Senate Floor

Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Quorum is President. We're going to skip over motions, resolutions and notices. Senators, if you could return and come join us on the floor. We're going to get started with the message from a pro tem.

Thank you so much, Madam President and Members. Second Friday we are grateful you're here. You all survived. And Madam President, what are we, seven hours from we recess. So let's talk about running a show today. We would like to be able to move on the Landmark Energy, affordability and climate bills that will be in front of us.

So we're going to take up the landmark affordability, climate and energy bills first. Today we are in possession of two bills, AB 1207 and AB. We'll take those two up first. The Assembly will be taking up four additional affordability energy and climate bills. They will punt them over to us. We'll take those up as they come over.

In the meantime, we have 14 items on concurrence. I want to again stress how grateful I am to Speaker Rivas and the Assembly. This has been so incredibly smooth, the transition of bills between the houses this year. Very grateful for their partnership. We had the final 14 bills sent over to us. We sent over their final bills.

And there is peace and love in the world. So ladies and gentlemen, let's get this party started. Thank you so much, Madam President. And we'll be doing a short lunch at at noon.

Let's get into this party. Consideration of the daily file. Sarah Lemon. We'll kick us off with file item 7, AB 1207.

Secretary, please read Assembly Bill 1207 by Assemblymember Irwin an act relating to climate change and making an appropriation, therefore, and declaring the urgency thereof to take effect immediately.

Senator Limon. Thank you. Madam President and Members, I rise on behalf of Assemblymember Irwin to present AB 1207. California enacted the Cap and Trade Program with AB 32 in 2006. It was the first large scale cap and trade program in the United States and made California a global leader on climate change.

Cap and trade has been a flagship program for reducing greenhouse gases while also keeping the cost of the transition more controlled. The program has invested billions of dollars in projects that lead to improved air quality and public health as well as good jobs.

This Bill will extend Cap and invest until 2045 to help California meet our climate goals, reaching 100% carbon free energy supply by 2045. It also expands the California Climate Credit, targeting high cost months, helping consumers with their bills in the hot summer months.

Reauthorizing the Cap and Invest program will allow us to connect with other markets, maintain the balance between environmental accountability and economic flexibility and reach our climate goals. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Kicking off our discussion is going to be our pro tem.

Thank you so much Madam President and colleagues at rise in support today of not just AB 1207 but this entire package which is truly one of the most impactful affordability climate energy packages in our state's history. What's going to be in front of us today is a promise kept.

A promise to all Californians that they're going to get relief in their energy bills. A promise to hold utilities accountable and ensure their infrastructure is more wildfire safe.

A promise to continue California's world leading climate initiatives while growing our nation leading economy right here in the Golden State and building more housing to ensure that folks where they live, they can also work. And it's about lowering prices at the pump for every Californian. This is what these bills are going to do today.

Talk is cheap and this body is taking action. The six bills including AB 1207 that will be in front of us today are sweeping legislative effort to help make the Golden State a more affordable place to live and raise a family. And look, it is absolutely no secret that we're facing some tough challenges.

Catastrophic wildfires, a changing climate, surging inflation, just to name a few. But despite it all, California, California is standing strong to be able to grow more jobs, grow our economy, make life more affordable and protect these bold climate policies.

I want to take a moment and a personal privilege to be able to say thank you to a few folks who are instrumental in bringing these bills forward today. First and foremost, Madam Pro Tem elect Senator Limon and I apologize to our Assistant Secretary.

I'm going to use names which is out of normal for us on the floor, but I'm going to without objection. Thank you so much, Mr. President. I like it. I want to take a moment to say thank you so much to our pro tem Alex, Senator Limon. She has led the climate working group with distinction.

She has been tenacious and truly grateful for her partnership. I want to say thank you so much Senator Limon. We would not be here today without your hard work. I want to say thank you to Senators Allen and Becker and Blakesbury, Caballero, Gonzalez, Laird, and Stern for their incredible effort.

I'd also like to say thank you to our affordability working group. Our co chairs, our Assistant Majority Leader Wahab, Senator Padilla, Senator Araguin, Ashby, Grayson, Hurtado, Perez, Rubio, and Smallwood-Cuevas. And of course we had an honorary Member of Senator Becker on there as well. I'm going to start wrapping up with this.

Let's first talk about Cap and Invest. This reauthorization includes 60 to 90 million in critical investments for transit, affordable housing, safe drinking water for tens of thousands across the State of wildfire prevention money for rail and of course lowering utility bills in every community in the state. 63 billion.

In fact $63 billion over the next decade will go towards lowering utility bills for California households and small businesses. These rebates will be timed around high cost months with additional support to help families in need and low income Californians. But don't take my word for it. Let's take a look at the numbers.

Over the past decade when we first authorized Cap and Invest, this program has grown California's economy. 30,000 jobs are dependent on this program. 20,000 housing units have been built thanks to this program. 420,000 clean energy rebates, Clean vehicle rebates have been advanced.

Nearly a third now of all vehicles sold in California are now EVs and it's invested billions in reducing energy bills. California, we continue to chart the future and these bills will put more money in the pockets of hardworking Californians, keep our air clean, all while powering our transition to a more sustainable economy. It's about giving California a fair shot. Madam President and I would respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Senator Blakespear, you're recognized.

Thank you Madam. Thank you, Madam President. Members, this is one of the most important things that we are doing in this legislative session. And I rise today as the proud chair of the Environmental Quality Committee and a Member of the Cap and Trade Working Group.

Newly renamed Cap and Invest is California's flagship climate policy and today is our historic opportunity to reauthorize and also to improve this program. The legislation addresses affordability, reaffirms California's climate leadership and invests in California's climate ready future. We also are importantly linking more clearly with the State of Washington and with Quebec.

Fighting climate change sustainably will be something that is accomplished together or accomplish not at all. And I'm very happy about that part of this Bill.

So cap and invest is that simple concept that we can reduce carbon emissions by charging for them and then using that money to invest in climate programs such as public transit and renewable energy that will then continue to reduce our emissions. And over time we reduce that cap of total emissions that we are allowing each year.

And this is how we make progress. This is a big Bill and I and this year we are making thoughtful and targeted reforms. One important smart reform is the way Californians get a climate credit on their utility Bill.

For example, if you would typically get $20 off your electric Bill and $20 off your gas Bill, now you'll get $40 off your electric Bill. Nearly everybody pays both. But some people don't actually have gas bills. So some people will have more of a credit and other people will have the exact same credit.

As more Californians move to electrify their homes and vehicles, everybody will continue to get this full credit. And in other words, we'll stop using our biggest climate program to subsidize people's use of natural gas and double down on using it to lower electricity prices.

It's important to remember that the best climate programs, they're not invisible, but they're defensible. And what that means is that we recognize that putting a price on carbon emissions impacts Californians daily lives through the fuels and the goods they buy.

But it also means that we can put that money toward a cleaner, greener future and improve Californians lives overall by having better air quality, reduced wildfire risk, and developing more affordable housing and sustainable communities. Some of the GGRF money or greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund money. What is it going to?

It's going to 125 million to subsidize transit passes, 400 million for inner city rail, 250 million for air protection programs, 200 million for fire protection programs such as improving the health of forests, and 130 million to ensure communities have safe and affordable water.

This is a complex and consequential policy, and it is now deeply embedded in California's economy and part of our critical transition away from fossil fuels. If we are just pulling one policy lever within the program alone, we don't accomplish our goals.

But taken together, the Legislature has the opportunity with AB 1207 for California to continue leading the world in climate ambition and in economic growth. Working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and addressing climate change while taking active steps to mitigate the associated costs is smart, responsible public policy that serves as a national model for others to follow. And for these reasons, I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Senator Caballero, turning to you. Thank you, Madam President. Members, let me just say that I'm going to speak to the kind of the challenges we have when we talk about the state and how complex and different every region is.

But I want to start off by saying that I plan to support both of the Cap and Invest bills, both SB840 and AB 1207. And I want to thank everybody for their work on these measures. This is not an easy task to figure out.

How are we going to meet our climate goals and how do we send a clear indication to the market that Cap and Invest is a really important program? And how do we encourage other countries who have started to follow suit? How do we keep them engaged and have them see the success of our program?

So people from my district feel the weight and impacts of climate change every day. Extreme heat waves create pressures on our energy system and on our utility bills. Changing weather conditions, droughts harm our agricultural lands, and ever more intense fires and floods devastate communities.

So I know how important it is to have a strong regulatory framework for carbon dioxide emissions so we can mitigate the impacts of climate change, protect our communities, meet our emissions goals, and just as important, ensure that in this process we can grow good union jobs, that there's a transition away from fossil fuels to good jobs in the future.

At the same time, I also believe that we should use the most cost effective, effective ways possible to reduce our emissions and that the framework should not burden consumers who face rising energy costs every day. If there's one thing we heard these past couple of years is the rising cost of energy is creating stress on everybody.

The reauthorization of Cap and Invest is important for these reasons. It's a far more cost effective way to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions than any other alternative. And it allows for us to invest back into our communities. There are also some very important policies in the reauthorization Bill.

For example, I have long been a supporter of California, California High Speed Rail. And I know my friend from Southern California believes the exact same thing because he stood up and he's talked about it here on this floor.

It has the role of one day opening up economic development across the Central Valley to some of the major urban centers. I believe the dedicated $1 billion per year in funding for high speed rail is a crucial step towards completing this important project. And we need to keep our commitment to to build to the Merced Station.

In the first phase, we made that promise, it's in statute. We need to keep that promise. A promise made, a promise kept. I'm also pleased to see continued funding for the SAFER program.

My communities in the Central Valley face challenges with the lack of high quality drinking water and continued funding for SAFER will help to improve our water systems and get residents the water they need.

Finally, I'm pleased to see that the Bill includes a Carbon Innovation Fund, a concept I've long championed as a way to deploy new clean technologies. Though for a true long term investment in research and development, the Legislature will need to provide stable multi year funding rather than in a single year.

I'm not sure that every aspect of this agreement strikes the balance between climate ambition and and affordability, but that's part of the challenge that we faced and I just want to call out a couple of them because I think we need to keep them in the back of our mind as we move forward and take a look at the money we're spending on cap and invest.

For instance, the comment about natural gas is really important. Natural gas still remains an important energy source to support the grid in times of peak demand. And for older housing stock that uses gas as housing and cooking source in low income neighborhoods in my district, most of the homes still rely on gas.

