Senate Standing Committee on Rules

In today's agenda. Can we please establish quorum? Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Thank you. A quorum has been established. If there are no objections, I would like to take up first on today's agenda, Governor's appointments not required to appear. Starting with item 2D. The appointment of Indira Cameron Banks, J.D. a Member of the Civil Rights Council. I'll entertain a motion. Thank you so much. To Senator Reyes for that motion.

Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Three to two.

All right, thank you. That item is approved. Three to two. Next item for governor's appointment is not required to appear. We have item 2. E senar lomale from the Board of Barbering and Cosmetology. I'll entertain a motion. Thank you. I have a motion from Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] aye. 5 to 0.

All right, that motion is. The item is approved. Five to zero. Next, we have item for governor's appointments not required to appear. Item 2, f. C. Don Klejd, a Member of the. For the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco Board of directors. Do I have a motion? Thank you.

To Vice Chair Grove for that motion. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

All right, that is five to zero. Last item. For governor's appointments not required to appear, we have item 2G. Joshua Pertula, JD of the University of California College of Law, San Francisco Board of Directors. I'll entertain motion. We have a motion by Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

All right, we have that item is approved. Five to zero. Next, I'd like to take up item three. Reference to bills, two committees. I'll entertain a motion. Thank you. To Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

All right, that item is approved. Five, zero. Our final items before we turn to governor's appointees are items 4 through 10. For acknowledgments, I'll entertain a motion. Thank you. To Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

All right, that item is approved. Five to zero. We will now turn to governor's appointments required to appear. We have items 1A and 1B. The appointments of Linda Hopkins and Patricia Locke Dawson as Members of the Air Resources Board. Supervisor Hopkins and Mayor Loch Dawson.

And you'll have the opportunity to provide one to two minutes for your opening testimony to the Committee. So we will welcome you to come forward and have a seat up front. So thank you. You'll have one to two minutes for your opening statements. In your opening. You're welcome to do any introductions for guests that you may have.

We'll also be keeping time for your opening, and we will give you a prompt if you get close to that time. And we're going to go ahead and begin with Supervisor Hopkins and then proceed with Mayor Loch Dawson. Supervisor Hopkins, you may begin.

Thank you so much. I want to start off by thanking Governor Newsom for his support and appointment and Senator Pro Tem Limon and the Members of Senate Rules Committee for your time and your consideration today.

I also want to give a shout out to my husband, who is home handling school pickup dinner, goats, ducks, dogs and gymnastics chauffeuring duties so that I can be in Sacramento this afternoon. I'm a county supervisor representing wild and wonderful western Sonoma County. But more importantly, I'm a mom of three amazing kids.

I'm here because that I worry that we are leaving a worse world for our children. Our country is poised to reverse decades of progress in climate mitigation, and our politics are toxic. Our communities, our state, our country are more divided than ever before.

CARB leads the country and in many ways, the world on climate mitigation, and I'm excited to be part of that work. I have an academic background in climate science, and I've dedicated much of my working life to climate change, both as a farmer and through public service.

I'm also the kind of person who wants to meet with anyone and everyone. I want to engage deeply with all stakeholders on regulatory processes so that people can feel heard and included in the rulemaking processes.

I believe that respectful engagement can help overcome the us versus Them mentality that seems to pervade much of politics and government work these days. Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to answering all of your questions.

Thank you. Next, we will go with Mayor Loch Dawson. You may begin.

All right. Thank You. So. Good afternoon, Chair Members of the Committee, I want to thank you and the Governor for the opportunity to be considered for CARB then. I come before you as a pragmatic environmental scientist. And I'm committed to protecting our natural resources.

But I also think we need to be able to support our economy, industries and our communities at the same time. So. You know, I live in Riverside. I'm the mayor of Riverside. And the other night I was sitting out on my front porch and I was watching the sunset over the San Bernardino mountains. And it was beautiful.

The ridgeline glowed in the dusk. And it's a view I never take for granted because it wasn't always visible. And as a nine year old growing up in Riverside in the 1970s, I didn't know where those mountains were. I couldn't see them through the brown air.

And what I did know was how difficult it was to breathe on some days. And if you've ever had smoke blown in your face or cleaned with too much bleach or ammonia, you know what a smog day in Riverside was like.

So not only that was not the only part of my upbringing that I want to share with you. I also know what it was like to experience economic uncertainty. My family had to declare bankruptcy when I was very young, which was a very scary time. So.

So these experiences taught me that you need to be thinking about both when you're making decisions as a decision maker. And it's a false choice to say it's either economy or environment. I think we can do both. California's proven that we've come a long way since the 1970s.

Today, even on hot summer days, I can see those mountains and that progress is the result of real leadership. But still our work is not finished. Too many Californians continue to suffer from polluted air. But I want to join the board because I truly believe. I was mentioning this to Senator Lamone the other day.

This is an opportunity. Right now we're in a. In a time of change and opportunity. And I'm very excited to bring my experience and my pragmatism to the board. And if confirmed, I really want to approach service on the board with independence, but with respect to the legislature's role as well as the agency.

So having seen what thoughtful policy can do right there in my hometown, I'm confident in our future and our ability to make good decisions. And with that continued leadership, I just will forecast that there are blue skies ahead. So thank you very much for your time today. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Mayor Loch Dawson. So we're going to turn it to our Committee Members for any questions or comments.

I'll go first. Vice Chair Grove. I was expecting the former Secretary of Natural Resources to take the first roll, but I will go first. Thank you both for being here. Mayor and Supervisor. I appreciate the time that you spent with me on our pretty long zoom call with some serious questions that we had.

I did bring one specific issue to mind. And I appreciate you, Mayor, for, you know, talking about leakage or job loss and how the economy has to be able to survive even as we address some of the climate change issues that face not only California, but elsewhere in the world.

I recently got a WARN notice from a company who has operated in my district for a little over 60 years. A warn notice, a war notice, is a piece of a document notifying employees in the community, required by law if you have to let so many employees go that you have to notify them.

320 people got a copy of this warrant notice. And this facility has been, like I said, in my, my district, it produces soda ash, boric acid operations, and also sulfites and things like that.

It produces about 700 to 1 million tons of soda ash and borates, about 40,000 tons of, excuse me, 701 million tons of borates and about 40,000 tons of soda ash. We use that to make glass. Everything. Glass everything.

You know, whether it's a car windshield or a glass case at Starbucks or a glass that you drink out of your home, milk, water, whatever.

My huge concern is that when we close this plant down because they can't afford the cap and trade continuous escalation of purchasing carbon credits because of what they do out in the middle of the desert, not only will these 320 people lose our job, but the world supply of this product, 30% of it, the world's or global supply, will disappear.

The only other avenues we have is a little bit of soda ashes available in Green River, Wyoming. Like just a little bit, not much price710%. But the rest of it comes from China. China has already acquired 83 or 10, excuse Me8088 % of the global supply of critical minerals that we need.

Every day you look at what they've done, it's kind of like predatory lending. Like they'll go to the Congo and say, you know, we'll give you this money. And. And then when they default on the loan, then they just CZ assets, which is the critical minerals in the ground.

We are not only with policies that are coming out of this building that you are enforcing as A board we are not only critically jeopardizing.

Well, we are critically jeopardizing job and placement for high quality jobs, signatory jobs, jobs that are incredibly high paying and have benefits, but we are also jeopardizing the mineral supply that we would have and produce here in California. So now instead of figuring out a way to import oil, here we go.

We're going to figure out a way to import borates and so to ash so that we can continue to produce glass. My question is, is that I, I know how you feel. I, I would like you to respond as, as well, Supervisor Dawson and specifically City Council Member Hopkins.

And the reason why is because I've talked to you personally and I know that you understand that leakage, meaning job loss, is something that needs to be significantly considered when implementing policies like this.

And so I'd like both of you are fond of respond about, as a Senator that represents this area, how do I go back and tell those people that, you know, I had two people caught from CARB in front of me today.

They don't care, really that you're losing your job because you're still going to comply and pay your $35 million that you owe for the cap and trade, you know, and it's going to escalate again next year.

And you know, we realize if we let you keep it, you could probably replace that coal fired plant with a gas plant. But you know, we're not going to let you do that. And this is the policy and this is what you're going to do. And 320 people lose their job.

So that's my problem personally on the dais. I'm sure other people have other problems, but I'd like you to address how I'm going to talk to my constituents after this meeting.

You want to go? Me? Either one of you? Okay, you can start.

