance of that they bring to our community.

I know we had scheduled a participant to join us today and for obviously human reasons she wasn't able to come.

But I want to take the opportunity to highlight one of my employees in the City of Lynwood that started in the Hub Cities program right through workforce development and now she's a full time employee and she's a mom and lives in the community.

And it's just a great story that someone that started getting those work skills at the local level, our local city, provided her opportunity and then she became a full time employee.

And those are the same stories that we have in Paramount, in Cerritos, Downey and Lakewood throughout our region of folks that, you know, start their journey in these training facilities and locations, schools, city halls, public works, and they may get a career.

So I just wanted to highlight that even though we didn't have the participant today, I wanted to highlight Jackie in our City Hall. That is the face of when you walk to City hall and it brings a smile to our community. And she's just one example of so many individuals that start their careers through workforce development.

And so with that, I want to thank the panelists. Before we get to a question from the panel, I want to from the Members of State Assembly, I want to take a little off script for a second and I want to acknowledge that we have our other neighboring Member from the region.

Our Assembly District has six Members around it. We're in the middle and Mr. Gibson's to the west side and then Ms. Pacheco's to the east of our AD district. So with that I want to acknowledge her and have her, she wants to make some remarks before we get to some questions. So Assembly Member Blanca Pacheco,.

Thank you. And I just want to first start off by thanking my Assembly colleague, Assemblymember Solace for convening us all here today to have these important discussions about, you know, affordability for our students for our workers and understanding the impact of the cost of living here in California.

So I want to thank our UCLA alumni now for being here today. I'm a little biased. I went to UCLA myself. So thank you for being here. And SELECO and also our SELECO Members, thank you for being here today as well. And it's a pleasure. I'm here to learn. And again, Assemblymember Solace, thank you.

And Assemblymember Gibson, thank you also for coming over and visiting us as well.

Thank you, Assemblywoman. With that, thank you again, the panelists for their information today. I'm going to start with Mr. Gipson if he has any questions of the panelists.

Well, first of all, thank you very much again for one appearing before us this morning, Pocketbook Tour. Appreciate your presentation. Give me three things that you want us to take back to Sacramento. What would you like for us to take back to Sacramento if we, if you would give us a wish list.

There's three things by way of legislation you would like for us to legislate based on your live life experience, that if we can have a magic wand to make people's lives better based on your live life experience, Please articulate that for us.

I would expand state funded work study. I have a lot of friends that are middle class and they have to take out lots of loans and work full time just to pay their bills and it's because they don't qualify for work study.

So I would expand that another one. Statewide internship tax credit to incentivize small businesses to hire students in relevant fields. Because a big cost that small businesses have is onboarding workers. And so if we have internship programs available to students in fields that align with their career goals, then it'll offset that cost.

And adjusting financial aid formulas to reflect the cost of living. Like I said, there are so many students that fall just between that threshold of not being low income but not being upper class. They're just right in the middle. So they don't qualify for aid. So I adjust that as well.

So all three of those, they will fall under my Committee because I chair the Revenue and Taxation Committee. So thank you.

Just to add, and actually the last question they would ask in their interview to students that they were serving was if you had a magic wand, what would you change? So the things that you're hearing is actually coming from that vision.

I would just add, you know, there's AB 800 which starts education of worker rights at the high school level and is to continue to expand that because the more we can continue to, you know, and by the time folks get to college, if they're not already kind of educated about managing their workplace.

The other thing is just the high cost of living. Right. Like the jobs just need to pay more and not to kind of get into this thing where like you know, entry level jobs or training jobs don't deserve the kind of same compensations as others.

So really allowing students to work less. Students actually say like we should not be working at all and education should be free. That of course is our long term vision is how can we make education affordable again so that students don't have to work, but even those that have enough financial aid still have to pay for their living costs.

And that then goes to housing and it goes to food costs and it goes to all the other things that they have to carry.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, always expand funding allocate so that the funding is not duplicate.

It doesn't create competition amongst our community providers so that there isn't that duplication of services but rather added value amongst ourselves that are working together to train and upskill our community trade bound support in allowing for trade skills and apprenticeships to count towards credit in high school making trades not a second choice, but a legitimate first choice and an honorable choice for students that are not interested in attending college but are trade bound.

Eligible training provider list under the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, we are required to train individuals only in facilities that are listed in the eligible training provider list.

It would be amazing if legislation would allow for all schools that are adult schools and community colleges to have their programs automatically added to that eligible training provider list to create greater access to high quality programs that are already available in our community college and adult schools and not having to burden them with the processing to get on that list.

I'm glad you said that because we started doing a bill mandating all schools in California reintroduce the trades back into schools. I came grew up in a time where it was mandatory that we had wood shops, metal shop, home ec and we took it out.

Well, I didn't take it out, but it was taken out of the schools. And we Davis chronicle a study when we did that, that's when the pipeline, the prison pipeline opened up because we didn't provide an opportunity for those students who didn't have a desire to go to community college or university. They didn't have anything to do.

And we left those kids behind. And we should be amplifying the traits because we live in a technology and we don't have kids or students trained for this emerging technology right now. And it's a demand for those kinds of technology schools and those traits.

And we should be making sure that kids who don't want to go to a two year community college or four university, we should also make sure they're set up for success in these particular areas. And we should bring those to those school levels in high school, middle school. That's where it started. And so I agree with you.

Thank you, Mr. Gibson. Ms. Pacheco.

Yes. So I do have a question. Taking it back to our alumni and Director of UCLA Labor Center, I think it was touched upon a statewide tax credit. I think that was on one of the slides about the recommendations. Can you elaborate more about that?

Yeah. So just to we propose the statewide internship tax credit for small businesses to encourage them to hire students. So this would offset onboarding costs while also encouraging students to take on jobs that align with their intended career.

And that would be like I know there were three things that you mentioned to Assemblymember Gipson. Would that fall under the second, the internship programs. Is that where that tax credit would fall upon?

Yes.