And while an electric transition is aspirational and exciting and will move in that direction unless we fund a lot of upgrades which then are going to raise the rents, we're going to see people only get the check on the electric and not on the gas.

And the gas is one of the things that becomes really important in some of the older, poorer communities. New technologies such as clean hydrogen and carbon capture can also lower the carbon intensity of natural gas.

The Legislature and CARB should carefully monitor the shift from free natural gas allowances to free electric utility allowances to ensure there are minimal price impacts on the consumer. Let me say that again. To ensure there's minimal price impacts on the consumers, we can say, zero, this is going to.

This is going to be an exchange of dollar for dollar, but we don't know. And to ensure we are not excluding key technologies in our clean energy transition. Additionally, CAP and Invest once fully funded several significant agricultural agricultural programs, including the Farmer program that helps farmers replace agricultural diesel powered equipment with new clean technologies.

Many of these programs have faced significant budget cuts in recent years and this reauthorization does not provide dedicated funding for the programs. In the future, the Legislature will need to recommit to looking at funding for agricultural Commission reduction emissions reductions in the same way it Funds transit so that our rural communities and farmers are not left by the wayside in our clean energy transition. The same goes for water supply.

We need dedicated investments from GGRF to ensure we are monitoring water supply and snow plaque levels year to year or else our state's water crisis will continue to worsen with the impacts of of climate change. I want to acknowledge that the Bill the bills include expanded legislative oversight over the administration's actions and many references to consumer affordability.

And this is really excellent. I trust that the Legislature will use its oversized capability oversight capabilities to closely monitor the program and adjust it as necessary to protect consumer affordability, promote innovative clean clean technologies and also to get the best bang for our buck in this program.

I also look forward to future conversations to ensure we are investing in all of our communities across the state, both urban and rural. Cap and invest is an extremely important tool for reducing our emission in a cost effective way. As I said, I will support the bills today and look forward to continued conversation in the future. And I respectfully ask for your your eye votes. Senator Laird.

Thank you very much, Madam President. I have been around for all three authorizations of cap and trade. In 2006 I was a co author of AB32. In 2017 I was Member of the Administration. This year I'm a Member of the Senate and of the Cap and Trade Working Group. And there is a common, common theme.

And the common theme is in each of those three years the National Administration stepped away from international climate accords. And the other common theme is, is when the Federal Government stepped away from climate, California stepped up. And when you look back at 2006, AB32, which established the program in the first place, was called a job killer.

It was termed a job killer. And a Republican Governor signed the job killer Bill. And what did it do? There were arguments that this will tank the economy, that this is really bad. Well, we moved to the fourth largest economy in the world while we were meeting our goals.

The Kyoto Accords were put on California when our national government stepped away from them and we met them early. We went to the emissions of 1990 before our target of 2020. And in 2011 we set a goal of a third of our electricity being renewable.

We met that goal early and we met it in a way that the economy booms and we, we step up to the leadership that we were missing nationally. And that is exactly what we are doing here today. And there is a dashboard and if you go to it, you see exactly what it means for each of your districts. For mine, it's been between 500 and 600 $1.0 million.

Coastal resiliency as we're hit by atmospheric rivers, saving prime ag land when the state steps away from the Williamson act and other things, dealing with transit and making sure that utility bills go down. And I have a district that's very fire prone.

And the fact that this will really deal with lowering emissions by amazing fire prevention is important. And so this is just right on every level. It is good for the economy, it is good for our fight against greenhouse gas emissions, it's good for world leadership on climate, and it's good for each one of our districts. This is landmark and this will go to 2045. But what hasn't been said yet is approving this will give the stability that likely revenues will go up.

And when revenues go up, because there's the stability that this will be there, then it turns around and is invested in our district, in programs and in stepping up where the Federal Government isn't stepping up. This is good for California, but this is also good for the country and the world. I respectfully request an aye vote.

Senator Wiener.

Thank you very much. Madam President, colleagues, I'll be honest that at first I was really bummed out to have to be here on Saturday. I was hoping to get done last night. I wanted to be back in the greatest city in the world, San Francisco, today. But then I realized.

Objection, objection.

But then I realized we're going to be able to vote for billions of dollars of investment in public transportation in the State of California. And so that turned my attitude around and made me very happy to be here today, to be able to do that.

This reauthorization of Cap and Trade is going to be profoundly impactful for the ability of people in California to get around without having to drive a car car everywhere and sit in traffic. It's going to do it by doubling down on high speed rail.

And as Donald Trump and his allies try to destroy high speed rail in California, we're responding. Guess what? We're not going anywhere. We are committed to this project. We're going to get it done.

And I am so grateful that this proposal continues California's strong, consistent investment in the high speed rail because it should not take twice as long to get from the Bay Area to LA by train as it does by car. That's what it is now and we're going to change that.

This proposal also deeply invests in regional rail, in inner city rail, and that is incredibly important that we are re upping and reauthorizing our investment in our regional rail programs in the Bay Area, for example, that means making sure that we are strongly connecting San Jose to San Francisco, investing in that rail corridor and in the two ends of that rail corridor in these two great cities and colleagues, combined with what we did last night, which in the Bay Area, we passed a Bill to authorize a regional revenue measure in the Bay Area so that we could shore up our public transportation systems and make sure we keep BART and Muni and AC Transit and Caltran and all of them strong.

Combined with what we're doing today with these huge capital investments, I am optimistic that we have a bright future for public transportation in the Bay Area and in the State of California. I ask for an aye vote, Senator Smallwood-Cuevas.

Thank you, Madam President. And I want to begin by thanking the author for bringing this important Bill forward and all of the many hours of strategy and interrogation that went into it.

While the process was far from perfect and many of us in this body still have many questions about this Bill, AB 1207 does make crucial changes to to the reauthorization and improve the cap and trade program.

It is also doubling down on what we started, which is to make sure that we are building a climate resilient future for California. AB 1207 ensures more equitable use of allowances as we decrease our relevant our reliance on fossil fuels, while also recognizing the need to stabilize industry to keep costs low for working families.

It is that tension of, you know, how do we keep gas prices low and ensure clean air for our children. I think we always have to lean into that tension and certainly this Bill and the work that we will do next session to strengthen it helps us bring us closer to the future that we deserve.

I appreciate that this increased accountability that is laid out in 1207 is critically important as we're requiring more periodic reports and hearings before the Legislature on the progress of these programs.

I want to emphasize that it is crucial that this oversight include robust reporting on the impacts of cap and trade programs on disadvantaged workers and communities that are most vulnerable to environmental injustice.

And I look forward to working with stakeholders to ensure that information including included in these reports around tracking and monitoring and implementation of AB 680, which we know established labor standards for specified programs receiving GGRF dollars. We don't know what we can't track.

And these oversight provisions give the Legislature the authority and it needs to ensure that workers in disadvantaged communities are not falling through the cracks as we make our green transition. I'm proud to represent South Los Angeles, which in 2021 was designated a priority community for AB16 617 implementation.

I'm grateful to see that we are prioritizing these communities by ensuring continuous funding for implementation of air quality monitoring and mitigation. I want to give a special shout out to the Senator from the Inland Empire, Senator Reyes's work on that.

And while these bills before us do not include the air quality protections that many in our communities have asked for, this funding is a first step to ensuring that air quality monitoring, monitoring and reporting can turn into real, implementable programs that create cleaner air, good paying, high quality jobs for the 28th district. And with that, I respectfully ask for your aye vote

Thank you, Madam President and colleagues. I'm trying, I'm trying really hard to see what you guys see, so I'm taking off my rose-colored glasses though, and I want to talk a little bit--you'll notice I don't have a speech today.

I just want to talk to you about cap-and-trade, the last 20 years, the last 30 years, what people are going through, what people's expectations were, how excited they were that we were doing something about climate, how we were doing something about energy and thinking that they were going to be able to raise a family here in California.

But climate, energy, and affordability are like oil, water, and sand. I don't care how much you try to mix them up, when you put the jar down, it's going to separate and whatever is on the bottom is what gets left behind, and what's on the bottom for us is affordability and it should be on the top.

People can't afford to live here anymore, folks. Our kids can't afford to live here. All three of my kids are going to be living, are living out of state now. The last one is moving next week. And why is that?

For the last 20 to 30 years, we've been trying this cap-and-trade, we've been trying SB 1 taxes, we've been trying to tax the heck out of everybody thinking and telling them that, 'hey, this is going to solve all the problems.'

This is going to give you the clean air, this is going to give you the great roads for those that want to drive, but now we're telling them we don't want you to drive, we're going to put you on the High-Speed Rail and it's only going to cost you $33 billion to get from LA to San Francisco.

And I remember originally that was supposed to go through my area down in Temecula while I was traveling from San Diego, but then they shortened it up and it was only going to be $33 billion. Well, it's not, and people see that. People aren't opposed to having a clean environment and good air to breathe.

What they're opposed to is paying for all that and it not coming to fruition. When you talk about, well, this is cap-and-trade, this is an extension of the Cap-and-Trade Program, and of course when you say that out in the public, they get upset. So now we've rephrased it to call it cap-and-invest.

I don't know that they will agree with you if you talk to most people that our investments are being realized in their world because they're paying $5.50 for gas. They can barely afford to commute to even a well-paying job because that well-paying job is so far away that they have to drive long miles or find an alternative way to get there or have an apartment in town or something that costs them more money. And why is that?

Because all of the regulations that we've created to try to make energy, affordability, and climate goals work together have made it untenable for businesses to even set up shop here. Somehow we have the fourth largest economy in the world. That's because of the size we have and the amount of goods that we need to consume with our 30--now 39 million, 39 and a half million people.

Something's not working and we have five years before, yeah, five years before cap-and-trade expires and we should be taking a little bit of more thoughtful time than to try to re-up right now to try to make it look like we're going to have an impact on the future for people. We're talking about investing in rail, we're talking about investing in BART and some of these others, but all people have seen is the problems associated with them, and part of those problems are crime.

Part of those problems are lack of maintenance. The big problem is, yes, they don't have money, but guess what, they also don't have the ridership that they want, that they need to make a program like that successful because California is spread out.

People are not going to give up driving their cars. That is unrealistic to think that you're going to change the mind of people who live in the Inland Empire and they're going to drive their cars. It's unrealistic to think that you're going to invest in all of these clean energy things but we're going to have the type of wildfires that we have had that reverse everything we do with clean air.

