Senate Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Water

Water Committee. And we're going to call it to order. If all Members of the Committee please come, can please come to room 113. We have one bill today on the agenda and the concurrence of amendments, SB 630 by Senator Allen. And we do have a quorum, so we're going to go ahead and call the roll. Right, we have quorum?

[Roll Call]

Alright, thank you. We will begin with Senator Allen, SB 630.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. I want to first thank the Chair and the committee staff for your diligent work on the bill. And also the diligence is reflected in the color in the theme coordination of their outfits today in honor of our outgoing Chair. In order to keep the citrus growing, we're helping our Parks Department with this bill. Actually there's a wonderful Citrus State Park down in Riverside area, which I commend everyone at some point.

But this bill is ultimately, as you may recall from earlier, it's about trying to help the Parks Department acquire land in a way that is much more efficient. We've seen the Department of General Services and the Public Works Board that have faced significant backlogs, many months to years in processing acquisition packages from many state departments.

We've seen simple acquisitions that have taken literally years. We're talking about acquisitions of less than $100,000 at times because we have all these duplicative requirements and review at DGS. So, you know, I think a number of cases we've seen the review cost has been more than the cost of the purchase of a small purchase of land associated with the park.

So partly as a result of this, State Parks has amassed a backlog of simple, very straightforward acquisitions. It's ended up screwing up deed transfers, land that people wanted to give to the parks, and then they've ended up turning elsewhere. I think there's 52 projects, 32,000, about 33,000 acres altogether. It's all supposed to be donated.

That's literally sitting there in limbo. And so this bill would streamline State Parks real property transactions by removing duplicative reviews for simple acquisitions, allowing the parks to be more responsive in working with local partners to address pressing needs for park access, infrastructure, and operations.

We took a seven year sunset from the Assembly with a requirement for State Parks to report to the Legislature on their progress. The bill also raises the threshold at which DGS is authorized to waive its review and approval of state real estate transactions, though at a lower level than we're providing for parks.

And ultimately, as well, it's about trying to reduce the backlog and staff costs and allowing DGS to focus on larger and more complex acquisitions that require additional review. The bill has no opposition. And then here in support of the bill, we have Reed Addis, who's the principal of Environment and Energy Consulting, on behalf of the California State Parks Foundation and Sempervirens Fund.

Am I supposed to borrow? All right. Thank you, Chair and Members. Reed Addis on behalf of the California State Parks Foundation, Save the Redwoods League, and Sempervirens Fund in strong support today. This issue has been a major challenge for us not only for years, but in some cases decades.

Our community spends a lot of time raising money to work with landowners, acquire lands with the idea that they would go to State Parks. Most of these properties are adjacent to state parks. In some cases, they're in state parks, these are in holdings. And we haven't been able to move them. And there's a downward pressure then on our boards to say maybe we shouldn't be looking to do this work.

Maybe we shouldn't be looking to talk to landowners and acquiring these lands. This bill solves that problem, allows State Parks to expedite its work, and allows us not to have duplicative activities at DGS and the Public Works Board. We're very excited for this. And also just want to say we really appreciate both this committee, the Senate, the Assembly, and the administration working on this. We're excited that the Governor will sign this at the end of the day. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right, seeing no other witnesses in support here. Are there any witnesses in the room who are in support that would like to add on? Please come to the microphone to state your name.

Jake Schultz on behalf of Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, California Association of Local Conservation Corps, Save Mount Diablo, and Save the Redwoods League in support. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. All right, seeing no other witnesses in support, do we have any witnesses in opposition? Anyone in the room who'd like to express opposition? All right, seeing none. We're going to bring it back to our dais, and we're going to start with Senator Laird.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Obviously, from the analysis, you can see I've been working on this for 20 years. And I want to apologize to the staff for pointing out that one bill was left out. And ironically, it was not... No, no. The thing was, is the last year I was Resources Secretary, I was determined that this issue get addressed.

Bless you. So Marc Berman did a bill that the Governor signed that added the Natural Resources Agency to the Public Works Board during any consideration of acquisition for land conservation and tried to address this. That's not there. In the ideal world, we would have done what you are doing in this bill.

And the secretary of government operations at the time made a run at exactly this. And I think, I don't know about this administration. I'm going to ask about that. But the last two didn't they want to defend this. And the real issue is this has gone through extensive process. This just gives another bite at the apple and takes forever for the apple to be bit. And so I mean we lost infill projects when I was secretary because of this.

And when they took Little Basin, which had been acquired by nonprofits and former Hewlett-Packard employee camp next to Big Basin. It's only because everybody was asleep in the first 10 days of the administration that we were able to get that through the Public Works Board and get that done. So I have two questions. The first one is, as you mentioned, the administration. So are they supportive of this?