Okay. And it is tough. I remember I had to go to community college first before going to UCLA because the cost was so high. And then I ended up going to Loyola Law School, which is a private school. And I did have to take out some, some grants and different types of loans in order to get through law school.

And it took me about well over 10, 15 years to pay off my debt. And I heard now cost of going to private school and even public schools has even gone up considerably.

So I know it's tough being a student and having to deal with the cost of living because I was fortunate that I was able to live with my parents. So I know that's tough. And that was actually my only question because I know it's so tough on students.

Yeah. Something that a lot of students and I found is that a lot of internships are unpaid. So for me personally, I had to work two jobs to get myself through college because one of the jobs I took didn't pay much. Thankfully it was paid, but not much at all.

So, you know, giving small businesses and businesses an incentive through tax credit would really help.

Add one more question. When I was in law school, I worked on campus. Is that still an option that is being provided to students? I would say at UCLA. Are you able to work on campus?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you, Ms. Pacheco. Something else, I mean.

Yes, yes. And we find that it's both like sometimes students are able to access. Not everybody can access the work study. Which goes to Hina's other finding about expanding work study in terms of who can. Not that you have to be work study for on campus. But those are two things that go together that really help students.

And campus jobs tend to be a little bit more flexible. But we also find that folks are working in La, you know, they're working in the retail stores, they're working in the restaurants, they're working in the hospital. So like how much of the jobs and there and that most of them are low wage, low paying jobs.

So Hina's point about working multiple jobs, that's also something that we're seeing quite common because you're still trying to find that second job that will help your career and the job that will help pay the bills.

Well, I want to thank the panelists for being here today for the last question that my colleague asked. I actually worked on campus in my undergrad in the outreach office and it was a fun job because I got to call protect students with table at different high schools and promote my undergrad to promote and encourage students.

But my work experience there was. I was doing work study on campus, and that was very helpful. So when we were putting together the different discussions throughout the state, and we're dealing with terror, we're dealing with so many issues at the state level and just seeing how workers and learners, you know, are being impacted.

And your research and your impact is critical because this hearing is being heard not only here today, but it's being televised so that other Assemblymembers, staff members of these members are listening to your input.

And I think it's critical to understand how these things are really, you know, relate to the affordability issue that we're dealing in the State of California. I think Californians told us very clearly at the last election cycle how they felt about affordability and how they're being impacted. So these discussions are critical.

And I'm happy that you brought those things to Mr. Gipson because that's under his Committee, you know, and under this Committee that I get to chair. On that note, I want to also acknowledge our great staff that we have on the Committee, Carla Castillo and then Ashley Bennett there are Committee consultants for this Committee that we chair.

And I wanted to acknowledge them because they've been able to, you know, put together not only this hearing today, but the different discussions are being had throughout the State of California. So on that note, I want to thank you.

We're going to have some public comment at the end, so hopefully if you stay, you'll listen to some of the public comment as well from the public. So with that, thank you so much for your time. We're going to go on to the next panel.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. So again, as a reminder for anyone that has joined us, we're going to just conclude our first panel. We're going to ask our second panelist to come up and come, and we're going to start that discussion.

This is also particularly exciting for me to have because not only does the mayor of Paramount, she is not only the mayor, but she and I share working with small businesses in our Chamber of Commerce.

Just last night, we were the chamber alliance and had a lot of the small chambers, the gas company and actually Mr. Gipson, Ms. Patrick were there too, hosted us. And just to see how our business community is being impacted at the local level.

And without a doubt, I want to also acknowledge something that's very heavy to our district and Southern California. These raids are happening in our district and our backyard are disgusting, are horrible, and our community should not live in fear. And I say that with a heavy heart because these are our neighbors.

These are the people that are shopping in our restaurants. When it started happening restaurants, the traffic of these restaurants were impacted drastically. And these are not just people that are coming, these are human beings that we're dealing with.

So regardless of anything, I want to just acknowledge that our districts in Southern California, specifically in Paramount, in these communities are impacted. And so these discussions of how we deal with our small businesses are critical. So I just didn't want to move forward to today's discussion without acknowledging the heaviness that we are dealing with in our backyards.

And you have champions not only here, sitting here, but throughout our state that are moving forward to being voices for our communities as a whole. So I just wanted to also acknowledge that with that we do have our next panel that deals with micro business affordability and cost pressures. I'm going to actually just acknowledge him.

I should have the first panel. But first we have the amazing, awesome, just fabulous Alma Marquez, CEO of Del Sol, Microbusiness Promotoras. We have Ariel Pe, not only a former mayor of Lakewood, but owner of Lapworks, Jennifer Cox who is owner of Momma Osa.

She's just a fabulous woman I've got to know as well in the community and painai, Executive Regional Director of the small business Development Center. So with that I'm going to just let Alma start and then we'll just go down and same structure.

We'll have the panel inform us and then we're going to go have ask questions and then again we'll go have public comment at the end. Alma. and thank you for stopping at Ochateria in Paramount and providing. She sent me a nice text. She says, you know Ochateria is in the house so again supporting small businesses.

And on that note, it's shameless plug but go to Ochateria after you leave Paramount, leave your gas taxes here, leave go have some breakfast. Paramount will thank you for leaving your local taxes here. So gracias.

Yeah, thank you. I always just say that their story is a wonderful story of starting small and growing and employing lots of people and doing wonderful work. Good morning. Thank you so very much, assemblymember, for your leadership. Thank you for being here and really highlighting the importance of this work and bringing us together to talk about this.

My name is Alma Marquez and I am the founder and CEO of El SolGroup. We are a communications and community engagement firm. We primarily focus on education and entrepreneurship and the question is why? And that's because it's the fastest way out of poverty. So we are committed to helping people in our community get out of poverty.

We know that micro enterprise is an important strategy and it's an often underlooked strategy or overlooked strategy to engage communities and to help people out of poverty. We've been in business for 15 years. I grew up in this region, I grew up in Huntington Park and I'm a proud alumna of the Hub Cities program.