Everything we do gets reversed by that, and I can tell you it's going to be really unrealistic to think somehow if you spread enough dollars, if you collect enough money from the taxpayers and spread enough dollars, we're going to be able to attack the wildfire problem and it's going to go away. It's not going to go away.

It's not going to go away unless we actually do the things that we need to do to make it go away. I've watched bill after bill that attacks some of the regulatory part of what we need to do so that we can actually get out there and do vegetation management. We've been trying to do that for 30 years in the fire service, and yet one hurdle--I mean, there's one barrier after another along the way that prevents people from doing that.

That wildfire issue, how are you going to get past the regulatory environment that allows the national forest, the SRA lands, the conservation areas, all of the things that protect those areas that tell us we can't go touch those things. We have to deal with those regulations, and those regulations don't have anything to do with extracting more money from taxpayers who are trying to figure out what the hell we did with the money for the last 30 years. They're not seeing it. Yes, you can make a list of things: look, we did this, we got High-Speed Rail.

We don't have High-Speed Rail, folks. We have a High-Speed Rail concept and they're trying to build one, but the process is just not feasible in California. We have to fix that process. We can't just throw more money at it and hope that more workers will come and we can pay them higher wages and somehow this thing is going to come to fruition.

So I wish I could share your enthusiasm and vote with you today to extend a program that we've trying to convince taxpayers that it's going to make their lives better because for the last 20 years, it has not. It has not made their lives better. Go ask them. We can sit up here and talk amongst ourselves.

You can go in the echo chamber and talk amongst yourselves and develop all these great plans, but if you don't go ask those people out there what they're dealing with, then this state is going to fail, and this state has no business failing. So, folks, I think we should take a little more time, be a little more thoughtful.

And also, if we're going to tax people, spend the money in the right places that actually have a direct effect on them, not a theoretical or politically theoretical effect on them, but a direct effect on them to make them actually be able to afford to live here, be able to afford to raise their kids here, to want to send their kids to our schools, and be able to deal with whatever the heck the climate is going to be because if we don't have reliable energy first, which is what we're experiencing now--we're scrambling, we're scrambling to try to bring back reliable energy because we took it off the table sooner than we stopped using it--that's a huge transition and we have not managed that well.

So, yeah, you guys can celebrate for your solution to all of these problems, but it'd be sure nice to be part of those discussions, and those discussions don't have to be made today. They can be made. We're still protected for the next five years, right? We're still collecting all that money.

Those decisions can be made thoughtfully with more of a collaborative effort to be able to come up with ideas, solutions to the problems that we're having that are more responsive, that will actually really create affordability for people which should be the number one thing that we should be thinking about right now.

People can't afford to live here, they won't, and they won't be paying taxes, you won't have the revenue, and you won't have people to take the revenue from to try to build all of these things that are supposed to help them. So I will not be joining you on this particular one. I will be joining you on the measure for the oil. I don't want to--this is my speech for all four of these, and I did want to try to match some of my colleagues in length. I think I'm approaching that now.

Forty-five seconds left.

This is not the Assembly, but anyway, I just ask you to be a little more collaborative because we do have good ideas, even on our side, but when you listed, when the pro tem listed all of those folks that were involved in the discussions, not one of them was one of the ten of us. So with that, I appreciate the discussion, I appreciate all of your efforts, certainly, but I'm not confident that this is what's going to solve our problems.

Senator Cabaldon.

Thank you, Madam President. I want to first thank the Senator from Murrieta for his admonition that we look to the other, to the Republican side of the aisle for solutions here and it's because that's how we got here. When--I wasn't here when the income tax was authorized or cap-and-trade the first time with Senator Laird, but I was an appointee of the Republican governor in the environmental portfolio when cap-and-trade was adopted here, and this concept is here.

I want to shift just from the conversation about where we're spending the money and the dividend because that's critically important--these are generational investments--but cap-and-trade exists because of the alternatives that were before us in the early 2000s and that are still before us today, which is, at that time, I was serving on the Regional Council of Governments here in Sacramento, along with the now Senator from Fair Oaks, and we, like so many other regions of the state, were literally choking with air pollution, children's asthma, adults' asthma, and just as important, the federal government was telling us, because of the Clean Air Act, you're not doing enough on pollution, and guess what?

You can no longer spend a dime on roads or even bike lanes or sometimes even transit, no more federal money because you are not meeting the needs on air quality. And so what you need to do is implement hundreds and hundreds of new regulations on business, on consumers, on drivers, on riders.

The Republican Caucus at the time and the governor and Democratic economists like me and others said there's a better way than just regulating and regulating and regulating and regulating. We need to unleash the power and the creativity of the market, of innovators, of entrepreneurs and companies to contribute the best solutions, the ones that will have the biggest payoff, the biggest return on investment, and that is how cap-and-trade was born.

Cap-and-trade is explicitly an effort to avoid a hyper-regulatory approach and instead along with sensible regulations to unleash the power of the market and all of us to create long-lasting solutions. And you know what? It worked. It worked. The federal government shut down none of our regions.

We were all allowed to continue to build the infrastructure and the transportation systems that we needed, and in many regions, we started to turn the corner on air pollution, and so this program was hatched as a bipartisan model for thinking about how to tackle climate issues.

The side benefit was that it would generate the revenues to make the investments, to make sure that all--as the Senator from South Los Angeles said--that all of California benefit in very direct ways, but let's not miss the point here. The central point is that cap-and-trade is advancing our climate agenda in California, making our air cleaner, strengthening our economy as a center of climate-based green jobs and green companies and green research and entrepreneurship right here in California. It is why we are the fourth largest economy in the world.

It is not despite this; it is because of this that we continue to lead the planet and we continue to lead in building affordable solutions that will protect our planet, protect our public health, and protect our environment. I urge an aye vote.

Senator Niello.

Thank you, Madam President. I have a great deal of respect for my longtime friend from West Sacramento, but I have a slightly different take on all of this.

I was around when cap-and-trade was first developed with AB 32 in the Assembly with my also longtime friend from Santa Cruz. Wasn't here the second time, but took a little time off so here I am back again. I have never been a fan of cap-and-trade principally--I'll have more to say about that--but principally because we talk about it as a marketplace that accomplishes great things.

Now, it is a marketplace in terms of how we describe it, but it's a marketplace that is artificially developed by the government with top-down rules as to how it works, and anybody who understands economics and pure marketplaces, all of that is a multi-layered oxymoron. Now, those who end up paying for the credits--businesses, the emitters of greenhouse gases--are largely not opposed to this, and some people within this room understand this, but outside the room might wonder, well, why?

The reason is because, as my friend from West Sacramento stated, or at least implied, is the alternative. The alternative to cap-and-trade for greenhouse gas emitters is further regulation by the California Air Resources Board, whose chair this year famously testified to an Assembly committee that they do absolute--they concern themselves absolutely not at all, nor do they do any analysis of the cost of their regulations.

She said that. A lot of people had a little bit of a problem with that, but the fact of the matter is it's true because they are not charged by AB 32 to do that. So to present this as an affordability strategy is another oxymoron. It is not an affordability strategy. It is a greenhouse gas reduction strategy, yes, but it contributes to higher costs, higher energy costs, higher gasoline costs. I don't know how we call this affordability.

Now, let's talk about the goals of cap-and-trade, the goals of the California Air Resources Board. AB 32 charged the Air Resources Board with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They've done a great job of that, and cap-and-trade--by the way, I reject the term cap-and-invest. It's already an artificial marketplace.

Let's not carry that illusion that much further, but I digress. Now, the charge is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and that has happened. The charge is not to reduce greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, although that's what a lot of people think because we can't. It's impossible.

California is responsible for less than one percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world, and our significant reduction of emissions has had not only no impact, but we have higher greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere than we did prior to the adoption of AB 32, somewhat due to wildfires, of course, and the Air Resources Board, as near as I can tell, hasn't developed any policies at all with regard to wildfire mitigation, but I digress again. Now that isn't to suggest that we shouldn't do anything.

Again, my friend from Santa Cruz talked about being a leader for the world and that's the way that this has been described to me when I ask the question, you know, what's it really all about? And that is, well, we're showing the way, and I guess we are, except that we're not looking in our rear-view mirror because nobody's following us.

Now, again, that's not to say that we shouldn't do anything. We should. I agree with the goal of reducing air pollution, which by the way, is different than reducing greenhouse gases. Typical air pollution has to do with toxic things in the air. Carbon dioxide is not toxic. But nonetheless, by reducing greenhouse gases, we also reduce related air pollution, and that's a good thing, but we ought to at least be honest as to what the cost is, be honest to our citizens who are paying higher gas prices, higher utility prices as a result of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions.

So let's work on that, yes, but let's assess what the true economic cost is. Now, a little bit about High-Speed Rail. We've talked a lot about that this evening. The High-Speed Rail was sold with a lie. If you read the title and summary statement of the proposition--forget the number--that authorized High-Speed Rail, was written by then Attorney General Jerry Brown, you read that title and summary statement and it says we get the whole thing for $10 billion.

And the unfortunate thing is a lot of people just read title and summary statements, which is why I have continually proposed that the responsibility for writing title and summary statements be transferred from the Attorney General to the Legislative Analyst who writes all the detailed analyses anyway and we would get much more unbiased title and summary statements.

And both Republicans and Democrats have been responsible for that, but the last time we had a Republican Attorney General was before a lot of people in this state were even born, but I digress again. Every time I have gotten that bill out of a committee, it ends up on the suspense file in the Appropriations Committee, and of course, there it dies, with no fiscal impact, I might add, but back to High-Speed Rail.

It was sold with a lie, it has been horribly mismanaged, the cost overruns are absolutely stunning, and applying this over time, $20 billion is going to cover a fraction of the unrealized cost that we have yet to spend to complete the project and I would also suggest that once we begin the political battles over where that thing stops, it probably will never operate as a true high-speed rail.

Those are my fundamental issues with High-Speed Rail, and I'll finish that by saying I would love to see it happen. I would love to be able to take a train as opposed to an airplane and all of the difficulty in air travel these days, but I just don't know that it's going to see the reality of actual operation, and in the meantime, we do have those things called airplanes, which is another alternative driving to Southern California, by the way. So I'll echo the process again as I did before.

This has been developed behind closed doors in a short period of time, so that--as I quoted that CalMatters article--lobbyists have little time to react to it and we lawmakers have little time to really contemplate it. I urge a no vote.