You know, I want to start off by saying that I have personal experience with leakage and that's a statement that I would not want taken out of context. But as a small farmer, you know, I used to sell vegetables at the farmer's market and I would compete against cheap out of country imports, right?

And here I am complying with some of the most sort of stringent regulations in the country when it comes to agriculture. And yet I was faced with these sort of cheap imports. And so when people come and ask, you know, why do your carrots cost more?

I would have to sit and spend five or 10 minutes kind of explaining how we pay our employees more, right? The cost of doing Business is higher in our community. The goods and services that we, you know, acquire in our community are more expensive than what other folks are dealing with out of state.

And when it comes time for you to sort of sit down and talk to your constituents, I would hope that you would be able to go back to them and say, the person that I met with is willing to sit down and talk to you and hear from you and learn more about your business.

Because that is my commitment, is that I have an open door policy, and I want to learn more about the impacts of regulation. I mean that for industry and for businesses and also for AB617 communities.

I think that part of our role as a Member of the Air Resources Board is to have an open door and to be willing to learn and to be curious. And so at the Bay Area Air District chair, I have learned more about oil refineries than I ever thought that I would know.

I've taken tours of almost all, except for one of the major oil refineries under the purview of the Bay Area Air District, and the last one is scheduled for the next couple of months. So I'm happy to. I think I shared my cell phone. If I didn't during that meeting, I would happily share it again.

And my commitment would be to learn. Senator Laird will ask you for that cell phone. Okay.

And then he shares it with all of us.

There you go. But I. Yeah, I would. I would want to hear from them and learn more. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. And similar to Supervisor Hopkins, I feel the same way. This is like, you know, I've been working in politics 25 years. This is my 15th year in elected office, and I don't think you get there without listening to people and caring. You know, you said the board not caring about people losing their jobs. I care deeply.

I care very deeply about that. And I also, when I mentioned in my opening comments that this is a time of, you know, opportunity, I really do believe that we're implementing new. New rules from legislation that passed last year. We have a new chair. We have new board Members coming on.

I'm not trying to, like, provide false hope here, but I do think we have new opportunities to talk in ways that we may not have been able to do that before.

So I appreciate that, and I appreciate that from both of you. And I know you conveyed that on the conversation, which gave me hope in the conversation that we had. I need to know how you're going to translate that communication. There's not a lot of time for communication.

The War notices, I believe, for 90 days, and then it's over. Like, it's just done. And when they idle the plant, just like the refineries that you toured, the largest one closed. You can't bring it back. And there goes 12% of our refining capacity.

So, I mean, it's all good that we'll sit down and talk and listen to people, but we've over the past years. I don't want to say talking time is over. It's not. I want to continue communication. But the decision. You can't tell a Fortune 20 company or a Fortune 500 company. Please don't make that decision.

Let us work with you on this. And then we don't work with them on it, if that makes sense. Yes, because they have a board that they report to and. And they have contracts that they have to eliminate. I know that when Valero closed, they bought out about a billion dollars of contracts.

They had secured contracts to buy people's oil for a significant amount of time. And then they just bought those contracts out and they paid out over a billion dollars just to get out of California.

These people are going to be in the same situation, and they are currently right now working with CARB on comment, but they are also working on what they have to do to shut down. They're notifying their customers, they're buying out contracts. They've given the warn notice, and some of the employees are already looking for other jobs.

When they leave, they may not come back, which creates a problem as well. So how do you translate your caring, your conversation, you're willing to listen and willing to learn into an action that will save some of these companies, specifically this one.

Yeah, I would really want to find out more about it, honestly. I mean, you're giving a scenario that I just heard about, so I don't know. Yeah.

And I would really like to know more about sort of what the, you know, what those decisions were that they are making to send out this war notice and, you know, in what role could CARB play in potentially, you know, winding that back, if possible?

So I don't know. I don't know.

I don't either.

Yeah, I don't know. And the reason why I say that is because it's. It's cap and trade. They have to buy down emissions. They're considered a high emitter because they produce these products for us. They went from 10 million to 22 million to 36 million. And this year I think it's higher than that.

And they just can't afford. They can't write a check for $36 million. I mean, that's it for the cap and trade carbon emission reduction program that they are on. So I don't know what can be done. That's why I'm asking. And this all kind of, you know, and I apologize for catching you off guard.

And not off guard, you're prepared. But in a public hearing we should have a private conversation. But it's pretty frustrating when you talk to the Director of this company and in a small community in Ridgecrest where we have financially distressed hospitals and like, it seems like the world is coming to an end now.

You have one of the largest employers laying off 320.

Yeah. So, yeah. And I would love to continue that conversation. Honestly, I do. And I think I speak for you too. I think you would as well. Try to find out more about it and see.

Well, thank you. Thank you. I can give you also a copy of the Warren notice. Let me just go here. We're implementing major regulations on off road diesel engines. Tier 5 rulemaking for diesel engines. There's farmers on the Carl Moyer program that provides essential grants. But you mentioned you're a farmer and you're competing with this.

The people you compete with don't have to comply with this regulatory process. They don't have to complain, comply with, you know, all the things that we do here in California. This is a significant hit to our farming community where I represent the top three food producing counties in the world.

We already minus 2.5 million acre feet of water that we need to have in order to keep small farmers in business. The large ones can buy it, afford it, they grow it, they have acreage. But small people, small farmers, can't. Can't do it.

And so one of the things that's going to be negatively impacting our food production here in the state where we continue to import more, is policies like this. Is there a directive from the Legislature or is it within the authorities purview? I know CARB has a wide range of purview on this.

So is there something that you guys are looking at to mitigate that damage to our farming community?

I can't answer the question about whether or not it would require legislative directive or if it's within CARB's authority. But I do want to note that I've already been having conversations with the Farm Bureau, actually also with Chair Sanchez about how do we lean in and engage more deeply with the agricultural community.

And so I'm actually in the process of scheduling a meeting and trying to bring in representatives from a lot of our different agricultural industries throughout the state to talk about specifically what are their top concerns in terms of cost escalation.

And I, you know, I've heard kind of anecdotes, right, about, you know, know, some folks, for instance, who, you know, utilize trucks a handful of times a year during grape harvest, and yet they're required to have inspections every six months and, you know, drive to sort of far away places in order to do that. I don't know.

You know, what if that is sort of actually under a different division or if that's a CARB rule?

I'm trying to learn more at this point in time, so I don't have an answer, but I do have a deep commitment to trying to get some, you know, substantive concerns that I can then bring forward to staff and, and talk through and see if there's anything that could be done or if this is something where we need legislative direction.

So it's a big passion of mine. And yeah, I really enjoy working with agricultural community.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I would agree with that as well. Just that I, I think, again, I'm not hedging the question, but just trying to find out more about the issue a little bit. On what remedy. Right.

The remedy has to be appropriate for the issue and understanding the issue a little bit more so you can figure out how to fix it or how to address it or what to tell the farmers. I have a lot of farmers in my district. I know you do. You've got the bread basket up there.

Like I said, we have everything from the largest carrot grower, blueberry grower, table grape grower, to the smallest farmer in the world, too, that operates on five acres. So a very diverse food production operation in the Central Valley. You know, they have issues with off, you know, with the. The new Tier 5 engines that automatically shut off.

You have the issues with, you know, they have to haul a tractor on a diesel trailer to get it to the field in which they operate because there's not enough electrification or fuel that will get it there and let it operate. So they have to come up with ways to do it.

I have to ask one last question. I apologize, Madam Chair. The city of Clovis is when there's a fire, like the creek fire up in the mountains, the high Sierras, they are considered. All of their stuff goes on emergency help, obviously, because we have a lot of kids camps up there.

A lot of people come from San Francisco and Los Angeles to send their kids up to the camp in Huntington Lake and Shaver Lake area. The Creek fire caused buses and a whole bunch of equipment to be operated as emergency vehicles to get those kids and people and campers and everybody outside because it was.

Were so many up there that the actual emergency vehicles couldn't do it. We had a huge problem because some of our electric vehicle or our vehicles have already been turned over to the electric capacity. They're fine.

I guess you can work with it and make it work because when you drive around town or from one place to a location, it's a flat. It's flat. And they will operate for four hours before you have to charge them again. But going straight uphill, 6,000ft, they die in 30 minutes.

And there's no charging stations in the Sierra Nevadas. So how do we figure out how to make communities safe while complying to the rules that you guys have to set?