So when you were talking about that earlier, it just really resonated for me because my sister and I did that program as young people and we were part of that workforce track and established an entrepreneurship path for ourselves.

We started the business 15 years ago and hire people from the community and really try and use our talents and our expertise to help other people also get out of poverty like we have. For us, thinking creatively about micro enterprise has been incredibly important. Specifically looking at strategies that have worked in other sectors is extremely important.

And so we have approached several of our clients and they've hired us to actually build out Micro enterprises through promotoras et salud model. Many of you might know the community healthcare model where community workers who are trusted messengers go into communities and actually uplift health care and education.

We've used the same model, many of the same people with whom we've worked and trained them to become community promoters, but for economic opportunity and to uplift them with micro enterprise strategies. I can't tell you how successful it's been. I'd love to show you that. I have some recommendations about what we can do with that.

I'm obviously very excited to share this information with you because we've helped thousands of micro business owners. We've helped them essentially think through how they could grow their businesses. Many of them are worried about making ends meet. Obviously the raids have dramatically impacted this population. Many of them are single headed households, so many of them are mothers.

So we're also talking about the impact of women. And we know that it's incredibly important that we encourage the Government agencies who are funding this kind of economic development work to be able to focus with intention and strategy with micro enterprises. These here are some examples of pictures of the work that we've done with our team.

Their small group environments, little by little, one on one conversations, they meet close to where people are. We've helped thousands of folks and know that this is an incredibly important strategy to be to expedite economic opportunity for others. Our recommendations are the following.

We want to expedite systems to uplift micro enterprise as a strategy, especially as international business opportunities come through with the Paralympics, the Olympics, FIFA, the World Cup, the whole nine.

We want to make sure that there's a focus on helping families be competitive in real time for these opportunities and requirements large contractors to support micro enterprise as part of their strategy. Second, we want to require community informed outreach.

We want to make sure that government agencies and government funded organizations also switch their mindset to they should come to. We must meet them where they are.

Because people who are working at home or working as street vendors or are working as professionals in their homes don't have teams to expedite this work and do government engagement or outreach and newsletters are not enough. We need to meet people where they are. Thank you so much.

Thank you Alma. Next we have Pat.

Good morning Chairman Solache and Committee Members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Pat Nye. I'm the leader of the Los Angeles Regional Small Business Development Center Network, the LASBDC. I'm here on behalf of the over 1 million small businesses that form the economic and cultural heart of the Los Angeles region.

Businesses that are resilient and innovative and deeply woven into our communities. But today they are facing unprecedented challenges that threaten their very survival. Running a small business in Los Angeles has always come with its own set of hurdles. But now we're seeing those hurdles become walls.

Commercial rents in many parts of LA have skyrocketed over the past two years. From downtown to the Valley to right here in Paramount. Small businesses are being priced out of the very neighborhoods that they helped to establish. Labor costs are also increasing.

And while fair wages are essential, many small businesses are struggling to keep up with rising payrolls without the financial cushion of that so many larger companies enjoy. There's also a lot of supply chain instability and inflation have added layers of unpredictability. The cost of basic goods and materials have surged.

Whether that's ingredients for your neighborhood restaurant or parts at the auto shop, margins are already thin and they're being squeezed to a breaking point. Now. And utilities insurance costs are also on the rise.

And add to that the challenge of recovering from Covid era setbacks to unprecedented national disasters that have hit our region, like the wildfires earlier this year. And we're in a dire scenario, really. The bottom line is that small businesses in LA are being hit from all sides.

Cost and competition are up, margins are down, and extreme unpredictability has become the norm. And it isn't just a business issue. This is really a community issue. When small businesses close, neighborhoods lose their identity, jobs are lost, families struggle, state tax revenues drop. The economic ripple effect of all of this is profound.

And these aren't luxury businesses we're talking about. We're talking about your local daycare center, your mechanic, your family owned restaurant, your neighborhood coffee. These are all anchors of community life and their risk. So we know budgets are tight and that our state has prioritized health care and housing issues this year.

But this is all the more reason to also prioritize small business. Community businesses are often the only source for people to begin to afford health care and housing to get access to those things. Ignoring the health of California's small business will only increase the burden to our state. This is why the state must play a crucial role.

This is really an opportunity. Technical assistance programs like the Small Business Development Centers program and so many others out there like us are the essential lifeline to these businesses. Our services are public, provided at no cost. And we're often the first stop for small business entrepreneurs trying to move from survival to stability and growth.

In many cases, the support from an SBDC advisor is what helps a business access capital, secure a fair lease, or adapt their model to remain viable. But here's the problem. While demand for these services is higher than ever, funding has not kept pace.

California's Office of the Small Business Advocate under leadership of Director Gray and her team, has done a great job in supporting and leveraging these small business assistance resources across our state through the TAP program. But these grants that fund the TAP program are wildly oversubscribed and that Delta grows each year.

Clearly we collectively have the ability to do so much more. So there is a budget ask by you Chair Solache and the Committee designed to increase the small business technical assistance funding for our state. And there's also a bill led by Assemblymember Coloza to offer more resources in times of disaster.

So both of these funding vehicles are critical resources that could really help meet this need. California has this incredible engine in the form of small business resources like the SBDC program. But we're not giving it enough fuel to drive the economic prosperity that our communities deserve. So Los Angeles small businesses don't expect handouts.

They expect a fair shot in partnership from our state. With the right support systems in place, they will do what they do best. Innovate, employ, and enrich our communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Pat. We are big fans of our SBDC, so thank you. Next, we're going to go with Jennifer Cox.

Hi, everyone. This is my first one of these, so be patient with me. My name is Jen Cox. I'm a single mom, owner of Momma Osa and our company specializes, or my company specializes, in tie dyeing and crafting experiences, both for birthday parties, crafting clubs, summer camp, corporate events, both in person and virtually.

And that just means that we build people, team builders worldwide. So I pack and ship kits and then I send them out and then we lead virtually. Momma Osa was created because of the Mama Bear energy. And so that's just where it comes from. And it just really taps into all of that that all of us have.