Thank you, Senator. Like to turn it over to the birthday girl, Senator Pérez. Happy birthday. I'm so sorry you are celebrating here, but happy birthday nonetheless.

Thank you, Madam President, and I just want to make some short comments really in response to the previous Senator and in support of AB 1207. You know, I know he mentioned that no one is following us, and I just want to highlight our cap-and-trade program or now cap-and-invest is actually something that many world leaders are looking at. We've met with world leaders from the United Kingdom, world leaders from the European Union, and this is oftentimes one of the first programs that we begin to have discussions about.

The climate credit, the investment that we make back into working people to ensure that we're addressing affordability issues, that is used as a model for other programs throughout the world, and so I do want to highlight that that is incredibly critical.

You know, in order for us to really talk about environmental justice, we need to make sure that we're making investments back into everyday people, that everyday working people see themselves as a part of this plan, and making sure that we have a climate credit that's going to show up on ratepayers' bills as we continue to see energy costs rise is something that's actually really important and does make a significant difference.

So this is taking into account the needs of especially low-income Californians and will make an impact, and the rest of the world is watching and will want to know what California is doing here, and it's legislation like this that is used as a model to inspire other environmental initiatives. Thank you, and urge an vote.

Thank you, Senator. Senator McNerney.

Thank you, Madam President. Colleagues, cap-and-trade works. It's simple in concept, but the devil is in the details, as we've heard. Basically you put a cap on emissions and then you charge people when they exceed that cap and you use that money to invest, so it's a great program, but a lot of details are needed, but what we've seen is billions of dollars invested in wildfire mitigation, wildfire prevention, wildfire recovery, so this is really happening right now, and also, money is being invested in reducing emissions and in making our state more resilient for the future.

So we can call it cap-and-invest. I think that's a good way to talk about it. It's the right terminology because we are investing in California's future. And a little bit about California leading the nation and the world--yes, California is leading the nation and the world in technology and that's exactly why we are the fourth biggest economy in the world, and so I think that's what has made us the fourth largest economy in the world: cap-and-trade investing. Cap-and-invest is working, and we need to continue that program, and I ask for an aye vote.

I see no other mics up. Senator Limón, you may close.

Thank you, Madam President, and thank you, colleagues, for that discussion. There is talk about taking action today and the importance of it. I also want to recognize that there is a cost to not taking action, that Californians pay a cost every single day for the impacts of climate change. It's just sometimes harder to quantify some of those costs.

The cost of extreme heat, of emergency room visits due to loss of a workday from asthma, the impacts to the power grid and infrastructure--these are also costs that our communities bear and these are the costs that we are making investments in. This program allows for 14 billion in utility billion--14 billion in utility bill credits that have been distributed to Californians.

More than 11 million households have received electric California climate credits on their utility bills. Over $900 million have been invested to improve solar and clean energy. These are investments to our community, and they're investments that, if they weren't made, will become a bigger cost to Californians.

So, members, I appreciate the discussion, but I'm also thankful that California continues to lead the way, that California understands that the hidden cost to the people of California have an impact on their lives and also that we must lead to ensure that Californians see the jobs, see the clean air, see the investments in our communities every single day on these projects that will help us live in a California that is cleaner, in a California that is healthier, and in a California that understands that our energy supply is part of this equation. With that, members, I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll call].

Please call the absent members.

[Roll call].

Ayes, 29. Noes, 6. The measure passes. Moving on to file item number one, Senator Becker. Secretary, please read AB 825.

Assembly Bill 825 by Assemblymember Petrie-Norris, an act relating to electricity.

Senator.

Thank you, Madam President. I want to first thank all 17 members of the Energy Committee for their efforts this year, working with me as a first-year chair to craft this energy package and helping deliver it.

I was talking with a key member of the Governor's team who said they've been here two decades and said this most impactful group of energy legislation they've ever seen. I first rise to present AB 825, a bill enables something that's a decade in the making, a western energy market.

Some doubted if we'd ever get here, but we landed in a great place. Number one, this Bill recognizes that after a decade of maybe yes, maybe no, that we have to say California, California is in, as long as the conditions in this Bill are met. And second, the benefits of a western-wide electricity market are very clear.

A billion dollars a year in savings, reducing greenhouse gases 58% in California, and increased reliability. And we can achieve those benefits if we just trust our neighbors to work together for mutual benefit. But as Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify. That's why the Bill includes a long list of safeguards to protect California's interests.

First, before we'll even join the market has to demonstrate it meets a long list of requirements for protecting consumers and respecting each state's authority to set its own energy procurement, environmental, and reliability policies. Second, the Bill requires rigorous legislative oversight.

Third, the Bill states unequivocally the market is voluntary, and we can exit anytime, if not happy, without any penalties or other barriers. Colleagues, this is a rare opportunity to bring states together all across the west for common benefits.

Experts across the country told us at the beginning of the year, the biggest thing we could do for clean energy across the west was to create this market. The Bill is supported by a remarkably broad group of supporters who hardly ever agree on anything.

And when that broader coalition comes together, you know we have an opportunity, something big for California. I want to thank Chair Petrie-Norris, who I worked extremely closely with on this Bill and the next one, and the speaker who's a joint author on this.

I want to thank our PT, as well as the Governor and US Senators across the west who weighed in on this Bill, and I want to particularly thank the Senator from Los Angeles, who I'm sure would love to speak on this measure, who cannot today, whose passion and commitment helped us get to the finish line.

I respectfully asked for an aye vote.

Senator Strickland.

Thank you, Madam President. Members, I rise in support of AB 825. I want to commend the Energy Chair for all the hard work and the member who can't talk today from Los Angeles, my good friend. As was stated before, a unique coalition came together to do this.

And I will tell you, on your cap and trade and all your different programs, I don't see any affordability on almost any of this stuff. I think most of the stuff we're doing today will make life less affordable to Californians, but this is one Bill that will make life more affordable for Californians.

This—expanding our energy markets to include other western states will help us lower our costs for energy and that is good for the people of California.

Again, I want to thank my Chair of Energy for all the hard work of putting this coalition together—it's not easy—as well as my good friend from Los Angeles and all the members of the Energy Committee who were active and involved in this piece of legislation. This piece of legislation will make it better for the people of California. I urge an aye vote.

Senator Blakespear.

Thank you, Madam Chair—thank you, Madam President.

In the interest of time, I'll just say the most important supportive sentence, which is that by establishing a wider marketplace for abundant clean energy, we can get real value back for California ratepayers and we can displace the need for more expensive, more polluting energy resources in other states across the west.

AB 825 would establish a robust partnership with our regional neighbors and assure California's role as a leader in clean energy, and I want to thank my colleague from Menlo Park for all of the months of work on this and I urge your aye vote. Thank you.

Seeing no other mics ups. Senator Becker, you may now close.

I thank my colleagues for their comments, everyone for their hard work. Respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Ayes, 34. Noes, 0. The measure passes. Senator Reyes, you are up with file number 68, AB 730. We're going to pass on file. Turning to Senator Cervantes for file item 160. She's ready to go. Secretary, please read.

Senate Bill 274 by Senator Cervantes an act relating to personal information.

Senator.

Thank you, Madam President. SB274 is back on concurrence. I respectfully asked for an Aye vote.

Phenomenal. Any discussion on this item. Seeing none. Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Please call the absent Members.

[Roll Call]

Ayes 28, Noes 6. The Assembly amendments are concurred in. Senator Ashby, you have file item 161.

Secretary, please read Senate Bill 414 by Senator Ashby an act relating to school accountability.

Senator? Thank you, Madam President. I rise to present SB414. This is the Charter School Accountability Act. SB414 responds to four reports and their calls for increased accountability and oversight of charter schools and their authorizers. The Bill reflects input from broad state stakeholder engagement, including over 85 hours of in person negotiations.

It's been six years since a new charter school has been approved in the State of California and that has not fixed our problem. Even with the moratorium, charter schools have been caught wasting taxpayer dollars, hundreds of millions of those dollars in fact, through loopholes in current law.

If we continue to simply extend the moratorium without any type of of meaningful reform to current law, we will not be doing justice for taxpayers. Despite all of this information coming out in these reports, since the moratorium in 2019, a charter for school reform Bill has never made it this far. It's time.

In fact, over the last six years, we have punted on this issue three times rather than making meaningful progress. But often we get down, bogged down in the negotiations around these issues, arguing over things like Whether or not students at a charter school should go to the zoo.

Truly, that was an item that took up much of the time. In the end, after 30 stakeholder meetings and many more with the coalition Members, we have agreed on 90% of this Bill. I lament I couldn't get full agreement on the last 10%.

But for anyone who has tried in this space, I would argue that 90% is a tremendous success. I'm grateful to every single stakeholder and every one of you who chimed in on this Bill to help make it better.

The Bill includes 55 new policies that stem from a Legislative Analyst Office Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Report, the California State Controllers Audit, the California Charter Authorizers Professional Report, and the State Auditors report on Highlands Community Charter School.

Dozens of policies have been put in place to strengthen what we do in the State of California and to catch fraud before it happens. Through this Bill, there are new oversight requirements, including creating an independent Office of the Inspector General, a technical assistance program for authorizers, and extending the moratorium for charter schools for an additional six months.

Multiple pieces of language have also been removed from SB414, including the liability component that gave some of you on this floor pause. This Bill recognizes the need for oversight and accountability while also understanding that there are good actors who some who provide things like special education to vulnerable populations or populations like migrant students or current or formerly incarcerated people, or foster youth, developmentally disabled youth, English language learners, or youth currently or formerly experiencing homelessness.

There are several charter schools specifically for LGBTQ youth who don't feel safe on campuses. Programs operated in correctional facilities must be run by charter schools. And as we on this floor ask to expand educational opportunities in those same institutions, we have a conflicting law in our Ed Code that won't allow it. This Bill fixes that for us.

The Native American community has come on board to support the Bill because they too rely on charter school programs. I'm very proud of the broad coalition that has weighed in on SB414. I am thanking so many of you, including those who may not love the Bill. Your participation, your input, has been critically important.

I thank the Assembly Ed Committee and I particularly thank the Senate Ed Committee and our Chairwoman for their engagement and participation. And today I humbly stand in front of you colleagues and and ask you from the bottom of my heart for an aye vote on SB414. Senator Wiener, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam President. I rise in support of SB414, and. I thank my colleague from Sacramento for her hard work on this, this Bill provides flexibility, particularly around folks who are not in traditional settings and need education, who are incarcerated or whatever the case may be. And I think it's a good Bill and I ask for an aye vote.