Good question. I think one of the things I think is you need to be looking at different technologies. You can't just be relying on electric. I think we had this discussion on our 101, but I'm very technology agnostic. As long as it's clean and it's clean air, I want to see it employed. And so there's.

There may be better options to outfit some of the fleet vehicles. I'm not sure, you know, I think. But that's something. I just had a conversation with one of our. I think it was one of our haulers, our trash haulers, and I said, well, what happens when you get into an area that it's.

That you don't have any charging? And he said they're part of a larger network where they can tap in and the vehicles can go on beyond this, you know, the range of where they are. But that wasn't satisfactory to me. I think hope is not a strategy. I think you need to figure out, you know, what.

What your. What your worst case scenario is and what your bandwidth is, and then make sure you have it and you're covered.

Thank you. Yeah. And as I shared in our prior conversation, I was, I think, nine months in office when we experienced the 2017 wildfires in Sonoma County. And we've had several major wildfire disasters since then. So this issue is very near and dear to my heart.

I also am actually looking forward to backpacking in your district later this year and would hope that there would be buses able to evacuate me and my family and everyone else in the event of a disaster. I also represent a rural area where we don't actually have cell coverage or broadband in large swaths of my district.

And so the hope of, you know, fasting EV infrastructure is quite a number of years away for us, if not decades, based on how we've been able, unable to solve for other things that people consider automatic really in most municipal areas in the United States.

I've been meeting with all of the stakeholders after the vote on the ACF for public fleets and actually compiled sort of a four page white paper. I'm very, very lucky to have someone assisting me from the Bay Area Air District with this work. And so she was basically able to come compile all of that feedback.

I did share that with Steve Cliff, who shared it with his senior leadership team. And I do believe that at some point this month, if it hasn't happened already, there are 15 day changes that are expected to be released.

And really the concerns that I have raised are what I would call second responder vehicles because emergency vehicles are exempted, but that's per state law, what is defined as an emergency vehicle.

Whereas for us, we also had know, animal control, public infrastructure, public health, a lot of different departments from the county that actually had to go out into these far flung evacuated areas after the wildfire to clear them before we were allowed to repopulate those areas.

And so if we were to be reliant on EVs for some of these longer drives, also when we were without power for some parts of the district for multiple weeks, it could be very challenging. So I, I do believe that we need to have safety guards, you know, safeguards in place for those sorts of emergency situations.

And what, you know, I do believe that that is something that is currently under consideration, although it's within the jurisdiction at point, at this point of staff.

Okay. No, I appreciate that very much. And just to add to your thing, other than dog catchers and all that, we deployed school buses. Yes, and we did as well. Yeah, school buses. And you know, we're doing the one for one school buses now. So it's very difficult.

I mean, when they need 10 buses and we can offer one or two or three, you know what I mean? That's, it's difficult, especially when people's lives are in danger. So thank you for letting me ask those questions. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, for your indulgence.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. And we're going to go with Senator Laird.

Thank you very much. And I appreciate you meeting today, even though the budget hearing going on at the same time was a complication. So, so thank you. Let me pick up a little bit on sort of one thing that Senator Grove said.

And it, it's that in many ways you're caught in the middle on all this stuff because the Legislature through AB32, empowered the airborne to do so many things about the state's climate program. And then we sort of authorize how cap and trade will be spent.

We do certain things that are directions to you, even though you have this authority that's independent. And here are your local elected officials that probably sit through various conversations of how the state's doing things to the locals. And now you're at the state. So how do you balance this? How do you decide between all that.

That you're going to do what you think is right?

So, so how do I balance implementation? Yeah. Okay. The competing. Well, that is elected office in a nutshell, isn't it? I mean, you are, and I don't mean to be cheeky, I just, I think it's true.

You have, you often have, you know, one side yelling at you about, we just had a very contentious issue just this last week as Senator Reyes knows that we had to sit through. And unfortunately, you just have to, you have to do your information gathering.

I think you need to make sure you are listening to your constituencies, and I think you need to hear and validate what they have to say. And I think it has to be incorporated into your decision making. Ultimately, it rests with you. Right.

And I will say you give us the, you give us the laws and then as car board Members, we're to figure out the. Well, staff is to figure out the rules and implement them. Right.

So we need to find out what the intent was from you all and then make sure that those rules are hewing true to that intent. And so that's in the CARB realm.

And I would say that I live in a small town, so I can't get away from my constituents and my kids are very used to me going to the grocery store with them for a quick let's pick up dinner and ending up 20 minutes in the frozen food aisle.

Sometimes with someone who's really excited about what I've done and someone with some. Sometimes it's, you haven't paved my road in 50 years. And I'm like, well, the first 40 years weren't my fault, but when are you going to rate? Like, when are you going to pave the road?

And I would just say that I always vote how I can sleep at night. For me, I have votes where I guess I wish I might have had more information at the time, but I don't vote. I don't have regretful votes where I felt like I did something that went against my values.

And that's really, really important to me. And if I ever got to the point where I had to make those decisions or I was making those decisions, I would not be in this job anymore. So that's, that's important to me.

Well, I should tell you, I have a column of tips for new elected officials and one of them is, is if you're in the supermarket, get your frozen goods last or they will melt.

So, and one thing you said in the opening statement, and it plays off of what you're just talking about, you talked about AB617 and the fact that you have a charge to deal with frontline communities and actually in the getting shot at, in your role, get shot at from enviros, you really get shot at from environmental justice people.

How are you going to deal with the implementation of AB 617 and what that includes?

This is a huge passion of mine and I feel really lucky to be the chair of the Bay Area Air District and to get to learn from people who have lived experience that is very different from mine. Right.

I represent a very rural district and I find myself as the chair of, you know, this nine county Bay Area organization that oversees oil refineries and includes multiple Aviation 617 communities. What's really important to me is that people often come at government with frustration because of the power dynamic, right.

You have these Brown act meetings where someone has two minutes and they have to sort of put all of their thoughts, hopes, dreams and frustrations into that two minutes while we sit up on the dais on high and deliberate what sometimes feels like endlessly, right. While they have to wait for us to make a decision.

That's a terrible dynamic and it often leads, leads to frustration. And so one of my passions is really meeting people where they are, as in, in their hometown, in their community. And so it's important for me to get out of the office and hear from folks directly.

And whenever there's frustration in the community, whenever there's a pain point, in my opinion, that's not where we shy away, that's where we lean in. I want to find out what's causing that, how do we actually address it?

And sometimes you have to get through some tough meetings and kind of work through that frustration before you can actually get to the point where people are willing to sit around and talk about solutions. But I'm committed to hopefully working through sometimes that anger, that frustration, those arrows Right.

I think we all come with Shields at this point, you know, in. In our careers, so that we can actually get to the part where we're. We're just sitting around a table as human beings trying to figure out how we can make this work for everyone.

Thank you. Anything you want to add to that?

Just that I sort of came out of the conservation community and environmental communities. So for me, I think I speak the language of the groups in ways probably that are relatable. But to the supervisor's point, too, these folks are all. They come at you from very different experiences. Right.

So I think it's incumbent on us to ensure that we value those experiences. Right. You can't dismiss people. You can't just because they don't look like you, talk like you act like you care about the same. Same things you do. Right. Our charge as board Members, our charge as elected officials, is to serve our community.

And sometimes that may be something that we may not necessarily agree with or do. But if that's what the community wants, you're the decision maker. You need to follow it.

Thank you. I think the Governor made two good appointments. I look forward to support.

Thank you, Senator.

Thank you. Senator Laird, Senator Reyes.

Thank you. And thank you both for taking time. To meet with me beforehand. I wanted to begin with Supervisor Hopkins.

I want you to know that your passion came through, obviously came through when we had our discussion. You've shared here about 8617 communities of which I have in my community.

One of the areas that has been of great importance to me is the overburdening of our communities with warehouses, not so truck traffic, and that's the light and that's the noise and more importantly, health hazards to our communities.

I would ask very specifically what you feel that you can do as a Member of CARB to help with the implementation now that through cap invest 250, $50 million or some number close to that will be invested this year and we hope every year after next, almost 15 years.

How do you see investing to make sure we now implement all those reports that were prepared by those AB617 communities?

That's a great question. You know, and you know, as CARB, we sort of stay away from the financial decisions. Right. Those are the legisl. But I really look forward to working closely with the community steering committees from AB617 communities throughout the state.