We really do strive to give back to the community. And I pride myself on becoming a mentor to youth and projects and partnerships, including the ymca. And by the way, I just think it's important to note I am not dressed professionally today because I just left 200 kids summer camp crafting with the YMCA.

And so I have to go back there in a little bit. So that's why I have the apron on. Just important to note. So also just to kind of give you a little bit of background, I come from big business. I used to.

I have my BFA in fashion, and we used to design for companies like Walmart and Target and all the big boys. And I really started this as a passion project. And Ari Pei sitting to my left, who is my mentor for. And I work very closely with him with the sbdc.

He was the one who kind of started this whole concept up of Momma Osa and what my niche was going to be. And that really, that hook of what we started at is what Momma Osa is today. It was that experience of giving people something that they didn't have.

So I started working with ARI and the SBDC prior to me getting laid off in 2020, and from that point has now blossomed into a really pretty cool success story. He's worked with me on operations, marketing, website development.

He's also really helped me kind of embrace a growth mindset and really understanding that limits are just things that we set on ourselves. And so that's one of the things that I really appreciate with working with him and the SBDC is that it's really allowed me to grow in ways that I even really understand were possible.

Just a couple of things to note for my business successes and my challenges in year one. It was Covid and it was a really scary time. But I mean, just talk about the rise up. The second year in business. We were featured on Good Morning America.

I auditioned for Shark Tank and was put on the Reserve list, like at the 11th hour, which still hurts to this day. In 2022, I sold my first million. And I'm happy to say that I booked that from my front breakfast nook.

And you know, when you're a team of one, sometimes it's really nice to just call your mentor and tell them, hey, guess what? I booked my first $1.0 million order.

So it's things like that that are just really cool to say and not to say that those things keep on happening, but that is one of the cool things things that have happened. I also have employed and mentored about 12 youth ambassadors. But economic uncertainty has really caused for some stressful times.

These impacts of my business for tariffs and the rising costs, they hit us at each step of the way. So, like for example, this summer, leading 200 kids at craft at summer camp each week, there were times where I was like, I've got to pull the trigger and I have to start planning my summer.

And there was times where I was like, I can't do any of that. I am 100% on hold, waiting, waiting, waiting, and then realizing that some of our materials increased, some of them doubled. And I know for a fact that some of my counterparts, you know, they just abandoned importing due to that.

But like me and some of my mentors say, like, I just rolled the dice and hoped for the best. I put everything on the water and it did end up working out. I got all my supplies on time. And the things that didn't work out, I got resourceful and figured it out. But my margins definitely decreased.

Like I said, some of the material costs have doubled. So, you know, I have not personally raised my prices on my website for over three years. The reason for that is not because I haven't seen the margins decrease, but it's because my competition is either staying the same or lowering their cost.

Which in my personal opinion, I don't understand how they feed their kids that way because you really don't want to pass those costs down to your customers. But what I've realized is that I'm keeping my Prices, my margins are going down, so my hustle has gone up. But yet, you know, there's no more. Like, there's.

They're squeezing us at each step of the way. So let's see. I also just wanted to mention that one of the really great things that Momma Osa does is that we work with two corporate event companies. We focus on team building, and like I said, some of the other companies and competition, they've started to lower their prices.

And I just don't understand how that's working because not only is it our costs that are increasing, but it's each step of the way, like I mentioned. So, like, shipping, because people are not buying as many things on Amazon and some of the other things that are going on just in our.

In our country, our shipping costs have actually gone up 12, $3 for a basic ground shipment. And for a small company like me, it's, like, critical. Those three bucks make a really big difference. So I focus on offering value and differentiation, differentiating my own services so that we actually still provide value. Excuse me.

So I just wanted to just reiterate, like, how important my relationship with the SBDC is also, you know, things like. Things like I come up with these ideas and I'm like, hey, Ari, you know, I need to know. I have no idea what it costs or what it means to license or to do franchising or whatever.

And that is the next step for Mama osa, which is really exciting. I'm five and a half years in business, cannot even believe that. So happy to say, but that's our next step is our licensing and our franchise model. So I just want to say thank you for having me. Thank you.

Jennifer, we love your authentic outfit today, so don't even worry about that. I think she looks great. I would be more worried about the guide to your lap. And just like you're a mama bear, he's a papa bear. So on that note, Mr. Pe, thank you.

Thank you, Committee Members Solache, Pacheco and Gipson. We truly appreciate on this panel your advocacy in supporting these communities and really being our voice. So just know that. My name is Ariel Pe. I'm the proud owner of LabWorks, located in the beautiful City of Lakewood.

My professional journeys began as a longtime marketing Executive with some of the most recognized brands in the industry. Vans ruka, Billabong, and Lucky 13 apparel. Through Labworks, I've been able to merge my love for creative culture with a commitment to community and creating.

Not just products, but a space where culture and creativity have a Thrive Connection I've been in the screen printing industry for over 20 years and during that time I've navigated a wide range of challenges, many of which are common for small independent businesses. Tariffs and rising of cost of goods sold have added a layer of difficulty.

Wholesale prices have gone up significantly and as a small business with limited buying power, we can only absorb those increases the way larger companies can. Bigger competitors often benefit from bulk purchasing which allows them to maintain more stable pricing for consumers.

The price gap can sometimes lead clients to choose larger companies, making it even harder for small business businesses like ours to compete. Despite these challenges, our dedication to quality, the customer relationships and community has kept us moving forward. It's a constant grind and balancing act, but one driven by passion and craft for the people that we serve.

I also serve as a part time consultant for the Los Angeles Mall Development Center, L.A. SBDC where I work with clients across a range of areas including operations, marketing, e commerce, access to capital and logistics.

Drawing on my global brand experience with major brands, I have a deep understanding of challenges that these businesses face with navigating competitive markets to adapting to to changing economic conditions. This background allows me to bridge the gap between large cell corporate strategies and the realities of running a smaller operation.