Senator Perez, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam President. Colleagues, I rise in respectful opposition to SB414. Earlier this year, I worked closely with the author of this Bill and I want to acknowledge both she as well as her staff have done tremendous work.

And when I say that all we are talking about meetings every single day during the weekday to meet, particularly on SB414 and AB84, it was a tremendous amount of work and I assigned one of my staff Members, Ian Johnson, to be a part of those conversations. So want to acknowledge the work of both the Senate Education Committee staff as well as the Assembly Education Committee staff in order to work on this.

We met regularly on coordinated efforts to strengthen charter school oversight in response to serious findings from the Lao FCMAT and the state controller at the time, I agreed to allow both SB414 and AB84 to move forward out of the Senate Education Committee based on clear and mutual commitments that key issues would be addressed before either Bill returned to the Senate Floor floor.

Since then, the author of AB84 has honored that agreement by placing his Bill on the inactive file. But SB414 has returned without resolving several of the most fundamental concerns we discussed in Committee. There are also important policy differences between SB414 and AB84 that remain unresolved.

AB84 creates a unified framework for charter school audit standards, oversight practices and funding determinations grounded in recommendations from independent state agencies. And I want to acknowledge the author of the FCMAT report, Mike Fine, who did all of this tremendous work to bring together these recommendations to have stronger oversight and accountability in this space.

He is the author that that really helped to drive this discussion and want to recognize his tremendous work. SB414, by contrast, carves out a separate pathway for non classroom based or flex based charter schools with its own terminology, funding structure and oversight rules and moves us away from alignment, not towards it.

Additionally, this Bill does a number of things that don't belong in a fiscal accountability measure. Most notably, it extends the moratorium on new NCB charter schools. But let's be clear about what that moratorium is supposed to be.

It was originally adopted as a temporary stopgap giving us time to adopt the necessary reforms because originally there was not consensus around what to do with SB 414 and and AB 84. It was not meant to be extended alongside reforms that are still unfinished.

This is why for those of you that were paying attention, SB494, which was authored by Senator Cortese, was gotten amended while it was in the Assembly to address this very issue. Since this has happened, SB494 as of yesterday was placed onto the inactive file.

So we had separate legislation that was focused purely on just the extension of the moratorium. This was not meant to be extended alongside reforms that are still unfinished. As I mentioned before, we can't have it both ways. We can't say we're ready to fix the system and also say that we still need time to delay expansion.

Either we've completed the work or we haven't. The Bill also includes an unrelated extension of verified data for charter renewal decisions. This is yet again an additional Bill that was outside of this Bill by Assemblymember Anna Marie Avila Farias.

AB 1493 those provisions have nothing to do with fiscal oversight and don't belong in a Bill focused on financial audits, funding determination or governance. Before AB 1493 was held an Assembly Education Committee, so it did not even make it over to this House and now that language is located in this Bill.

More importantly, two specific commitments were made by the author and Committee and neither one of them unfortunately has been honored in the Virgin before us today. Neither. And a part of that is because we're not having Committee hearings anymore. It's Saturday.

We were supposed to be gone yesterday, so we are not able to sit down and to have this discussion.

To revisit this, the first was to strike the rebounding of non classroom based charter schools as flex based, which is not accompanied by meaningful instructional or operational change and risk confusion in statute and implementation and two to strike the provisions restructuring the funding determination process, which would reduce the State Board's discretion to adjust funding based on Reserve levels and actual spending precisely the kind of discretion that our oversight agencies have said is essential.

Beyond those two points, SB414 does not fully implement several key recommendations from the Leo and FCMAT report, including no cap on small district authorizing capacity, even though many NCB charter schools are authorized by small rural districts with little or no administrative bandwidth to provide meaningful oversight, a grant program for authorizers that does not correspond to any actual increase in oversight responsibilities, no alignment of funding determination with charter renewals, no use of the current expense of education to measure certificated staffing investments, no definition of a virtual charter network and statute, and no requirement that authorizers undergo regular training.

Colleagues, let me be clear, this is not a no, it's a not yet. This Bill, like AB84, reflects an important policy conversation that needs more time. And I really want to emphasize once again that the Senator from Sacramento has done a tremendous amount of work in this space to try to bring together these bills, as well as the Assembly Member in the other House who was working on AB84. These are ongoing conversations. We know we need more oversight.

We know that we need accountability. But there were still gaps and unresolved issues in this policy. In addition to that, this Bill is now touching several policy areas that have absolutely nothing to do with the FCMAT report. And so it creates a conflict.

I've made very clear to both the Senator and the Assembly Member that having strong oversight and accountability measures is important to me, Mike Fine, who authored the FCMAT report and is somebody that I have the highest respect for because he does work that is nonpartisan and he works across agencies and with different groups in order to get it right.

So for those reasons, I'm going to be laying off of the Bill because as I mentioned before, this is not a no, it's a not yet. I have full faith that the Senator from Sacramento is passionate about this issue and wants to ensure that she's delivering results in this area.

But unfortunately, this Bill still needs significant work and in addition to that, is no longer just touching on provisions related to the FCMAT report. So I recommend that this body, unfortunately, lay off of this Bill for the time being so. So that we can get this right in a meaningful manner. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Colleagues, just a note. Lunch is here. We're not breaking for lunch, but lunch is in the break room if you want to grab food. But we will not be placing any item on call. Senator Cabaldon, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam President. First, I want to salute the author who doesn't serve on the Senate Education Committee because no sane Member of the Senate Education Committee would have waited in into this topic. It's so charged politically in so many different ways.

And I salute her for her dogged commitment to solving what is a real problem we've heard today, including by my seatmate and dear friend and highly respected chair of the Education Committee, that it's either done or it's not. And this is one of those issues, like so many on our floor, where it is done and it's not.

This issue will require much more work. But here's the challenge. If we don't act today, if we don't pass the one Bill that is proposing to close the loopholes that we put our state's finances and our school district finances and the money available in Proposition 98 for our students at risk.

This is the only path forward to end the fraud and the abuse of our financials, of our financials by these charter, by these charter schools in the system. And not to paint a broad brush on charter schools generally because it isn't the case.

I mentioned in Committee as well, in community colleges, we have 35% of our students in publicly operated community college. Colleges don't exist. Right. That fraud like this is not, it's not unique to charter schools. But the solutions in this Bill are. And that's why it is so critical that it advance forward.

Now I serve on the Committee and in the Committee I objected to painting this non classroom based versus flex based language as a key issue. So I'm not sure I would respectfully disagree that that was one of the conditions that if that were to change, it would have to come back because that is the least important of all the issues in the entire, all of the bills.

What we call these schools, I don't know why folks are obsessed with calling them non classroom based as opposed to flex based or anything else, but compared to 50 or $90 million of fraud, that's a non issue. This Bill is the only Bill that's before us.

In part because the Assembly just passed this Bill overwhelming with a 2/3 vote. The Assembly had passed the competing measure AB84 by a couple of votes earlier in the session. The Assembly passed the verified data provisions of this Bill.

Yes, it didn't pass out of Assembly education because that Committee said this needs to be part of a larger set of reforms. Look, here's the bottom line. Any charter school Bill that has anything to do with charter schools always turns into a hyper sort of religious issue about whether charter schools should exist or not.

And this Bill is not that. It doesn't have to be that. The negotiations started with a hope that it would not be. But, but the other proposals that have been out there have been around. How do we take advantage of this financial crisis in order to undermine the very existence of charter schools themselves?

And so this Bill is as simple. It's absolutely necessary. Yes, we will need to do more. And the moratorium is necessary to be extended so that we can implement this Bill.

But if we don't put in place the financial controls, the audit controls, the training, the changes to the financial rules from the State Board of Education, we, we are leaving open to massive abuse by this sector. And we cannot afford that our students Cannot afford that. This is the time to act, and I urge and aye vote.

Senator Reyes, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam President. I, too, have issues I've shared with the author, and I think that our chair has talked about so many of those issues in great detail. I do understand that there were many amendments that were taken. I want to very specifically ask about conversations that will continue specifically with CTA.

I think CTA is an important stakeholder in any discussion having to do with education of our children. It's our taxpayers dollars that are being used, and charter schools are part of that mix. But very specifically, there were questions and I'd like to know about. Are you asking if the author would take a question?

Thank you. Would the author take a question?

Yes, of course.

I think without having to have the. Senator see her question through the president's.

That's okay. Love to answer. First of all, thank you to my distinguished colleague who has been working in this area herself for a long time. I agree. Any solution that moves forward needs to include the teachers. It has to. I tried my best. Let me tell you. I took 55 amendments to this Bill three times.

CTA brought me their number one priority. All three of them are in this Bill. Changed a little bit along the way. New priorities come and go. You know how these, how these work. Sometimes you solve for one and there's a new number one. But the top three priorities that they gave me are in this Bill.

An extension of the moratorium. It's there. Not giving teachers that work in charter schools incentive pay for attendance. That was their number one. It's in the Bill. They wanted an office of the Inspector General. It's in the Bill. I gave them everything they asked for, but I couldn't give them no field trips to the zoo.

And I couldn't fight them any longer over what we would call these schools. We couldn't get to that bottom line. On the last day that you could put in amends, the representative, the Assembly Member representing them, came to my office and handed me a list of six items and said, it's these or nothing. And I walk.

One of them was, can kids go to the zoo? I did this one for my daughter, you guys. And for your kids. Those kids up there go to charter schools. Some of them, you want to tell them they don't deserve to go to the zoo because they go to a charter school? I'm not going to.

And so I did the best I could to be an adult in the room with the remaining 10%. And as to promises, I have made a promise to cta. I actually hold the head of CTA in extremely high regard and consider her a friend.

And I've said throughout this process, the folks who represent CFT are also very close, very close friends of mine. I said many times, as the Chairwoman will tell you, it was almost awkward. They all know where I live because I'm here. And guess what?

I'm Senator, sure that that was the answer to the question. If not, why not? Yeah, yeah.

This is answering her question. I'm their Senator too, so they definitely know where to find me. The promise that I made to them is that we could work together on any cleanup language they need to this for sure.

And that if there are concerns moving forward with other pieces of the audits that they'd like to see included, that I would gladly have that conversation even between now and January if we needed to have another Bill ready to go in January.