I do believe that just the formation of AB617 communities was essentially a promise to these communities who had quite frankly been dismissed and ignored, you know, for decades and felt very kind of silenced. I'm just saying statewide in the state of California, while they continue to sort of accrue the impacts of.

Of the things that really benefit all of the state of California. Right. I mean, there are a lot of folks out way in the, you know, the woods in my district who enjoy their Amazon prime being delivered. Right. And yet there's clearly not one of those warehouses, you know, out in western Sonoma County.

And so I look forward to, you know, kind of learning more about how those funds are going to be spent and the ways in which the California Air Resources Board might be engaged. Also, with respect to warehouses, I believe that South Coast went forward with an indirect source rule.

We have yet to do that on the Bay Area Air District, but it is something that we are looking at this year. And I believe that right now from the CARB perspective, that we would need further sort of delegated authority from the Legislature in order to look at some kind of a statewide framework.

But to me, I'm actually, and I don't mean this on everything, but I'm actually, I think a rare local elected official that sometimes welcomes statewide frameworks from the state because it can decrease Right. Over concentration and overburdened communities. Actually, if you have rules that apply equally to everyone as opposed to. Right.

Having sort of Patchwork, you know, land use controls. And so that sometimes leads to over concentration and essentially potentially creating the next generation of AB617 communities.

And Mayor Dawson Locke. Dawson, obviously you're in the middle of these communities. In fact, AB98 specifically calls out the Inland Empire as having been overburdened.

Is there anything in particular that you have done when it comes to land use and decisions regarding land use that have benefited the community and taken advantage of AB98, which is a floor, not a ceiling?

Yeah, well, a couple things, right. I think while it would, many of the communities around us have considered, and the city of Riverside considered at 1.0 a moratorium on warehouse for land uses. And that didn't fly in my community initially and it just didn't pass in Marino Valley either. We just talked about that.

But so when you, when you don't, you can't get that rule over the, over the finish line. What do you do? Right. You have to start working in different ways. So like for us, we just recently passed the most stringent good neighbor guidelines we could with our warehouse use.

We are trying to encourage and perhaps even condition warehouses built on spec to be a little bit more available for manufacturing so we can reduce truck traffic. We've been working with California Highway Patrol to site truckers from, you know, using the roads they're not supposed to be on, coming back and forth.

So, you know, you can't, you can't always get what you want, but it doesn't mean you should just throw your hands up in the air and give up. You still have to work to ensure that the communities are protected.

So that's what we've been doing because I don't have to tell you, we have the worst air quality in the country in our region.

And something you said at the beginning in your opening statement, I, I hear often that, you know, years ago we would look out and you couldn't see the mountains. And now at least we can see the mountains. But the reason we can see the mountains is because it's now diesel particulate matter that is so much smaller.

And so it's not going to be dark because of the regulations we've been able to pass. But that diesel particulate matter is still there and still entering the lungs, especially of our young, young children and also our seniors who are most affected.

And so I go back AB98 in particular, or any other legislation that has been passed, knowing that is a floor.

What more because you're in charge of land use as a mayor along with your city council what more can you do as the mayor to make sure that when we're making, when you are making decisions, when your council is making decisions, and maybe initially you don't have a vote unless you have to break the tide, but to make sure that your voice, which is a strong voice, is heard by those around.

And I want to add also that you've talked about this balance and it is important between economic growth and warehouses, for instance. But where do you weigh in the health of the community, the actual health of the community? When the American Lung association says that the Inland Empire is number one for diesel particulate matter, number one.

So how do you weigh that and say, well, but we still need more businesses. What kind of businesses are we allowing in?

Yeah, I think. Well, my city has now become quite the hub for clean and green technology and electric vehicles and also hydrogen powered vehicles. So we're trying to encourage more of that within my city. So I can say that that locally, that's a big thing.

I've launched our Office of Sustainability, our own fleet at the city of Riverside. We take care of our own house first. Right. We have been the greenest fleet in North America for two years running because we have done our fleet.

We've launched the very first ever, as we can tell, in the country, clean air car share program with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. I did mention I was technology agnostic and I believe that we got to work. We got whatever we can work that's keeping the air clean though, right?

So the things that we can do within our power and the things that I can do as mayor within my power, I am trying as much as I can.

So follow up question, if I may, on the hydrogen last year and the year before, not so much last year we didn't spend a whole lot of time here, but the year before we passed AB126.

And one of the big issues had to do with hydrogen because it was being touted as one of the clean energy, clean energy, and yet not all hydrogen is created equal.

So we have different ways of defining what hydrogen is and whether it's green and is it just green in name or is it really green or is it gray or is it something else? And so how, if that's one of the.

It's good to be tech agnostic, resource agnostic, but how do you ensure that it's going to be clean hydrogen?

Well, we're really fortunate, as you know, to have CARB in my city. So the CARB headquarters is there, which has the testing and also CSERT at UCR, which is the center for environmental and research technology. So we tend to follow a lot of their advice with respect to what constitutes clean, you know, clean fuel sources.

UCR does a lot of research on this. And so that's. I, as a scientist, I like to read those reports and see what's, what's coming in and what we can. The ones that we have coming, I know are we've got electric trucks, we've got electric buses. I have hydrogen powered trains for the Olympics that are coming in.

We have battery storage now with AI informed technology to help with the storage. So different ones.

And my last question, Madam Chair, for both of you, can you describe how you evaluate projects in vulnerable communities and these are the impacted communities in these vulnerable neighborhoods when economic opportunity and pollution impacts are both at stake?

Yeah. I feel like this is probably more relevant to my role as county supervisor than it is would be to a role on the California Air Resources Board. But I am the kind of person who really dives into the details in terms of, you know, staff analysis and what are the projected, you know, potential health impacts.

And that's a lot of what we consider Right. On the Bay Area Air District, when you're talking about rules and regulations. Right. What is the potential cost on one side, what are the potential savings on the other in terms of reduced health impacts?

And so, you know, if it is something that is within my district, that's when I really sort of take, try to take a lead role as a county supervisor to meet with the planners, to have lots of conversation with staff, and then to really take the time to hear from the community as well.

And because when we're on the Board of Supervisors, we serve in a quasi adjudicatory role when we're making land use decisions. Those are all sort of technically ex parte communication. So it can be a bit of a headache because you have to sort of, you know, log them all.

But I'm really committed to that process because I really believe that everyone voice needs to be heard and you have to familiarize yourself with actually where it is, you know, which I know my district pretty well, but even when I'm making a decision that's not in my district, I try to visit the space just because I want to see what it looks like on the ground.

So that's kind of how I approach land use decisions from the local level. Thank you.

Yeah. And I would answer, too. I think we need to be looking at data after we make decisions too. Right. I think we pass a lot of rules. We Pass a lot of regulations, and then we don't know, like, what happened. So I think, for example, we just did the ISR for the railroads and the.

And the warehouses and at South Coast aqmd. And we've asked that to come back to AQMD so we can look at, you know, what's. What, what's status, what's our report card, what's going on there. Because I want to make sure the rules we're doing are meaningful. Otherwise, you know, we just. They are just add to the pile.

I'm telling you they are. I know they are studies, but I'm telling you. And let's put that information out. I will tell you that that was very. That was powerful to have you take on that role or take on that particular decision and provide those protections. That was very powerful. But I'm sorry.

Zero, no, I was just going to say, I know it's. I know they're making a difference, and I think we need to let people know. I mean, the voters need to know. I think, you know, because of what you were saying about the arrows and all sorts of stuff.

How about let's inform them, let's tell them, okay, this rule, maybe you didn't like it, but here are the benefits of it and here's what we should be considering going forward. I think it's. It's not crazy, right?

Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Senator Reyes. Senator Jones.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have just a couple of questions out of curiosity, not necessarily qualifying questions. Mayor Loch Dawson, on your resume, you mentioned PLD Consulting as your. I'm assuming those are your initials. Your company. What kind of consulting do you do?

Oh, what my business was. Yes, it's on hiatus at the moment while I'm mayor, but it was a governmental affairs consulting practice. So I got to work with Senator Laird back when he was. Before he was a Senator to get some legislation passed. Get legislation passed regarding the Santa Ana river, get some. Some money for that.

And then you. You state that you were a field representative in the Assembly. What Assembly Member did you work for?

I worked for Jose Medina for three years. Yeah.