One of the most pressing issues for businesses and my clients is the rising cost of doing business. From raw materials to shipping and labor, expenses have steadily increased, driving by driven by factors such as tariffs, supply chain disruptions, inflation, higher cost of goods sold.

For many of my small businesses, these increases can't simply be passed along to consumers or customers without risking sales, which forces owners to absorb the hit to their margins. Larger companies often have the buying power to negotiate better rates or spread the costs across higher volumes.

But small businesses don't have that same leverage, making it harder to remain competitive. In addition to rising costs, cash flow management remains a significant challenge. But many businesses must pay for materials upfront and with client payments may not arrive for 15-30 days, even more after the job is completed.

How the State can Help us Expand Access to low interest financing grant programs specially designated to address cash flow gaps for small businesses. Support local chain development so that more materials resource can be sourced affordably within the state. Reducing dependence on costly imports.

Invest in workforce training programs that equip workers with the skills small business needs in helping both employers and employees thrive. Ultimately, small businesses like mine and others are the backbone of our local economy.

With the right support from the state, particularly in reducing financial pressure and fostering more sustainable supply chain, we cannot only survive current challenges, but Also position ourselves along for long term growth and job creation. Thank you once again for this opportunity to share in the business world.

Challenges are always constant, but so are the opportunities to grow, adapt and thrive. Is a truly honor to advocate for the needs of our entrepreneurs in our community. While capital infusion is often a crucial step for small businesses, it is equally important to emphasize on the role of marketing and operations in sustaining long term success.

Access to funding alone is not enough. Business must know how to strategically position themselves in the market, streamline their process and build resilience against economic fluctuations. This message we share with businesses business owners is simple. You are not alone.

We are here to help navigate obstacles, seize opportunities and keep the spirit of small business alive and thriving in our communities. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ariel. Thank you to the full panel. We're going to go into the Committee for any questions and as we do that, I want to also acknowledge that we have a presence of the local Chamber of Commerce Director Barbara, the Paramount Chamber of Commerce.

I want to acknowledge her for being here today and just being part of this conversation as well. With that questions, my colleagues. Mr. Gipson.

I want to say thank you very much. I want to ask the first question. Do you think that. So we know that what's taking place in Washington D.C. is having a significant impact on the cost of goods and on prices. I know that in your testimony that you talked about pricing out the businesses.

A lot of businesses being closed because of the goods. Goods are expensive, insurance wildfire and things of that nature. Right. The cost of business in California. It's expensive to do business in California. California, right. Affordability. That's our number one priority in California. As policymakers. That's our theme. Affordability.

Trying to address affordability in California and trying to look at our policies and trying to make sure that it doesn't further exacerbate it to be more and more expensive. Right. So we're looking at that and that's in the forefront of policies.

Myself as the Chair of Revenue and Taxation, I had to do some unpopular things to a lot of hope. None of your bills Members up here. I had to hold a lot of bills. Right. Because even though those bills were well intended. Well intended, we faced a budget deficit that was astronomical. I think it was.

It was just a lot of money. And so a lot of the bills that came before my Committee cost a lot of money and whether further exacerbated our budget deficit. So I had to hold a lot of bills which was a prudent thing to do. And that was my responsibility as the Chair in our Committee.

And so with that being said, we had to make sure that we didn't further, you know, by trying to balance our budget, you know, further exacerbate that. So my point being is that, you know, we don't have, you know, wildfires we have to deal with. That's stuff that we're dealing with in California and cost of insurance.

How do, what do you suggest we do as a state to address some of these issues, issues from your lens as a, you know, as a businessman? Give us some suggestions that we should be looking at as policymakers that we can take back to Sacramento and really focus in on.

Yeah, thank you, Assemblymember, for that question. So, in General, I would just ask our sort of entire Assembly to really think about small business as a revenue generator.

And so if you want to be able to pay for all of those programs and all the things that we want to support, to have the amazing California we know it can be, investing in small business is how we get there. That really is the economic engine of our state.

And all of these things tie back to small business. You know, healthy communities. That's because you have a great Main street that's thriving, people being able to get health care, people being able to afford homes. Small business drives a lot of that. That's where you get good jobs. That's where you have good communities.

And so I would not necessarily look at anything in that stack of bills you have to go through that's around small business support as the same as something that might be a different type of program. That's sort of the nice to have type of thing. Small business really is an economic generator. So I would start from there.

And to address the question of disaster, making sure that small businesses can weather our state's disasters, which are now just a normal part of business, is critical. If not that burden then goes back onto the state. And so I think there are lots of things that we can do.

One is just ensure that our businesses have more preparedness. And I think I have to give credit to Claire Whitmer, who is part of the California Office of a Small Business Advocate. She shared an idea of, well, maybe we can create an incentive program where your insurance rates go down.

If you demonstrate that you have been through disaster preparedness training and you've created measures in your business where you can weather things, you know, why not create some incentives in our state?

So just 1.0. So I carried a Bill in 2022. It was the Los Angeles Chambers of Commerce Bill they asked me to carry, Assembly Bill 1864 that would have given a tax credit to small businesses for every person you hire within a five mile radius in the community.

We would have given you, I think it was 500 to $1,000. You hire someone from the community, we give you $1,000 to 500 tax break from hiring that individual. Is that something that you.

Absolutely. I think these kind of creative solutions are very worthwhile, as we heard on the first panel from UCLA, being able to incentivize businesses to actually pay interns and sort of open that pool of who hires students. So I think that is very much in alignment with, you know, trying to support these local communities.

If I bring that bill back, you would be a supporter of that bill? Absolutely. Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Gipson. Ms. Pacheco.

Thank you. And thank you to our panelists for being here today. Ariel and I have known each other for many years back when he was on City Council and mayor in the City of Lakewood. So thank you for being here.

So I just, I just had just really one question to Pat or to anybody that's willing to answer it. I know you mentioned some ideas of like grants and I really like your idea of the incentive programs for preparedness.