Senator, to answer your question very specifically, I have made that commitment and I have secured that commitment in the last 24 hours with the head of CTA. And by the way, she has been absolutely lovely to work with.

Thank you.

Seeing nothing further from this Senator. Going to turn it over to Senator Dr. Weber Pierson.

Thank you, Madam President. Colleagues, I rise today in strong support of SB414 by Senator Ashby. Over the last few years, the Legislature has worked hard to increase accountability and transparency in our charter schools, especially after high profile fraud cases have have come to light in recent years.

In response, the LAO, the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team and the State controller each identified clear gaps, weak auditing standards, clear authorizer responsibility and insufficient contracting oversight. SB 414 directly impacts those recommendations. It strengthened audits, requires authorizers to step up in their oversight role and brings greater transparency transparency to charter contracting.

This is not about punishing good schools. It's about protecting students and taxpayers from abuse and making sure every public dollar is used for kids and not for profiteering. And the timing matters. The moratorium on approving new non classroom based and flex charter school ends January 12026.

Without action, we are risking having a vacuum and oversight right when new petitions are coming in. SB414 ensures that by that time the moratorium expires, we have stronger rules in place. That means no gap, no uncertainty and no repeat past abuses. This Bill also strikes the right balance.

It protects families, access to innovative learning models, rural, online, personalized, while also putting enforceable guardrails around how those programs programs are run. SB 414 is supported by a broad coalition of schools, parents, and charter leaders who want accountability that works in practice and not just on paper. Colleagues, this is our opportunity to fix what is broken without breaking what works. I urge your aye vote on SB4 14.

Senator Rubio, Senator Seyarto, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was not planning on speaking on this, honest to God, but I feel like I have to. I've watched charter schools evolve over the years, and like anything, when you have evolvement of a program, a different way of doing things, a different approach to education, you're going to have some bumps along the way.

And charter schools have definitely had those bumps. And in this case, they had some fraud issues that had come up. And the appropriate way to do that is to work with charter schools and address those issues, figure out how you can create safeguards. And I think that is what the author has been doing in this case.

I read both these bills and immediately I could see the flavor of both these bills. The other Bill that, thank God, did not go forward. That Bill was all about getting rid of charter schools. It was making it so difficult for a charter school to exist that they wouldn't.

And it's sponsored by people who don't want charter schools to exist. When you cannot compete for, in this case, a product, and that product is educating our kids, what you do is you raise your game. You provide a better product. You don't try to legislatively eliminate the other side so that you have no competition.

So make no mistake about it, that's a little bit of what this is about. And this approach. When I read this Bill, I could tell they are trying to address the real issues that came up with their charter schools. Because I can tell you there are a lot of great charter schools in my district.

And you know what? They don't want bad charter schools out there any more than anybody else does. They want to educate kids and they want to meet those kids where those kids are and where their needs are. And sometimes it is not in our traditional school settings. So shame on people who want to do that.

We want good schools. We want good choices for our kids that may not be able to fit into those regular schools to be able to get that education that they need to be successful in life. That's what this Bill is about. That's why I'm going to be supporting this Bill.

And I think we should end that conversation there. I think we've heard all about what it is and we've heard the technical aspects, but. But really, at the end of the day, it's, do you Want to fix the problem or you just try to get rid of. Use the opportunity to get rid of it. Like our good colleague from West Sacramento had said earlier, I urge an aye vote on SB414.

Senator Perez, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam President. I don't think I've ever gotten up twice to speak on an item, but it is Saturday and we were supposed to go home yesterday. So I wanted to raise and I appreciate my colleagues. Other comments. This is not about getting rid of charter schools.

And I don't think this issue and this topic of conversation has ever been focused about that. This is about having basic oversight and accountability. But now this has gone beyond that. And so I have a question for the author. If I could do so through the chair.

Will the author take a question?

Sure. So I want to understand the thinking behind including an unrelated extension of verified data for charter renewal decisions into this Bill. Was that not AB 1493 legislation that died in the Assembly Education Committee.

CThrough the hair. Madam President, may I answer her question? Please proceed. So one of the primary requests of CTA was an extension of the moratorium. And the reason you need to extend the moratorium, and the reason I did that, even though other stakeholders didn't want an extension of the moratorium, is because what exists now is an exchange.

The charter schools get to verify their own data and no new charter schools come into existence. This is a very temporary band aid solution, but they do go fairly hand in hand. What we want is a robust oversight system, accounting audits.

We want policies that catch fraud early so that we can protect taxpayer dollars and make sure that every precious resource we have in the Golden State lands in a classroom for kiddos. In order to extend the moratorium, you have to extend verified data as well.

Also, as great as I think this Bill is, and as many boxes as it checks, and it checks many, they don't happen overnight. It takes some time to implement. So the timing of the moratorium and the timing of verified data in this Bill are not the same as whatever the other Bill is that has been referenced.

They are in fact in line with the timing of this Bill. So that when the auditing states standards are in place that they become the law of California and that all schools are responsible to those accounting measures. These new, very stringent accounting measures, which, by the way, all of which are agreed upon by all stakeholders.

The accounting piece that's in the 90% of things that they all agreed upon, all the oversight components, that's all agreed upon. Everybody agrees on that. But I need to give them time for. For those to be implemented in this Bill.

The verified data and the moratorium exist only to get us to the place where we do something better and stronger than the temporary solution that we have now.

Back to the Senator.

Can I ask another question through the Chair?

Will the author take another question? Sure.

When does SB414 go into effect?

So SB414. Should it be lucky enough to receive the governor's signature? Like all laws goes into effect in January. However, many of the components do not start until July. But there is also existing law that plays into what happens in SB414. For example, charter schools can only start in three months out of the year.

Those months happen in the first three months of a fiscal year, a school's fiscal year, not your family's fiscal year. And so that plays into the implementation of this Bill, too. You need a full year of education before you can do an audit. That's 18 months. So you have a tiered system.

It technically goes into law in January, is implemented in portions in July, because that is when you can start adding new charter schools. And then a year after the charter schools are in place, that is when you can begin the audit soon. So 6 months, 12 months and 18 months is the answer.

Senator Perez, back to you.

You know, I want to acknowledge something, and it doesn't just have to do with 414, but this is just a larger issue that I've noticed within this body, within this Legislature, that there is this tendency, and I've had this even happen to me, of folks at the 11th hour trying to squeeze other folks bills and to legislation that is moving.

It's been very frustrating. I've experienced this, and I have discovered that this is something that also happens to other legislators and happens while other pieces of legislation are moving forward. You know, as I mentioned before, this Bill, SB 414, as well as the other Bill, were both focused on making sure that we have oversight and accountability measures.

When discussions began, particularly on the moratorium piece, part of the reason why that came up is because it was thought that there was not going to be resolution to creating oversight and accountability measures, which is why there were talks about extending the moratorium and finding a solution to this, not for both of these pieces to be put together in the same Bill.

You know, in addition to that, I disagree with what the author mentioned. Verified data was put in place because we did not have the California dashboard measuring student growth. We're going to be working on that next year. And verified data and the moratorium, I just, I don't think that they're linked from a policy perspective.

But, you know, unfortunately, as you know, I mentioned before, there's been so many last minute decisions within this body in order to try to get policy through at the 11th hour. These are the kinds of things that need massaging. As I mentioned before, I know that the Senator has put a tremendous amount of work, work into this.

This is a policy that means so much to her. And I see that reflected in the time that she has invested here. I know that she wants to do something meaningful in this space and we need oversight and we need accountability. That's why I'm laying off and not voting no.

But I do think that it's concerning when we start bringing in other pieces of policy that frankly are not relevant to what we were trying to do here and kind of move in the opposite direction of the conversations that we were having.

So, you know, once again, I just needed to hear from the author because those were also pieces that I discovered were in this Bill as of last night at 1 in the morning.

Thank you, Senator Rubio. You're recognized.

Thank you, Madam President and ladies and gentlemen of the Senate. You know, this debate is often very contentious, and I've been here seven years to hear charter versus public education, and everyone has valid reasons to either support or oppose.

But I think someone on this floor already mentioned how we get into the weeds of the technicalities and what's right for teachers and authors and the board and the committees. But I just want to humanize it. As the only elementary school teacher.

I'm sorry, let me clarify one of two, because I know my colleague from Yucaipa is also a teacher. Again, the only two teachers on this Senate Floor and myself that have. Has taught for 20 years, vice principal for three.

I really wanted to stand up to share the perspective of one of my students because I think that we tend to lose ourselves in the conversation about what's right on this floor and we forget that there's little humans behind the conversation.

I had a little boy, his name was Martine, who was really having a hard time sitting down in class. He was constantly in trouble, constantly going to the principal's office. Mom didn't know what to do. I did not know what to do. And we really tried to support the student throughout that year.

But somewhere along the line, I discovered that he was very artistic. I have a background on theater, so I wanted to help to see if that would help him. And low and behold, he became a different child, I was so thankful that a few years later they opened up a wonderful school in the neighboring city in my district called California School of the Arts.

Anyhow, so that child that I saw could really go in a different direction, perhaps drop out of school and really get into some trouble as a young adult. Really found his calling in music and theater and the arts. And so his mother decided to take him out of my school and put him into that charter school.

And that was his lifeline. And so to everyone on this floor who talks about technicalities and what we do here, I just want to point out that there's little human beings that I know for a fact have benefited from not being in my class, in my school, but going to a charter school.

So as the only teacher that has taught for 20 years and my colleague who taught for a few years, I can tell you as a public school teacher that I absolutely support this Bill. Because not every child is going to learn the same.

Not every child is going to thrive in an environment that we expect them to very rigid class with 24 kids, curriculum every hour changing from math, science, and on and on and on. Some kids just don't do well.

And I think it's up to us to continue to open up opportunities for these kids, kids that don't have any other way. So, yes, as a public school teacher, I always advocate for my teachers, my teachers union.

As a member of the union for many years on the Executive board of my union, I can tell you that we want what's best for teachers, but we also have to advocate for what's best for our students. And I think that's where this conversation should be focused on what is best for students. Students.

And I do believe that we have to open the conversation. And it's not that this conversation is over. The author clearly stated that the conversation will continue. I've been sort of hearing these conversations for a little while. And so it's not like it was the 11th hour, as I think it was implied.

This is a conversation that's been going, going on for a long time. And you know, experience would teach us that it's not in an 11th hour when one author decides to do this. Sometimes the Governor or other stakeholders force us to combine bills at the end of the legislative year.