We have had a number of conversations with the administration, the Resources Agency. I know those are positive conversations, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say officially, Senator.

He did body language and we'll see if he wants to put that on the record.

I think we're getting good feedback. We also worked with our, you know, folks at Parks. We kept this very narrow. I mean, you'll see these are small. It's not a... It's for small acquisitions, and it's in cases where there's duplicative review taking place. So we're feeling...

Well, actually, you could make that argument about the entire board and all of them. I don't saying just where that's happening. I mean that's not a dividing line between most of the things.

But yeah, no, we got the language from the agency, and I know it's been... I think it was adapted from trailer bill language. So we're feeling...

Well for my colleagues' understanding, the Public Works Board at its base is the Department of General Services, Caltrans, and the Department of Finance. So if you have any land conservation projects, there's nobody with that expertise that is on the Public Works Board. That is one problem.

The other thing is Senator Assembly Member Pellerin had a bill that's been in front of us for two sessions to do this for the Santa Cruz Mountains. And the real issue was where would there be public process. So in this where is there public process if this bill passes?

The bill is double... It's actually double joined with the Pellerin bill. But you know, there is a, so it talks a little bit about... There's certainly less... Well, there's public process associated with these other processes that were that are in play that have to be in place for this bill to kick in.

And again, you know, people can send letters, people can, you know, people can participate in the regular agencies process that's happening that we're, that we're... But we're just, we're saying we're seeing that the DGS process doesn't happen have to happen as well. So they're going through. They can...

You're saying that there will be public process.

Yes. Through the process that happens at Parks.

Yeah. I was just going to add, Senator, that this issue about public process has been a discussion for a number of months and in the past around the Pellerin bill as well. I think both the committee here, committee staff here, as well as the administration as well as Assembly staff have worked through an elegant solution that does clearly allow public process but doesn't allow multiple duplicative public processes, if that makes sense.

And what's it mean to be double joined? Does that mean they both have to be...

They both have to be signed. Yeah. Yeah.

I hope you're not jeopardizing that other bill with this.

Well, yeah, I think both bills are in a good place. I think if anything this bill was in a stronger place.

Okay. I did what I needed to do. Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you. And I will, to that point, I will say that the committee staff and the authors have been working on this piece in terms of alignment and consistency on public policy process with, again, both authors, both committee staffs, and also the governor's office. So I think that there's a desire to see it move forward. But I understand the concern. And Vice Chair.

So I also share some of the concerns that my knowledgeable colleague over there has kind of raised about some of the oversight parts of this. But I also have other concerns. And I also find it really ironic because while you're explaining the rigors of trying to get through a process to do something that makes sense in our state, I feel like saying welcome to the world that the rest of us get to live in.

If you're a business owner or you're somebody who wants to come into California and bring a corporation with you or even a homeowner trying to build a house. All of those things exist for all of us in California. And so this is, you know, the problems that you're experiencing with process are very similar to what other people are doing too. One of my issues is we already have a huge backlog, correct? $1.2 billion of backlog of things that need to be backlog maintenance issues.

I also have a state park in my district who has had a tremendous problem just trying to address the maintenance issues with relation to where the park ends and houses begin. And those are fire. Those are extreme fire issues, and nobody can touch it. As we add more into the system, I can see those type of maintenance issues getting pushed farther and farther off as everybody competes for dollars to do maintenance and to maintain the lands that we are acquiring.

I am generally very supportive of streamlining where we should be streamlining and ensuring that we don't get caught up in process that makes no sense. And so my question is, how is this going to affect that backlog if we are able to onboard more and more land when we're already demonstrating that we can't keep up with what we have already?

Senator, just remember this bill only focuses on very small purchases. So we're talking about purchases that are no more than $1 million. So in many respects, it's actually going to help with maintenance because you have in holdings, you have sections of land that are where the parks don't have access to. It's going to help with the parks being able to manage their land in a more coherent way. But this is not massive new purchases. These are very small efficiency purchases.

Yeah, the small also, when you talk about $1.0 million of land purchase that is worth nothing but the land, that's not like commercial $300,000 an acre or more rates. Those are more in the 20 to 40. They can be large enough parcels. My concern it remains, if we're acquiring more lands, how are we going to catch up on our backlog if we can't even do it now?

Parks is still going to be doing a big review process associated with each of these processes. We're just saying that the DGS doesn't have to do it in addition to what Parks is already doing. But sure, I absolutely agree with you. I mean, it's part of why we ran Prop 4.