We like Jose Medina. He's a good guy. And then Supervisor Hopkins. I was looking at the board agenda for the Bay Area Air District last week, and they posted several locations that people could view the meeting in person and then the streaming of it.

And I'm just curious, for the Bay Area Air District, they list the lodge at Torrey Pines in San Diego as one of the locations I'm just wondering why that is.

That is because Supervisor Howbert was traveling. And so he posted the location, which is actually my old stomping grounds. I grew up in San Diego. I spent my summers in your district at Paso Picacho Campground, hiking Stonewall Mountain, getting apple pie and rocks from Julian. And so that's why we had one particular board Member who was traveling.

Well, if I would have known that, I might have attended it.

Right.

So just to kind of segue into some questions kind of regarding, you know, thought processes and things like that. Mayor, I appreciate your comments and your opening about it's not a false choice to choose between good policy and economics. I also am going to resonate with my colleague about, you know, the view of the mountains.

As I grew up in the east county of San Diego, driving up to Riverside, I remember the days driving into Temecula, you couldn't see the mountains. And so I do think California has done a great job. Low carbon fuel standards was passed by CARB last summer or the summer before. I don't remember exact timing on that.

But only two CARB Members raised concerns about the low carbon fuel standards and how that was going to equate to cost of living for Californians. Only two board Members voted against that new standard. And the board Member, Flores, his main reason for. I think he agreed with the policy.

I don't want to speak for him, but he has written about it, raised the concern that there was not an economic analysis done by the staff at CARB to provide the board members with more information on how this vote was going to impact our constituents.

And so I'd just like to, if you want to say how you would have voted on that, you're certainly welcome to do that if you'd like. Rather, rather speak generally to. As a board Member, are you going to ask for staff to provide you that information or are we just going to keep going down the road?

We're going down. The majority of the. Of that board went. Is that clear enough? Do I need to clean that up a little bit?

I think she understood. I did, yeah. First of all, I have a personal rule which is I never say how I would vote unless I've done the homework. And because that was before my time, I have not read the packet, met with the stakeholders.

For me, it's really important to go into any vote being as educated as I possibly can on something. So that's not me punting, that's me truly wanting to do my homework on that particular subject, which I have not immersed Myself in because it hasn't come back before the board.

You say an economic analysis would be something that you would like to consider. And as the background information for those votes.

I support socioeconomic analyses. And that is something that both CARB and local air districts do in terms of looking at sort of the overall cost and the overall potential benefits. Right. In terms of health cost savings, for instance, for any regulation.

And we're actually currently having a conversation at the Bay Area Air District of do we want to go deeper than that?

And so I kind of look forward to this conversation at the Bay Area Air District of how can we, you know, sort of set the gold standard in terms of socioeconomic analysis as part of our rulemaking process. And I'm hoping that maybe this is potentially, you know, a pilot project to see how deep can we go.

And is that something that might be replicable in other air districts or in other agencies?

Yeah, and I think I'm same. I don't. That was before my time that. That that was voted on. But I will say this. I think my understanding of the criticism about the analysis is sort of a matter of degrees, like overarching. Did it get down into the weeds? Was it at the consumer level? And I think that's.

That's what I understand was the rub with that. But I may be wrong about that. There was a lot of rubs, but that was one of them.

Well, I'm sure they're continuing to be rubs. I think the having socioeconomic analysis, as the supervisor said, is critical. And I think it's part of any analysis that you do. I think you have to have it, I think. Right. Okay.

Yes.

Thank you. I appreciate Senator Laird referring to AB32. He used the term authorized. I'm going to use the term abdicated. The Legislature abdicated a lot of their responsibility to CARB. And CARB is now in California and actually across the country and maybe the globe, you know, the most powerful branch of government.

And I don't think that anybody ever expected it to be a branch of government, but I would argue that it has become that. I do appreciate, you know, your comments so far, and I think they're in line with bringing CARB back to reality on how their rulemaking impacts constituents.

There's a couple of things I'd like to get your personal opinion on if it's okay. There's a big move across the state right now that has just been baffled me and I really think. And I'll just share my commentary. I think it's showing that some of the. Environmental stuff has gone maybe a little bit too far.

And we're talking about outlying natural gas stoves. And I know that hasn't come to CARB yet, but a lot of the local jurisdictions have done. A lot of local airborards have done it locally. Municipalities have taken that step.

Do you think is it your belief that natural gas stoves are going to be the end of humanity and that the CO2 emissions from a natural gas stove, if we ban natural gas stoves in California, we're going to save the planet.

I don't know if it's saving the planet. So we had this come before us at aqmd, but it was for heaters. It was for. Same thing. I know. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. It's. Some jurisdictions are heaters, some jurisdictions are stove.

Yeah. And I think it wasn't so much the same as it was an air quality issue for people inside the house or in the apartment. I think was more consensus. I think they used to get it. Yeah, we had it at South Coast, a qmd and it was a pretty contentious vote. It was a big decision.

And I ultimately voted no on that actually because I felt that I was trying to look for a little bit longer market rollout. You know, what is the saying? That leadership is change that at a rate people can absorb. Right. And I think it's the same thing. I think our technology wasn't quite there with our manufacturers.

So I sent it back, I asked to go back to Committee so we could look at potential having better, you know, design with, with better incentives and some other things with the, with the manufacturers. But it was last year, so I can't really remember the specifics of it.

But that was, and I will say, I mean this was something Manny Perez, I think many of you know Manny, he voted, he was really emphatic. He voted no on it, which was surprising I think. But he did it because of his constituency.

When you say vote no, you mean voted no on the band.

Yes, yes. So. And he did it because he represents a constituency that is, you know, a lot of low income folks and he felt that they would not be able to afford the transition out of natural gas. So, you know, it was a pretty spirited discussion. I know. But I think it's coming to carp later this year.

I think we're going to. Might be coming to us again, I.

Think maybe on a longer time.

On a longer time, yeah. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. You know, so do I think that, you know, gas stoves or gas appliances are sort of end all be All Darth Vader? No. Do I think that ag burning is end all be all? What's the Harry Potter evil guy? I don't even remember. Let's go with Darth Vader, you know? No.

Do I think that thoughtful regulation can transition us to a place that, you know, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and protects people's health? Yes, I do. And so I think the question is how.

I actually voted yes on the Bay Area rule, but with substantial exemptions, which we're actually currently working through, because I know that I have constituents who would be bankrupted by having to electrify their house.

Because a lot of the folks that I represent, myself included, I think my sort of little old farmhouse was built in like, I don't know, the 1920s or 1930s. We have a lot of really old housing stock. I have a lot of constituents, actually, who rely on Wood burning stoves for heat.

I'll have a lot of folks who are actually on propane, not natural gas. Right. Because they rely on propane deliveries because they're not near a natural gas service area.

So I do think that we need to think about thoughtful transitions, but I think that it needs to come from, you know, not kind of a black and white perspective. Right? It's like, how do we get there together? How do we find ways to transition?

There are some instances where it actually creates substantial cost savings in addition to public health benefits. Right. How do we go after that low hanging fruit and help folks, you know, transition to cleaner fuels?

I just gotta say, it's funny. We both had the same analysis and perspective, but we had different votes and.

We had different rules that came before us also.

So that's true. I will share, Supervisor Hopkins, one of my frustrations with Sacramento, both the Legislature and the different rulemaking bureaucracies is something that you alluded to is we pass a law or pass a rule and then we give a list of exemptions to folks that are exempted from that rule.

Where, you know, my preference is we just don't make the rule in the first place until we're ready to have it across the board.

Because I think we're just giving too much power to the government at that point in time when the government's controlling who's exempted and who's not exempted, and the legislators or the rule makers, whoever, are now removed from that process and not accountable to how it's impacting our constituency. That's just. That was free. That's not in my notes.

May I share a frustration, which is that one of My biggest frustrations is set it and forget it policy. Right. I call it crock pot policy. Right.

You know, which is like we often pass rules and then we don't actually check in to see are they working, did they create a benefit or is this just sort of creating undue burden that actually isn't delivering what we had anticipated. And I think that's something that we all need to do, state, local, regional to sort of.

That actually kind of is in my notes. Are you willing to with that then? Are you willing to go back to CARB and you know, some of these policies that they've passed in the past that are now negatively impacting our constituents, for example, LCFs, and ask them to reevaluate that and bring you more information?

I'm not, I need to learn more about LCFs, but I will say that's one of the reasons that I'm actually meeting with agricultural stakeholders to find out what are their biggest pain points. When did that happen? You know, what can we do going forward?