And, you know, many years on this floor would teach us that. But anyhow, I just want to say that I really would like to bring it down to our students. I want the author to have the opportunity to continue this Bill. I want the opportunity to continue to engage with teachers and.

And I think that teachers are very important in this conversation. And as she said, she stated that she sat with them to fifth the amendments. And I really would like to just allow this to continue for the sake of our students. And with that, I ask for an aye vote. Thank you. Senator.

You may now close. Appreciate everyone's input. And I appreciate the folks who put their mics down, but wanted to say supportive things, but also are worried about time. I appreciate you all so, so much. Listen, this dialogue, this democracy that we do, it makes the bills better. You've heard enough. I thank you so much. This is critically important, I think, to the State of California. It's real progress. I ask for an aye vote.

Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Please call the absent Members.

[Roll Call]

Ayes 24. No, zero. The Assembly amendments are concurred in. Senator Perez, you have filed item 162. Senator Perez. Secretary, please read file item 162.

Senate Bill 547 by Senator Perez, an act related to insurance.

Senator back on concurrence.

This Enjoy Support. Support.

Yes.

Thank you Madam President and Members, I rise to present SB547 the Commercial Insurance Protection act which is back on concurrence amendments narrow the scope of the bill to small businesses and commercial residential and habitational properties exclude and exclude commercial auto insurance. I respectfully ask your Aye vote. Seeing no mics up Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Please call the absent Members.

[Roll Call]

Ayes 36, Noes 0. Assembly Members are concurred in taking a quick pause it Members if there's no objection we will be taking file we will be taking SB254 up without reference to file Senator Becker.

Secretary, please read.

Senate Bill 254 by Senator Becker, an act relating to energy, making an appropriation therefore and declaring the urgency thereof to take effect immediately.

Senator.

Thank you. This bill's back on concurrence. It is California's most ambitious energy affordability bill in decades and result in billions of dollars of savings for Californians.

This is a very big bill that now does three things—combines three things—the best of my original bill 254 and the Assembly's affordability bill, led by Chair Petrie-Norris, and the Administration's proposal for shoring up the Wildfire Fund. I do want to mention a note about the Wildfire Fund since this is not something we have discussed here on this floor.

Wildfires, as you know, have created existential risk for our state, and if we don't have the Wildfire Fund at the end of the day, it's wildfire victims who suffer the most. This Bill adds $18 billion in capital to the Wildfire Fund, split evenly between utility shareholders and ratepayers. Believe me, they did not want it that way.

But we push, this is split evenly now between ratepayers and utility shareholders, and, and it does this by extending existing surcharge on bills so this will not cause higher bills. This is ads starting in 2036—extends the existing surcharge. Happy to discuss that more, but I'll just touch on the other important provisions.

There's a couple new provisions in this Bill. It requires—the first affordability requires utilities to use securitized debt rather than equity for $6 billion of investments. That itself will save $3 billion over the next decade through lower interest rates and not having utilities earn any profit on this spending.

A second, it establishes a transmission accelerator program utilizing public funding, which my Senator from San Diego and also the Energy Chair and the Assembly worked so hard on these provisions and studies estimate we could save $3 billion annually if enough projects ultimately take advantage of this approach.

These are building the same things, just at a lower cost, financing them differently, particularly on wildfire spending. A couple other major provisions, three other major provisions. It provides tighter scrutiny on utility profits so consumer advocates like TURN and the Public Advocacy Office can be more vigilant about whether the profits are just and reasonable or excessive.

Second, it includes improvements to streamline permitting for clean energy projects, which will lower the cost for clean energy and lower future electricity bills. Finally, adds teeth to the target timelines for utilities to get new customers energized. This has been a huge issue, particularly in PG&E territory. They were way behind.

The—to get new charging infrastructure was 50 weeks, 5-0 weeks in my PG&E territory. My Bill, SB 410, a few years ago, helped on this a lot, but this bill will add even increasing teeth and timelines to make sure we get new energy, new housing, all connected up to the grid. This legislation was a huge effort this year.

Again, I'm grateful to all members of the Energy Committee to work on a Bill that will make such a big difference. We know there's not one silver bullet, so that's why this had to be comprehensive. It's 361 pages. There's a lot in there. Just wanted to summarize quickly.

I want to thank all the people who put so much time in this bill, the Pro Tem and his team, my joint author, the chair of Assembly Energy, again, the Senator from San Diego, the Governor's team on the Wildfire Fund, and so many stakeholders who weighed in with advice and critiques. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Senator Strickland, you are recognized.

Question to the author.

Would the author take a question?

Senator.

Thank you. Thank you. Without this Wildfire Fund, how—if we don't pass this, without this Fund, how can utilities pay for the cost of the catastrophic fires? And what would it do to the rates of the people of California if we don't pass this Bill?

If we don't pass this bill, ratepayer is on the hook for everything because of inverse condemnation—the way we've set it up right now in California.

And you just look, we had testimony from assembly members up north who had the fires in 2018 and in the Pro Tem's territory in 2019 who are still, who got a fraction of what they should have gotten and a fraction of what they would get now. Now, the Wildfire Fund is in place.

On my own time, Members, I rise in support of SB 254. Again, I want to thank the Energy Chair for all the hard work. This has been a major move, major discussions with a lot of different folks to land here at this time. Again, not a perfect Bill, but no Bill is.

But if we don't do this, it would mean that it'll be more money for the ratepayers across the State of California, and if we care about affordability, we should support SB 254. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Senator Wahab, you are recognized.

Thank you. First and foremost, I rise as a joint author of this Bill. As stated earlier, I don't think any bill is perfect and this is a delicate issue for the State of California. I want to highlight, as you know, we are moving in and seeing that more wildfires are happening.

The cost of paying for wildfire damages and utility infrastructure, that is one of our biggest goals, right? Let alone the cost of the grid construction and maintenance, replacing aging infrastructure with new transmission and distribution for large amount of new energy. These issues are incredibly important, as well as moving towards a carbon-neutral economy.

One of the things I really wanted to highlight is the actual affordability to residents. I've said it before, when this was in the Senate a couple months ago, that this will actually increase the climate credit that residents receive on their bill.

More specifically, it's about $200 a year per household and that is also going to be adjusted for the highest time where, either in winter and summer when people use a lot of energy. It's also going to be creating funding and a program for public financing and public ownership of transmission lines.

And I want to make it very clear that this is a public-private partnership to finance and develop the transmission lines that we need for the 21st century, especially given the wildfires, as well as the fact that this is the most expensive piece of our utilities infrastructure.

It is expected to save ratepayers about $3 billion a year over the next 20 years, as we build out this infrastructure. I want to also highlight that ensuring wildfire spending is all about getting the biggest bang for our buck.

It is going to require wildfire-related spending to be evaluated in terms of cost effectiveness, timeliness of risk reduction to strike a better balance.

This is one of our biggest complaints when we are dealing with the CPUC and the rate increases year over year, if not multiple times a year, as well as requiring IOUs to forego earning on a profit on $6 billion in utility savings. We are trying to make sure that the most amount of money is with the ratepayers and prioritizing rate payer affordability.

I also want to highlight that we are trying to extend extension, you know, the Wildfire Fund and future considerations for reducing wildfire losses, as well as the construction of clean energy projects. This Bill, in particular, is a culmination of almost everything that we've wanted to work on in regards to energy, specifically with their utilities infrastructure.

I will say that there are pieces that some of us like and some of us don't like, but this is a very large collaboration, hence why the Bill is hundreds of pages long because it took a lot of work and a lot of effort.

And I want to thank my colleague from the Bay Area as well, as well as our Pro Tem for leading this effort because this is one of California's biggest crises here today. Thank you. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Senator Seyarto, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I unfortunately am going to rise in opposition to this, I think, approach to trying to deal with our wildfires and also some of our energy issues related to the wildfires.

Borrowing money to try to create a capital stack so, so that when you have a catastrophic fire, you have a capital stack to draw from isn't a long-term solution and it also can be impacted by any years where you have more severe incidents than others.

I think there are different approaches, and I think there are approaches that can bring our insurance companies back to California by absorbing some of that risk, and this does a little bit of that, but it doesn't absorb all of the risk that California offers.

And so, I don't see this bringing back our insurance companies in mass to offer insurance and without the fire risk added into it, which is making it completely unaffordable.

So, you know, I think this, this approach does a little bit, but I don't think it is going to make the biggest difference in the affordability part of this that people think it is. When you talk about a $200, potentially a $200 rebate a year, what people need is a $200 decrease in their $400 a month electricity and gas bills—that tax the affordability.

Throwing them a stipend every once in a while, once a year, is not something that puts a huge dent in the unaffordability aspect of living here in California. So, I will be opposing this.

I would like to explore other approaches. And I am not without ideas for solving this problem, along with the insurance problem and along with the wildfire problem and reducing risks in California for the wildfire problem, but I think this is too expensive.

And I think it's, again, it seems like all of our solutions start with how much money we have to extract out of, and in this case, we call it the IOUs, but they are us, the taxpayers. We're the ones who wind up—and the ratepayers—are the ones who wind up paying for $9 billion.

And I think there are better ways of doing that. And so, I will be exploring those things in the coming months and would be delighted to have some of my colleagues join me in exploring that. I don't want to lock us into something that we're going to have to undo if we find a better solution.

And that's what happens when you have a fire, catastrophic fires in January, and then all of a sudden, we've decided we're going to come up with highly complicated solutions and then at the end of session, wind up trying to push them through on Saturday when we shouldn't even be here.

So, anyway, with that, I do appreciate all the work that people put into this. I just can't support it because I think we got better ways of doing this. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Senator Perez, you are recognized at your desk.

Thank you Mr. President and Members. I rise in support of SB254 and want to thank the good Senator for bringing forth this measure. I was very proud to be a part of the Affordability Workgroup where we had several in depth conversations about the shaping of this legislation.

California electricity rates have been increasing rapidly in recent years, growing not only faster than inflation but also outpacing growth in nearly every other state. Unfortunately, these trends are on track to continue. Energy experts tell us rates are climbing for two main reasons. First, the cost of paying for wildfire damages and hardening utility infrastructure against future danger.

Second, the cost of grid construction and maintenance. Replacing aging infrastructure with new transmission and distribution lines needed to deliver the large amount of new energy being developed interstate to meet customer demand. SB254 takes direct action to address this.