But is there any ideas or suggestions you can provide to us as Assembly Members on how we can partner up even in the community to help our small businesses? Any ideas? I know we're involved with our local chamber of Commerces, but I feel like we can do more.

Thank you Assemblymember. I appreciate the question. So every Assembly Member in our state has an SBDC that covers their region and there are lots of other programs that do small business technical assistance and really that's my business.

We're there to help give advice and professional guidance to help small businesses start, thrive, grow, weather whatever they might be challenged with. We're not widely known. So I think that's an immediate area where we could partner with, maybe do more stuff in district with all of our assemblies. That's an open offer from all of the SBDCs.

We're there to help meet your constituents and help support those businesses. I think forums like this or even roundtables are very useful.

Businesses want to know that their legislators are hearing them and hearing what they're going through and pair that with whatever the local resources might be, have them there and you have sort of this nice matchmaking kind of approach.

So I would suggest starting there in terms of partnership and then we can go as high as you would like.

How do I get that started? I definitely, I'm on board. Oh, I would love to do something in my Assembly District, you know, to offer support for our small businesses.

Yeah, well, so you're one of the districts I cover, so we can definitely work on setting up some dates.

Sounds good. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Pacheco.

So I do have a question. You know, having been recently and working in the local business community with the chamber, one of the things that a lot of us in that space, council Members, leaders, we always promote buy local, shop local. Right. In fact, that was one of the actual themes in Lakewood most recently.

So the question that I have on behalf of the state is, you know, how are consumers responding to that buy local, shop local in support of small businesses regarding the movements in light of rising import costs and international trade tensions?

This would just be kind of an anecdotal response because I don't have hard data behind it. But it feels like there are lots of different versions of this and they tend to be one offs.

I would say maybe sort of anchoring it with having all of the cities in a region get together, or I know the LA County does this, maybe have them partner with cities and make it a much bigger deal collectively. I think that would really move the needle. I think there's a lot of goodwill behind this.

And when it does get attention, you do see a little bit of a bump. But then everybody gets busy and goes back to their normal things.

And so I think maybe the state supporting a much broader and sort of ongoing campaign and getting the creativity of small businesses, I mean, maybe they can come up with, I don't know, incentive programs or discounts or, you know, whatever it might take to sort of capture the imagination of the local community to keep that rolling, keep it going.

Thank you. And maybe to the rest of the panelists, you know, we deal a lot with brick and mortar businesses, of course, throughout the state, but sometimes we forget about those that are not brick and mortar, that are doing online sales, that are doing from home, that are doing those type of businesses.

So is there anything that the state could do more to support those type of businesses throughout our state?

I think that in lieu of not having an infrastructure like the traditional brick and mortar businesses have, the state could invest in creating and supporting a network of micro businesses, micro entrepreneurship that builds capacity, that engages with each other, that also helps leverage their collective buying power.

That needs to be an intentional strategy that needs to be funded because doing outreach is one element of it. But maintaining that kind of collective even Information building, sharing information with a community and having a feedback loop where some of the micro entrepreneurs actually you what they need and how they can grow.

I think that kind of traditional strategy would be important of just having a network. A lot of these micro business owners are not part of chambers of commerce, so they're not part of the traditional business community. And there doesn't exist a Chamber of Commerce that's focused on micro businesses.

A lot of them are supporting each other and supporting their work. For example, with people who have their businesses and are food vendors, for example, they have a network. Many of them are place based. So by community, some of them are by their country of origin also.

So I think that having, using what's worked for traditional businesses, for micro businesses I think is important and also thinking expansively about other ways of reaching and engaging and staying in touch with those micro businesses is important.

Thank you, Ariel.

Yes. One of the challenges that we saw in being a micro business or a smaller business is the act of being convenient, right. It's easier to order online and just have the product show up.

But going back to Pat and Assemblymember, Pacheco's idea of really sharing our public narrative of the SBDC being activated allows for the other businesses to see the work that we do and have a longer reach. Because when I mentioned you're not alone, you are not alone.

There's other businesses I've been through and there's a lot of people that will help and elevate the community together. You know, rising tides raises all ships. But I think the public narrative of really knowing that the SPDC is out here as a service is a big, big, big step in pushing the food forward.

Because I mean, let's look at Uber. Uber allowed you to buy your time back, right? Successful here. One of the challenges that small business face is convenience, right? We don't have to leave to get your groceries, we don't have to leave to do these things.

But human interaction is still very prevalent in the retail business and in the brick and mortar business. And it's never going to go away. You know, online sales is going to be there, but human interaction is never going to go away.

And if we can keep focusing on that and telling our story, I think that's a big win for everybody. Thank you.

I want to share an observation.

In our years of doing organizing and community engagement work with micro business owners, obviously we do a lot of work with the immigrant community and with Spanish speaking business owners, a lot of them see their work as important, but they will Say things like trabajo por me cuenta, which is, I work on my own.

They don't necessarily see themselves as micro businesses, and our work has been to educate them that trabajando porto cuenta es queres empresario you are. Or an emprendedor. Emprendadora. You are, in fact, an entrepreneur when you're working for yourself.

And so I think that the state can really do a lot of really innovative work in terms of educating people about what is an entrepreneur. And an entrepreneur is that person who is making balloon arches and selling them on the weekend.

An entrepreneur is somebody who, you know, quote, unquote, has a side hustle, but is also building towards their funding for rent, for their mortgage. All of that kind of income is fueling the economy and is part of the economy that doesn't always get acknowledged.

Thank you, Alma. And one thing that panel, for today's discussion, we're going to transition next into our public comment. You're more than welcome to stay there or sit over there, whatever you like. On that note, we're going to transition to public comment. And as I transition to public comment, I want to acknowledge something I said earlier.

As you could maybe know, those that know, make it a little passionate about the work that we're doing and what's happening in our backyard. And I just also want to uplift the cities that have taken a stand on protecting our communities as we're dealing with these, you know, this national situation that's impacting our backyards.