And so I am very open to hearing, like I don't want, you know, I don't want you to be getting a warrant notice, you know, Senator Grove, I want to know why. I want to know what are those pain points because I do think that oftentimes we don't have to deal with the ramifications directly. Right.

Of some of those decisions that might happen years after something was passed.

Last question, just to get kind of your thoughts on a particular energy issue. Several of us have traveled internationally to look at different types of nuclear energy and nuclear technology that's emerging. I'm not saying that, you know, California is ready to build a nuclear power plant today. I would. Yeah, yeah.

And I think even some of our Democrat colleagues are getting there as well. It's being argued by lots of specialists and experts that we're not going to get to zero carbon emissions on energy without nuclear, even in California.

Can you share, and this is a General, you know, just a General question, nothing specific on what your thoughts are towards nuclear. Are you open minded to having a conversation about it? Have you done some studying like some of us have done to, you know, be start advocating for the science of it?

Where are you at on that? I have a quick one.

All right. I have a quick. I would just say Riverside owns its own public utility, so we have electricity and we're looking at it right now.

Okay. You are considering nuclear in Riverside.

I would like to learn more about it. My current sort of preferred alternative energy source is enhanced or advanced geothermal which we are pursuing aggressively. And I actually learned that. We talked. So we said synthetic geothermal. I was like, what is that? I texted our CEO of Sonoma Clean Power. He's like, zero, that's the same thing.

I'm like, oh, my goodness. You were talking about the same thing that we're working on in Sonoma County. I would love to see strong CEQA streamlining happening to support that energy development. Because right now what's happening is that kind of energy is being developed in Utah instead of in California.

And when you look at the footprint, I mean, the finished product is about the size of this table. Most of it's underground. They have to make a sort of large staging area, but it's very, very minimal. I had an opportunity to tour a plant in Utah, and I was really inspired and hope that we can do more.

That's 24/7, 365, renewable energy that can be deployed through most of the state of California.

It is. It's cool.

Yes.

It's so cool. I didn't know about it being synthetic either, until you mentioned it. So it is a neat. It's a neat technology.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And as you know, geothermal would be applicable in Imperial county as well, near San Diego. So that's good. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Senator Jones. I appreciate you all coming forward. I do have a couple questions. You know, I think today's questions are a reflection of just the diverse kind of perspectives we have, you know, as to where CARB should be, what CARB is doing. When we talked to both of you, right. When we.

When we spoke, we spoke a little bit about the intersection between the Legislature and CARB. And so I'm going to follow up on that just a little bit and ask you two questions in regards to the Legislature and CARB.

First and foremost, I'd like for each of you to tell me what you think the appropriate role of the Legislature is in working with CARB and vice versa.

I mean, we talked about this, but I think, you know, you set the rules. CARB, you set the law. CARB implements the rules. But. But I kind of mentioned this at the beginning, too, is we need to know really understand fully what the.

What the intent of the Legislature is, because it's not always clear just from the written legislation. Right. So I think. I mean, I would love to talk with you more about it. Right. If you felt that, like, it wasn't getting. It wasn't getting implemented in the way that you wanted it, I would want to know why.

I'd want to hear from you. I'd want you to call me or I'd want to call you. Right. I'd want to find out. And then this is just something else we, you know, we were chatting about earlier. But, you know, it's in all levels of government, as I've worked in federal, state, local, all this.

There's always that tension, right, between the rulemaking body and then the implementer. And it's not just CARB. CARB happens to be a very streamy example, I think, for what goes on. But I think there's a tension there and I think it's actually a good one. I think it's.

I think it's good if it's communicated well and you figure out between the two, what the intent is, because you do want both in the mix and you want them to be able to communicate better so that you have a more robust decision making process.

I completely concur with everything that she said. And I feel like, you know, if. I know that you're all extremely busy people. We're busy people. Sometimes it's hard to take the time. But I think that if anything at any point is going sideways, I would like to hear about it. I would like to have a conversation.

I would like to set up conversations with staff and make sure that we are fulfilling the intent of the Legislature.

So let me ask you part two of that. How will you ensure that your service to CARB reinforces rather than conflicts with the legislature's efforts to protect specifically vulnerable communities?

I know this is a big one here. I'll let you go.

Yeah. I mean, so are you sort of talking about AB617 in particular? Are you talking about sort of new sort of, you know, bills or legislative actions that have happened since vulnerable communities. As defined by 617 or other?

I mean, for me, it's about going back to that open door policy and really wanting to hear directly, you know, we are very lucky, I think that we're. I don't know what, in terms of timing, but I know that we are shortly going to have sort of the new ejac, you know, seated at CARB.

And I look forward to getting to know them. And actually I would welcome recommendations from all of you and from any Member of the Legislature over who should we be connecting with in your district. What are those? AB617, community based organizations or community leaders that, you know, please share my cell phone.

I genuinely want to sit down with them and if I'm able to maybe add on, because sometimes CARB does meet in Riverside, you know, and get down to Southern California and sit down with some folks and learn more about their concerns. I would really love the opportunity to do that.

But to me, I mean, being on the Bay Area Air district, like the AB617 communities, that is our top priority. That is, in my opinion, why air districts exist. And so it's. It's really critical to me that we are upholding the intent of that law.

Yeah, I mean, that's what I was going to say is we do. We're sort of that go between right on the air districts. We're embedded in the community. And I think we can wear that hat. We can wear the CARB hat.

But I also think, like at AGMD, we do these like, roadshow kind of things where we go out to the communities and meet with them, we talk about technology, we find out what their issues are. I'm a big. I like to go out and discuss, meet with folks in the community.

But I'd also want to understand more closely what it is that if you. What you'd like to see, but also, you know, push back on. Push back on CARB staff when you need to too. Right.

If it's something you feel that it's not being done in the intent or the spirit of what you're trying to get done, I'd want to know about that and ask some questions of CARB staff for sure.

Thank you. Let me ask you just a little bit about our climate framework, which is. Tends to be such a big focus, not just for us, but also for CARB and the work that you do. So are there any aspects of our current state's framework that you believe need to be modified and. Or reconsidered?

If so, which elements and why?

To be honest, I feel like I'm caught a little bit off guard because I tend to think of what is the state's framework and how do we implement it, since that really is our role on the California Air Resources Board. So I honestly, because I'm not a legislator, that's not something that I had previously considered.

So I will say that it's something. It's a very delicate balance. And I recently had the opportunity to travel to COP in Brazil where there were huge protests against any kind of a cap and trade system.

And so there are some people who don't even believe in that framework and some folks who are very passionate about environmental justice and feel like you're basically allowing people to pay to pollute my community. That. That's one perspective you have another perspective, which is that industry. Right.

We are one of the most aggressive in terms of handing out the fewest free allowances to industry out of any of the major sub national cap and trade systems. Right. There are some cap and trade systems that almost give out 100% free allowances to what industry needs in order to operate.

We don't do that, which is how we're able to have ggrf, which the Legislature chooses to invest as appropriate. And so it's a very, very tough balance when you're on that spectrum. And I appreciate the question. I feel like I need go do homework to give it a really decent answer. So I apologize.

Yeah. And I too was at COP and I thought it was interesting. On the flip side of that, we heard from other countries that they're looking at California's cap and trades or cap and invest now. Right.

System to emulate, particularly to help try to pay for some of the countries that do not, you know, on a global scale, some of the countries that do not have the resources to implement some of these things. So it was kind of interesting.

But to just to your point, I mean, I was looking at some stuff the other day. Let's see, we got AB32, SB32, AB398, AB1279, AB1207, SB840. Right. I mean we have a lot of laws that are dictating what we do for our climate framework.

So the question would be what parts of those laws maybe are not being implemented in a way that we think are fruitful, I guess is the question.

I think this, I'm very interested to dig in more to your legislation from last year and see just what we can do with our, with our offsets and our leakage problem that we have. So I'd really like to dig in a little bit more on that.

Well, thank you. And I certainly appreciate the recognition that the Legislature creates the law, that the Legislature sets the direction.

I think that is important and I appreciate that it's been recognized that that's the role of the Legislature and that you as appointees are there to, you know, ensure that our agency, who is responsible for the regulatory process and implementation process of the laws that are directed by the legislation. So I think that that's important.

I think for me to hear and for you, I've heard both of you point back to us and I think that there's a welcome understanding of that as well. This is a very, very important agency.