One of the many things we're working on in Sub 2 is trying to get more money to the parks system, which is woefully underfunded with regards to operations and management and the maintenance and operation backlog. It's enormous over there. But I guess I see these as... I don't see this as harming that effort though. Reed?

Yeah, exactly. Senator, I would say yes, the issue you're raising is a serious issue and one the state needs to grapple with and organizations like us would like to grapple with. But this bill does not add to that. It very specifically talks about a narrow set of circumstances in which you can have these lands qualify. And in particular, there's provisions that say these lands do not need to require any new infrastructure. So I think it really does speak to the issue of...

Yeah, I've read that part. Okay. But a lot of the existing lands we don't have infrastructure requirements either and we can't get our maintenance done. And so that concerns me when we're add to the burden, no matter how much that burden is. If we can't even do this, then any amount of addition is going to create competition for those dollars and we need to get what we have fixed. So.

If I can get promises that we will do a better job of trying to get dollars to where they need to be so that we can get these issues addressed so we don't burn down houses next to state parks, that would be awesome.

Yeah. Something we're working on at the Sub 2, we pushed out a lot of money to help parks and conservancies do a lot more with regards to fire and wildfire mitigation. But love to work with you on that, Senator. That's a broad, broad and very real problem. Yeah.

Thank you, Vice Chair Seyarto. All right. Seeing no other questions. I want to thank the author for bringing this forward and in particular for the author, the advocates working for several months with our counterparts in the Assembly and also in the GO with trying to sort this piece out, provide consistency for public process.

I think that there is an eagerness and desire to try to move some aspects of this forward and, certainly, you know, that was a big piece of the debate the public process and, you know, in terms of the acquisition. So appreciate all the work that you have put in. Would you like to close?

Yeah. I want to clarify one thing. The analysis does mention that the bill is double jointed, Senator Laird. Though I have been informed that the way we've done it it doesn't actually require signatures. They're just this is a reference to them having no conflict in the chapter.

I've never seen it referred to this way. I need to get some more information, but that's what I've been informed. Ultimately, this is about making sure that we have a... That we're able to acquire these parks, parks lands that are largely being deeded to the state parks in an efficient manner.

But the broader challenges that Senator Seyarto raises with regards to really needing to invest in our Park's ability to manage its lands are very real. And a different issue, but a very real one and one that I hope to work with this committee and Members on. But I think folks understand the need for this, and I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you so much. With that, do we have a motion? Thank you. Senator Laird has moved the bill. And this is SB 630. The motion is that the Assembly amendments be concurred in. We will call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Alrighty. That is 3-1. We do need one more vote for that to get out of committee. And so we will have, we will hold the roll.

I would rather have one of your colleagues get here on time.

All right, we are going to leave that on call. Before we go to recess, since this is the last Committee for Senate Natural Resources and Water that will be meeting this year, I want to say thank you to the committee staff who have been incredible. They are surprising me with wonderful Limón shirts each of them is wearing.

Oh, everybody has the Limón pins. It's a bipartisan Limón support. So thank you all, each and every one of you. This past year has been great to be able to work with all of you from the first meeting and hearing we had here, which had a lot of people in attendance, to this last one.

I'm grateful to all of you for the effort and support, but really for supporting us as legislators to process, to deliberate, to think about every bill that comes forward and to do it in a way that really helps Californians. And so each of you in every way has been just incredible, and it has been a very, you know, honor to work with you on huge issues that our Legislature and California takes on. So very grateful for all of your work. Thank you. Senator Laird.

What she said. And then I want to add that, with regard to the Chair, it has been an unbelievably eventful year. And I know firsthand there was this amazing work behind the scenes to work on a number of bills to try to address the issues. And it might seem simple here because it is worked out or has a direction by the time it got here. It's because there was an amazing amount of work that made it look easier that led to that.

And this is while our Chair was chairing the working group in the Senate on cap and trade, which required the heft of sort of somebody involved with these issues. And so I didn't want to let it go with just the staff being acknowledged. I wanted to make sure the Chair was acknowledged because this is clearly your last meeting.

Thank you. It is my last. So thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you to the Members and our Vice Chair for working with each of you this year. Thank you so much. We will recess. Okay, we will recess. Thank you.

What do we... Reconvene. Reconvene. All right, we are reconvening and coming back from recess. And we're going to go ahead and open the roll. And this is for SB 630 by Senator Allen. The motion is that the Assembly amendments be concurred in.

And the current vote is 3-1. Chair voting aye and Vice Chair voting no. [Roll Call] That's 4-1.

All right, that is 4-1. The bill is out. And with that, I will adjourn my this hearing.