I just want to thank Paramount. I know they held a roundtable with our businesses here locally to deal with this immigration situation. Lingua has to get some votes on that. So just want to thank the cities that have just been on the up on the forefront of that.

So I get a little passionate about stuff that obviously impacts our community, but that's because, you know, we can't forget that we're human first and how it impacts our families, our neighbors.

So with that, I just want to thank those community leaders and folks that have engaged community to just bring that humanity to the work that we do every day. That being said, we're going to go ahead and make sure that this hearing also involves our public comment.

So with that, for those who wish to speak, please form a line right in front of us and approach the microphone one at a time. Each person will have a maximum of 2 minutes per comment.

So with that, if anyone would like to make any comments from the public about today's hearing, you're more than welcome at this point.

Check, check. Good afternoon Chairs and Members. My name is Jimmy Mancia and I'm a UCLA alum and former student researcher with the Labor Studies Research Summer Program. This past summer I worked alongside 28 other student researchers to examine the realities faced by workers and learners. Students who, like me, balance paid work with full time studies.

Our team created the first ever three part podcast series for this program amplifying the voices of student workers across LA County. Through interviews and storytelling, we made research accessible not just to policymakers but but to the very communities we serve. This project is deeply personal to me.

As a first generation college student who has worked multiple jobs to make ends meet, I saw my own story reflected in the data. One student I interviewed told me, if I take a sick day I can pay rent, but if I don't, my grades suffer. That tension between health, academics and survival was echoed again and again.

Our findings show that two in three students earn under 15,000 a year, 43% struggle to cover expenses and 71% work while sick because they can't afford to miss a shift. This instability doesn't just affect grades, it impacts career readiness, mental health and the future workforce pipeline.

If our students burn out before they graduate, California loses skilled workers before they even enter into the labor market. We hope this research guides policy that bridges the gap between education and work through expanded paid internships, flexible scheduling and adequate financial aid.

These changes aren't just about helping students today, they're about investing in the workforce California needs tomorrow. Thank you for your time and for considering our findings. I'm proud to stand here representing not just my research team, but every student worker striving to succeed in both the classroom and the workplace. Thank you so much.

Next speaker.

Mr. Good UCLA turned out. It's evident to me today. Good morning Chair Solace and Members of the Committee. As a lifelong SELA resident and now a local Council Member, I appreciate that today's hearing is bringing our state government closer to the people. I'm grateful for all the important conversations today.

These panels were very informative and just want to share my thoughts on the UCLA Labor center panel. In 2018, as a senior at UCLA, I joined the First Earners and Learners Study with the UCLA labor center to understand what we were seeing more and more students working multiple jobs just to survive while pursuing a degree.

Our team surveyed and interviewed students across every single public college and University in Los Angeles County. I learned a bunch of mascots and things particular to each college, ultimately gathering over a thousand surveys and dozens of interviews. I'm glad that this work has continued every year since then, and especially of our recent alums.

As we heard earlier, some of the stories are sobering. I'll never forget one UCLA student working three part time jobs, commuting long hours because housing was so unaffordable on the west side, and still carrying a full class load. She doubted she would graduate. And sadly, her experience was far from unique.

This research challenged the myth that students are simply preparing for the real world. Many are already living it, facing hunger, housing insecurity and exhausting work schedules while trying to earn a degree relevant to the work of this Committee.

If we want true economic development and a workforce ready to meet our state's future needs, college must be attainable for those that want that path. That starts with addressing the barriers interstate's, public higher education institutions, things like housing, food, basic resources that can push students out before graduation.

So thank you so much for the time and for the hearing.

Thank you, Mr. Munoz, Guevara, anyone else? And as we have another speaker, I want to also acknowledge that we have Council Member from the City of Bellflower, Mr. Sanchez in the audience too. Thank you for joining us.

Hello, my name is Bill Cinco with Community Family Guidance center and nonprofit Children's Mental Health. And I just want to thank you for having the forum today. I think it's pretty awesome that what you're doing. Just wanted to just bring you to your attention the importance of nonprofits in the community.

I think nonprofits are doing the work that a lot of other entities don't want to do. Right. And we are, I think, a fabric that is holding the community together and meeting the needs of the community, in particular in the area of mental health.

I think it's super important that mental health continue to be funded by the state. And with everything happening at the state level, the Prop 1 and everything else, it is making our nonprofit in particular worried about where our future funding is going to be.

So the things that we do on a daily basis, particularly with the families and the children that we help, I think is going to have a tremendous effect on the community at large.

What we do in giving our kids the tools to get through the trauma of everything going on, and let's face it, there's a lot of trauma going on with Ayes, with everything else going on out there in the community, it's really affecting our families and the result of that is going to be increasing crime, drug use, everything else.

But if we can give them the tools to overcome those issues that they're dealing with, they can become active, contributing Members of the society. And I think that's where the money needs to go. And if we can catch it early and help them early, I think the result is going to pay off in the future.

So thank you for what you guys are doing and a lot of confidence in you guys. I know you both and I think that I'm looking forward to what you're going to be able to do for the state.

Thank you. Thank you. Good seeing you. Mr. Adrian Lando.

Good morning, Assemblymember Solace. Assemblymember Pacheco, thank you for hosting this very important Committee hearing here in the beautiful City of Paramount. My name is Adrian Landa. I do the government community relations for renewable energy down the street.

And I'm here to just let you know a little bit about what we achieved for the last three years when we got the permits approved from this City Council with overwhelming support. So we're renewable energy facility and we make basically jet fuel out of beef fat tallow.

But underlying that was many other achievements that yielded positive benefits for the community. One of them was that we brokered a project labor agreement with the Los Angeles and Orange County building trades where we hired about 1,000 plus unionized employees. Their average wage was about $100 an hour.

When you kind of combine benefits and wages together with that. Also, we weren't insular from the community, we were an extension of it. Their success was our success. And one of the reasons why I felt compelled to come up here too is because of the internships that we provided to students.