I think that the sense that you get, you know, no matter where Our questions are coming from or, you know, our view on the issue itself. The level of engagement you're getting from us is a reflection of the importance of this agency for our state and for the well being, I think, of our constituents.

So many of us share the same priorities of wanting to make sure that California is a place where people can live, where people can afford, and also just breathe clean air. That's important. One of the questions. Right. That was posed and we were talking about is the cost.

There is a cost to a new stove and there is also a cost to seeking health, you know, medicine and support when you are really sick because something made you sick in the air. And so both of those things are true and both of those things are things we all struggle with on this dais.

We all care about that. Certainly, I think, you know, we have also talked about how we can all better find a way to assess different lens, different impacts. And as board members, certainly, you know, have in mind that the legislature's role is to provide direction.

But as we roll out the process, the guidelines, that we don't lose sight of the intent of the Legislature and we don't alienate communities that don't feel heard, no matter how different or where they're at, that we don't do that.

And so I think, you know, there's been a little stain in some of that, I think, in the past. And so my hope is that as board Members, as you're thinking about all of the issues that are important to the Legislature, that that will also be one that is included in the thought process.

I appreciate both of you coming forward and having individual conversations with all of us, us about your interest in serving in one of our state's more important agents.

All are important, but a very important agency for our state that has the same goal that I think every single one of us individually has, which is to make sure that we're providing the best that we can for our communities and for those that we represent.

So with that, I am going to open it up to public comments. So we're going to start with public comment. I ask that you just state your name, your affiliation and position on your support and then we will move forward to opposition.

Good afternoon. Staci Heaton with the Rural County representatives of California, representing 40 rural counties statewide, including the county of Sonoma. We are here today in support of Supervisor Hopkins and her confirmation. And we appreciate your time. Thank you, you.

Madam Chair Members. Amy Brown. I'm here to offer my support to my dear friend and colleague, Mary Lock Dodson.

Madam Chair. Members. Chris McKayle on behalf of the California Renewable Transportation Alliance. And we support both the supervisor and mayor in their confirmation. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Alan Es with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in strong support of our Chair and Supervisor Hopkins. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Martin Radosevich on behalf of Heirloom Carbon in strong support of the mayor and supervisor for their confirmation. Thank you.

John Winger on behalf of the RNG Coalition in support of both nominations.

Michael Pimtel here on behalf of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association in support of Mayor Loch Dawson.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. Don Gilbert for the California Municipal Utilities Association which has had the opportunity to work with Super Supervisor Hopkins. Enjoyed the experience and supports the nomination confirmation.

Bill McGovern with Coalition for Clean Air. Also speaking for Californians Against Waste in support of Supervisor Hopkins confirmation.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. Kendra dijogo with the Goalkeeper Group on behalf of the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance in support of both of the candidates. Thank you.

Madam President. Members Kome Ajise from the Southern California Association of Governments here in support of Mayor Loch Dawson.

And if we have anyone in opposition in the room, this is now the opportunity to come forward. Seeing no one in opposition, I am going to bring it back for final thoughts from our colleagues. And so I see. I'm going to go with Senator Jones and then I'll go with Vice Chair Grove.

I just wanted to respond to your concerns because I share them about CARB being responsive to the Legislature. And this is not directed towards either of the candidates today. This is a general frustration with CARB overall since my very first budget sub 3 Committee hearing in the Assembly dealing with CARB. Madam Pro Tem, I would support.

If down the line we get all more frustrated with the lack of response from CARB, I would suggest that we just zero out their budget in the budget process and I'll bet we'll get some response from them at that point in time. So Madam pro Tem, I move both.

Confirmations to the floor. Thank you. Thank you for the suggestion, Senator Grove. I mean Senator Jones. And thank you for the motion. So with nothing else, we're going to go ahead and we're going to call the roll and we will start with. We have. We have a motion made by Vice Chair Grove.

We're going to start with Senator Hopkins as a Member of the Air Resource Board.

[Roll Call] Four to zero.

I thought he was a no. Not voting. Not voting. Okay. All right. The appointment for Supervisor Hopkins has been approved to the full to move to the full Senate for confirmation. With that 40 vote, now we have a motion also for Mayor Locke Dawson as a Member of the Air Resource Board.

And that motion was made by Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

All right. That appointment has been removed to move to the full Senate for confirmation. I want to thank all those that were here in support for the individ that we had in front of us today and certainly appreciate you being here and you working with us. So thank you.

So for our final item, we're now going to return to governor's appointees required to appear. We have item. I believe it's 4C 1C. Sorry. The appointment of Andrew Rakestraw, J.D. chair of the board of Environmental Safety. Chair Rake Straw. You'll have the opportunity to provide one to two minutes for your opening testimony to the Committee.

And we welcome you use your introduction for any guest introductions.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Senator Pro Tem. Senators, my name is Andrew Rakestraw and I'm honored to be here. I'd like to begin by recognizing my wife, Rachel, who is in the audience here today.

I'd also like to thank Governor Newsom and his team for placing their trust in me, along with Cal EPA Secretary Garcia, board staff, my fellow board Members, DTSC and the public.

Prior to this appointment, I spent 12 years at the U.S. Department of State, where I held roles in the Climate Change Office, Office of Special Presidential Envoy John Kerry, and the Office of the Legal Advisor. Most recently, I served as the Deputy Head of the US Delegation to the UN Climate negotiations.

I have experience as a negotiator, a facilitator, a regulator and a lawyer. My experience to date has taught me a few things. First, how to truly listen to all stakeholders. Second, how to resolve complicated, consequential issues with profound impacts on communities. Third, how to understand interests, not just positions. Fourth, the critical importance of being guided by science.

And finally, the importance of a transparent, inclusive and efficient process. I'll end by underscoring that I'm deeply aware of the history that led to the creation of this board.

And I'm committed to ensuring that the Department of Toxic Substances Control remains transparent, accountable, fiscally stable, and responsive to both the concerns of the regulated community as well as communities in California that are disproportionately burdened by toxic pollution. Thank you for considering my nomination.

We will bring it to Committee Members for questions or comments. We're going to go ahead and begin with Senator Laird and then we'll go to Senator Reyes.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to meet. I really appreciated it. And you, I can't remember how euphemistically you just dealt with it in your statement, but you did talk about the fact that there's a past history with the Department.

And I know from just my experience it was struggling in the last Administration and it's been moving. How would you sort of characterize where it is and what your role is now in sort of oversight and continuing that progress with the Department.

Thank you very much, Senator. I would say since the passage of SB158 and since reform of DTSC began, DTSC has made strides in certain areas. For example, they are nearly caught up with the past permitting decisions of the decades old long permits. I know that was a big push for reform.

DTSC is now a more fiscally stable agency than they were pre reform as well. That said, we do hear concerns at each one of our Board meetings in between about, for example, DTSE not being responsive or as responsive as they could be to community concerns, to the regulated entities, their concerns.

I think fundamentally we hear a desire to be involved earlier in the process and for that comment and that input to be reflected in the final output as well. Of course, the board's role is to continue the reform process. And how I thought about it is reform is not an end state, it is a process.

And the board's role is fundamentally to push DTSC to be more transparent in how they conduct their day to day work, to ensure that they're receiving input, to be more accountable that's accountable to the Legislature, that's accountable to the public, to the regulated industry, and then of course to the board and the decisions that we take as well.

And I think the other thing I just wanted to mention, because we talked about it and maybe we can just do it here out in the open, is representing Moss Landing, where the battery storage fire was.

There was one particular period of time where it was the Department of Toxic Substance Control that was releasing results on tests and they were releasing it with limited context. So it's just being given to the locals. The locals felt obligated to release it, but the public and various stakeholders didn't know what to do with the information.

And we talked about that a little. I didn't know if you wanted to make an observation about that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that particular issue hasn't come up directly before the board, but that kind of sentiment of the desire for context, for responsiveness does come up very regularly before the board. So that, that really rings true for the experience that I've had so far as chair of this board.

Okay. And I just would hope you would note it because inevitably it's going to come up again and now it's on your radar screen and you will just hopefully deal with that in some way. Thank you. Thank you. Responsiveness.

Thank you. Senator Reyes.

Thank you. Madam Chair. Thank you so much for meeting with me earlier. I sincerely appreciated that. I asked the question there and I'd like to ask the question here because I know community Members are going to be listening here and they would want to hear from you.