It will provide electric Bill relief by substantially increasing the climate credit that customers see on their utility bills having real impacts for working Californians as everywhere that they will be able to see and feel in their pocketbooks.

And it requires more financial transparency on what the IOUS are spending so the CPUC and other stakeholders can see what truly is a fair rate of return and holds the IOUS accountable for their spending over the coming decades. This measure will save consumers billions. Billions with a B of Dollars on energy costs tied to utility caused fires.

Specifically, the extension of the Wildfire Fund does the following. It creates a continuation account to cover future fires, though not ones that have already occurred. It protects both ratepayers and fire victims from investor owned utilities trying to avoid their liabilities through bankruptcy. It extends the Fund and also prevents credit downgrades for utilities which directly impacts ratepayer costs.

The most important thing about this Wildfire Fund is that it protects ratepayers by improving financing costs and most critically, it splits these costs between both investors and and ratepayers. 5050 I know there were some discussions previously about having ratepayers customers pay more and both myself and the Senator knew that that was simply unacceptable.

Placing additional cost and leaving my constituents, those that were impacted by these fires carrying the bag was simply unacceptable. And I appreciate the tremendous work that the Senator has done in delivering this Bill and making sure that it is fair for customers.

That is what is most important because for years people across California have felt like the powers have been imbalanced. SB254 also builds an authority for the CPUC to approve financing if the Fund is ever exhausted to make sure there is coverage for liabilities from this year's fires as well. We know that this is important.

Replenishing the Wildfire Fund is important. Giving the CPUC the authority to do this is important because we never know when the next fire disaster is going to strike.

I don't think any one of us in this body ever thought that we were suddenly going to see the town of Altadena suddenly burn in the middle of January and winter. It took all of us by shocking. And we know that there's still determination yet to be made in that fire.

But when and if there is and one of our IOUS is found to be at fault, this Wildfire Fund is going to be utilized. Over 9,000 homes were lost. Over 19 lives were lost in Altadena. And those folks are going to need that kind of financial assistance to rebuild their lives.

And so they will be tapping into this fund. At the same time. We can't see the Fund go down to zero in the case that another fire disaster strikes again. We have to be ready for the next event. And that's what this bill prepares us for.

So because of that, this bill helps protect not only future fire victims, it also helps protect my constituents, the survivors of the Eaton fire. So again, thank you to the Senator from Menlo park for all of his tremendous work. This is an excellent piece of legislation and I respectfully ask for your Aye vote. Thank you.

Mr. Pro Tem closes out with a dismiss.

Thank you so much. Madam President. I'll be brief. I wanted to say a few thank yous. First and foremost, I want to say thank you to this body for following through with a promise, be able to make life more affordable for Californians in every corner of the Golden State.

Number two, I want to say thank you to our Energy Chair. Our Energy, Energy, Energy Chair is ushering one of the largest energy reform pieces of legislation in our state's history. Senator, thank you. This bill has died about 10 times and you've stuck through it.

And I want to say how grateful we all are for your tenacity, your focus and your willingness to get the damn job done. Thank you. I want to say once again, thank you to our co chairs of the affordability groups for their amazing work, Mr. Padilla and Ms. Wahab. And I'll end it right here.

I want to say thank you to the amazing staff team who have been a part of this the entire time, and that includes Kip Lipper, James Barba and Chris Nielsen. We would not be here without them.

And I want to say how grateful we are for the many hours of work, hundreds of hours this year to be able to get this done. Would respectfully ask for an aye vote on SB254.

Senator Becker, you may now close.

Thank you, colleagues. I echo the thanks to the staff who literally did not sleep, pulled at least one all nighter that we know of to help get this over the finish line. I want to thank the PT and your team for help delivering the most comprehensive energy legislation in decades.

I want to thank the Senator from Hayward whose passion about affordability and particularly utility profits has been a major focus this year and helped drive this legislation. Most of all, just thank the Members of the Energy Committee and all of you and respectfully ask for an Aye vote.

Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Please call the absent Members.

[Roll Call]

Ayes 30, Noes 2. The Assembly amendments are concurrent. Members, is there any objection to taking up SB840 without reference to the file? I see none. Secretary, please read.

Senate Bill 840 by Senator Limon and Act relating to greenhouse gases, making an appropriation, therefore, and declaring the urgency thereof to take effect immediately.

Thank you, President and Members. SB 840 is another part of the reauthorization of the Cap and Invest program. It will mean billions of dollars in investments for transit, affordable housing, clean drinking water, wildfire protection.

Senator.

It also provides $250 million in new funding for the AB617 program, which helps address the air quality and environmental and environmentally overburdened communities, as well as $125 million for transit passes for Californians. This bill is an essential part of the reauthorization of the Cap and Invest program.

It will keep California on track to meeting our 2045 climate goals with making reforms and maintaining critical funding for environmental programs. I respectfully ask for an Aye vote.

Senator Strickland, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam President. Members, I rise in opposition to SB840. Listening to the debate on the Cap and Trade Bill, one of my colleagues said promises made, promises kept and one of the big items in this bill, SB840.

I didn't speak earlier, but I have to say, as all of you know, I was here when the high speed rail was sold to the people of California. And that's not promises made, promises kept.

End of the day, what was sold to the people of California was a $33 billion project to be done by 2020 that goes from LA to San Francisco. We all know Members, everybody in this body knows, as proposed to the people of California, this train will not be built.

In fact, when you look at the total cost that's projected today, the cost projected today to finish the high speed rail of what's been proposed is more expensive than the entire state budget was when we passed the bill. Originally the entire state budget was $98 billion. Today the projection is somewhere around 128 billion.

Members, this is the most wasteful spending project in world history. There's other ways that we can spend these resources. This $1.0 billion that we're putting in, again, $1.0 billion, that only puts it on life support. It doesn't mean it's going to go forward. This $1.0 billion.

Think about what we can spend with $1.0 billion with shovel ready projects in each and every one of your districts. I know in my area in Southern California, we're trying to get prepared for the World Cup. We're trying to get prepared for the Olympics.

There is much needed infrastructure projects that will be better for the people of California than this one project. Again, Members, this project was the entire state budget, the whole enchilada. It's more expensive, one project. Think about that, let that sink in. And it's only a project that goes from Merced to Bakersfield.

It's not going from Los Angeles to San Francisco as proposed to the people of California. That's one of my objections to this bill. Another one in SB840 is it's $1.0 billion slush Fund. Moving on forward, it's a slush Fund for the Legislature. $1.0 billion every year to figure out what you want to spend money on.

And we add on this Bill SB $843 billion for unaccountable climate bureau. Again, one of the problems I have with a lot of these agencies that we're giving so much power to is we're taking power out of our hands, out of this body and giving it to now the Climate Bureau.

We have the Air Resources Board, we have the Coastal Commission Members. I get a lot of calls into my office.

I don't know if you get the same calls, I know we represent different areas and different districts and different constituencies, but I get calls over and over and over in my office complaining about some of these unaccountable boards and agencies and they're like, Senator, why can't you do anything?

Because again, if people don't like the job I'm doing or you're doing, they could vote us out. But these agencies make a lot more of an impact in California than a lot of the laws that we actually do here in this body. And again, now SB840 is going to create another unaccountable agency that has no accountability.

If the voters and the people of California don't like what's coming out of it, there's no recourse. They can't vote them out. And so the last part is a lot of the major funding that comes through this is cap and trade.

But it's also every year since I've been back and every year since Governor Newsom has been Governor, we've increased the gas tax. Ladies and gentlemen, the gas prices where we are today is number one in the nation. And high gas cost falls disproportionately in hard working California families.

Hard working California families can't afford the ones that are living paycheck to paycheck. They can't afford these continued high rise of gas prices. And we continue to do this over and over again. And it makes it harder and harder for hard working families to make it ends meet.

In fact, affordability is what you've talked about a lot at the beginning of the year. It makes life less affordable in California. And especially talk about those young people. When I was young, we used to save up money. We had money to save. But now because of affordability, they're not saving money.

And there's a lot of young people today in their late 20s, early 30s. They're moving in with their parents. That didn't happen a generation ago. They're moving in with their parents because things like the gas prices that are going up, they can't save because they can't afford the high gas cost.

And what was projected next year, not by me, by USC, is it could go up to $8 a gallon of gas. Now I know there's another bill coming forward that addresses some supply issues which I will be supportive because we can't have that catastrophic $8 a gallon gas.

But let's make no mistake, Members, this bill will continue to move forward on increasing the gas prices. And the only one that is really robbing people at the gas pump. It's not the oil companies, it's government. Government's the one that's gouging the motorists at the gas pump. And this bill continues to move that forward.

There's many other reasons why this bill is bad, but I want to make my flight home. So I'll just stop there and say, please vote no on SB840.

Senator Smallwood-Cuevas.

Thank you, Madam President. And I want to thank the authors for bringing this important bill and crucial investments forward. I also want to recognize my colleague from Orange County and his interest in supporting ensuring that we raise adequate resources for the World Cup and Olympics. So.

So that we have a transit system that is able to welcome the world to Los Angeles and in particular my district. I look forward to working with him on that. I also want to lift up the funding initiatives here that are within this bill.

SB840 provides 250 million for air quality monitoring and mitigation in communities like South Los Angeles that have endured decades of pollution. For example, LA County alone. As it comes to transit, you know, we have about 13% of our community that is living in poverty, one of the highest densities of compounded poverty in the state.

And those folks who are struggling to make ends meet rely on public transit. And in LA County alone, Metro is driving nearly $30 billion of infrastructure projects. And the way that they do this is by leveraging billions more in federal funds.

These dollars will help us bring more money home to our transit system to ensure a vibrant and robust commitment to all of those who need to get to and from the places and spaces in their lives and rely on public transportation, not to mention the tens of thousands of jobs that are created, good jobs that are going to be created through this Cap and Invest program.

These investments matter. They matter because our communities matter. And when we are able to invest in our most vulnerable, impacted communities that are too often at the bottom, we lift all of us. I want to congratulate all of those who took part in making this policy move forward today.

And we look forward to ensuring that all of our regional transportation infrastructure benefits and that these dollars are a multiplier to bring us into the climate and transit leaders that we are here in California. With that, I respectfully ask for your Aye vote.

See no other mics up. Senator Limon, you may now close.

Thank you, Members. I appreciate the robust discussion and respectfully asked for an Aye vote.

Phenomenal. Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]