We had well over hundreds and hundreds of students come through our facility and we immersed them with our subject matter experts. They were for four months. These students, ranging from sixth graders all the way up to high school, got immersed by having talks with our engineers, chemical engineers, environmental experts, management experts.

And so we want to continue doing that moving forward. But our small program but mighty renewable energy facility has encountered very unique challenges. And I know we're not the only ones kind of facing these kind of challenges throughout the State of California. I know there's other facilities too.

So if there's anything you folks can do for our facility that is basically creating an alternative source of energy to help decarbonize one of our hardest to decarbonize transportation sectors, which is aviation.

We would highly appreciate that because we see us being kind of a vessel to kind of continue to promote economic growth along with yielding positive environmental benefits for the community at large too. Again, thank you for hosting this really important Committee hearing here hearing in the City of Paramount. Thank you. For your time. Thank you, Adrian.

Seeing no other folks in line, we're going to go ahead and. zero, we have one more. Sure. Please join us.

Welcome, sir. Thank you for having us. My name is Darrell Engel and I'm a Member of the Communication Workers of America Retirees Association and a Vietnam veteran.

And I would like to speak on community impact and I would like to recommend that the State of California who replace the electric vehicle and solar energy credits that Trump's big beautiful bill destroyed. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, sir. Okay. See no one else. We're going to go ahead and go ahead and close public comment. I want to thank all of those that did come up and speak. I had a response for every single of you, but we're going to respect time and that we don't respond to public comment.

But again, I did want to thank you for your time and response means good, by the way, because I was just at World Energy taking a tour yesterday. So it's just really good to be here in the district and understanding our district from a, from an in person kind of experience.

So with that being said, we're going to go ahead and as we end closing remarks, Ms. Pacheco, would you like to make any closing remarks?

Thank you. And again, I want to thank all of you for being here today, for having these very constructive conversations that are extremely important here for the State of California. Again, Assemblymember Solache, thank you so much for having us here today. This brings back memories of being back on City Council and I think that's important. It's important.

I think someone mentioned it. It's important to bring the state level legislators down to the local level so that way you can hear from us. I think I really love your idea and I'm going to have to invite you over to my Assembly District and do something together because this is important.

It's important for the community hear from us. It's important for our local electives to hear from us. So I really commend you for having this event. And again, thank you all for joining us.

Thank you, Ms. Pacheco, and it's been great serving so far with her the last eight months. Please continue that good energy you have. And I call her my travel buddy because we're on the plane every week traveling to Sacramento. That being said, I can't say thank you enough to the City of Paramount.

I know Mayor Lemons kicked us off today's discussion. I do want to say thank you to her because let me borrow her chair to my Colleague's point. It feels a little odd being in a different city hall that's not yours.

So now I get to say I could have the perspective of what a mayor and councilmember here in Paramount has because I could see that perspective. That being said, thank you to all the stakeholders that made this happen. I want to thank everyone in the back that helped make sure that happened.

So kudos to all of them in the back. So thank you to our law enforcement here today. Always happy to have our support there. I know I already acknowledged them, but our community staff has been great in this Committee. We're taking this tour throughout California. It's our second stop.

We're going to Central Valley next and then we're going to go to the Bay Area to ensure that we are listening to issues that really matter to the community. There's no better way than to get to the district, get to know our folks. Because when we get too stuck in Sacramento, we can't forget what happens here locally.

So to my colleague's point, it's good to bring state government to our local backyards and what better opportunity to do it here in our own communities. I also want to thank my Sacramento team. They're all here today and they Woke up at 4 in the morning.

Not that you could tell, but they woke up early and they're all here. On that little note, little shameless plug, tomorrow we have an open house here in Paramount. By the way, my lingua family is getting jealous because they're saying I'm doing too many things here in Paramount. So we will diversify our events throughout our communities.

So we will be doing other things in other communities. But I want to thank them for being here and always look out for our district staff. Gabriela Vallisteros. We have our awesome intern Giselle here. So our staff here locally, we're here in Paramount as of this Saturday officially at 7300 Alondra.

That's our new home to serve the district here locally. So I just wanted to make that little plug. I know Ms. Pacheco will be there tomorrow as well. So get to see our staff and our staff that. So again, your thoughtful insights and expertise are invaluable.

They will help inform the Legislature's path forward and ensure that our next steps are grounded and realities Californians face every day. I'm genuinely hopeful that and energized to continue these important conversations as we work towards meaningful and lasting solutions. Again, I'm a fan of our partners who are here today.

Our SBDCs are just doing great jobs, not only here locally, but throughout our State of California, our workforce development. You know, I too am an alumni. I work to Hub cities myself, just like Alma and Linwood and in my former elementary school. So I got to have that experience.

So these work skills that start early, you know, my parents taught me foundation is important. They taught me to make sure that we work hard. And so these programs, opportunities, you know, you give them an opportunity, they'll take it.

I always tell people that when I would drive to the west side, I won't mention the campus I would visit. I saw nice homes, big cars, and, you know, it was just, it was a different reality for someone that grew up in the southeast Los Angeles communities. Right.

So it's always great to expose our youth and our folks to jobs, skill levels and they can dream. And we have to provide those visions to them as well. So thank you all once again, your time and commitment building stronger California for everyone. And let's take this tour to Central Valley next. That's a new space for me.

Ag community. I love it. You know, they have cattle and they have food and they have a lot going on. For someone that actually eats some good steaks and some good milk and some good dairy cheeses, the ag community is definitely a new space for solace and for this Committee, the RAC community.

Joking aside, by the way, this agame price so much to our State of California. We import, we export so much export, so much of our resources here in California. That's what. It's no secret that we're the fourth largest economy. We do so much. Right?

So that's why these tariffs have an impact to what's happening to our business community. Right? And so, yeah, the AG community is hurting and we're going to make sure we go there next and we listen to their concerns. And as we create legislation and in Sacramento, we can't forget these local issues.

So our you all know me, I'm a phone call away or a social media post away. So with that, thank you for your time and we are officially adjourned at 11:05.