In the communities like Harupa Valley, which have endured decades of environmental harm at sites such as Stringfellow, I continue to hear deep concern from environmental justice advocates about additional development, particularly as I mentioned to you, warehouses in the very area that already have received had so much impact to the health of the community and asking whether cumulative impacts are truly being Considered, we talked about community voices being heard.

And the question is, what does meaningful community engagement look like to you in practice, not just in public comment, but in shaping outcomes.

Thank you for that question, Senator. I would say a couple things.

The first would be making sure that we as the board and I as the chair of the board are going out to the communities we where they live, not just relying upon a three minute public comment period, making sure that we are having the informed discussions, understanding again, interests, not just positions that are stated over a microphone so that we as the board are able to take more informed decisions.

I think that is true for kind of the issues that are more squarely in the board, but also issues that we as the board are then able to pass along to the Department as well to ensure that the Department is being more responsive.

I mean, I think one of the key roles of this board is to allow the public to influence DTSC's decision making in a public setting.

I sincerely appreciate that and I know that the community of Rupa Valley appreciates that as well. My last question I said I would be asking is why do you want this job? After all these years working in such wonderful positions, why do you want this job?

Thanks for that question, Senator. I think my past experiences have really set me up nicely for this role.

My past experience, as I mentioned, of being a facilitator, so listening to, in the context of the climate negotiations, 198 different delegates with 198 different positions and trying to find consensus from that outcome as a regulator, trying to, in the International Maritime Organization, come to a common sense but effective policy.

And then as a negotiator trying to ensure that. I am kind of advocating for the US Government in that instance's interest. I think I'm particularly interested in this role because I would like to transition to working in California for Californians and working on behalf of communities as well, and working with communities to ensure that they're.

That those that are disproportionately burdened by the toxic impacts here, that their voices are heard and not just heard, but reflected in state policy.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you. Just a couple of quick questions. I think you're the Chair of the Fee Rate Setting Committee, is that correct? And I understand that you testified last August to the Senate EQ Committee. Can you update us on what's happened since then?

Yeah. Thanks so much for the question, Senator. So the board has a role in setting the fee rates for the Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Essentially, we receive four pieces of input working with dtsc, which is basically the existing funding balance or any Fund balance that's a rollover, the expenditures, which of course is your all role, and then the anticipated revenues.

And then finally, we as the board are quite limited, actually, in setting the fee rate by a reserve amount, which is 10%. So kind of adding all that up, Our discretion is relatively limited. And so within that range, our job is to push each of those levers to ensure that DTSC is fiscally stable.

So one of the recent regulations that DTSC has worked on and that we've kind of still waiting to see the results of, is really increasing the collection rate for the generation and handling fee. I think that, to me, is kind of one of the key outstanding questions of whether DTSC fully is a fiscally stable agency.

And there I think it should be within months is my understanding, to get that first set of data. So I don't think I have kind of that final answer yet, but it's trending in the right direction.

Okay. And that kind of segues into an additional concern regarding the generation handling fee. We're hearing rumblings that the Legislature may be considering exempting some stakeholders which could, you know, one or two or, you know, both things, you know, obviously have a fiscal impact.

If we're exempting, you know, certain folks from that program, it's going to impact the fiscal stability of the fund and or require fees to be increased on those that aren't exempted. Share with us some thoughts on that.

Yeah, that's. That's absolutely a concern that we've heard as well. Of course, that's not within the board's purview, but that is certainly something that informs a lot of the discussions that we have in our meetings with particular regulated entities.

You know, I should mention, for the fee rate setting exercise, we do make sure all of our board business to engage all stakeholders and to really be available to have that kind of deliberative process to ensure that all our decisions are being informed by all.

So I don't have a kind of particular clear answer on that, on that question, other than to pass along that. That is a concern that we hear in nearly all of our meetings with regulated entities.

Do you feel that SB158 description of the board's oversight, is that sufficient? Is that. Has the Legislature made that role clear, or would you like to recommend to us some clarifications or some changes that might be beneficial?

I don't have anything off the top of my head that I would say, you know, would be A fix. I mean, I would observe that the way that this board was set up is unique. Right.

We are a partial oversight board that is embedded within the organization that we are partially overseeing with a small staff, a small board and a limited set of mandates and ability to engage deeply in certain areas, but of the broadest scope possible.

So I don't think that there's any particular fix that can solve that other than to say that we are very strategic more than anything in our use of like staff time and resources and really engaging in the most high impact areas where DTSC interacts with the public.

And so that's really where our Board Meetings become so critical as we hear where the pain points are with dtsc. So we're then able to reflect that back in our work.

Okay, thank you. Thanks.

Thank you. I'm going to just piggyback on a little bit of what Senator Reyes was mentioning just about some of our EJ communities.

And in particular I wanted to know how the board is collaborating with the Department's Environmental Justice Advisory Council and maybe what some of your key takeaways has been from the council's meeting thus far that was held in June.

Yeah, thank you so much for that question, Senator. So I think it's first off, it's very exciting that the Environmental Justice Advisory Council was formed last year and did hold its first meeting. I myself have either attended in person or listened to each one of the meetings that they've had so far.

I've also had the opportunity to meet both with the individual EJAC board Members or the EJAC co chairs in various capacities, including to ensure that the work of the board and the EJAC remains complementary. So, you know, that again remains a big priority for me.

We of course also have an environmental justice Subcommitee that's composed of two Members that are even in more regular contact with the EJAC and dtsc.

Great, thank you. And then you also the board formed an exide working group. And it's actually interesting because I feel like the exide issue is, while not in my district, it's one that I've been following since I got to the Legislature and certainly I've, you know, supported the community in trying to get cleanup efforts.

And I'm just wondering if you can speak to some of the specific concerns raised and how the board is helping resolve them. I mean, this has been a long issue in the community that many of us here in the Legislature know about.

Yeah, thank you, Senator. I appreciate that. Question. A couple points. I mean, first I had the opportunity to tour the Exide cleanup site as well as to join a sampling tour. I was able to meet with several Members of the advisory group at that meeting.

Made sure to offer up my cell phone number to anyone who is interested in. To make sure that we are getting our. I, as chair, am getting the most relevant, up to date information on Exide.

We do, as you mentioned, have an Exide working group which is composed of one board Member who does attend all of the Exide Technologies Advisory Group meetings, which is. Which are meetings between the facility or, sorry, between dtsc, excuse me, and the community as well.

And then just to comment, the kind of how this Exide working group even came into being, which was. It was a response to community concerns that came up during our Board Meetings.

We, well before my time, received regular public comment at our board meeting on the Exide facility and the troubles that were going on there, which is why we decided to get more involved as a board in the Exide cleanup.

Thank you. And then I'm going to turn just a little bit to the Hazardous Waste Management Plan and ask a little bit about some of the board's oversight that the Department. What are the things that the board oversight has done to make the Department more responsive to community.

Yeah, thank you so much for that question. I would say for the Hazardous Waste Management plan, specifically the SB158 mandates a pretty clear process for how that document is going to be developed and then how the board will engage in that development and then ultimately approve that document.

So, you know, first the board worked for basically an entire year to produce our own sets of comments to dtsc. We then held several public hearings where we heard public comments, then worked with DTSC to incorporate or reflect many of those public comments within the final document.

I do want to acknowledge though, that at the November board meeting where we most recently voted on this, there was an enormous amount of criticism and opposition from many community groups to this plan.

And so the board kind of ultimately decided to adopt a second motion for this plan where we would retain oversight of the implementation of it in certain areas.

In particular those areas where either community groups or industry felt that there was a real risk that in kind of including an action within this plan that it would lead to negative health outcomes. And so that is at least my priority is making sure that DTSC is not heading in that direction.

We also had worked, of course, to make sure that the language or the directive that's in that plan is as neutrally framed as possible, possible, so it does not lead to A less health protective outcome.

Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, so seeing no further questions from the dais, I'm going to invite anyone who is here to speak in support of Mr. Rakestraw to please come forward. Just state your name and your affiliation and your position, please.

Hello everyone. My name is Miguel Alatorre Jr. I'm the Executive Director of the Unidos Network in Kettleman City in Kings County and also a co chair for the Environmental Justice Advisory Council. And I am in full support of Chair Rakestraw and his appointment.

He's been a really great help whether it be in the E JAG or whether showing up physically within our communities in Kettleman City and in but Willow where we have the state's hazardous waste landfills. So pardon my voice, it's going away. But it's really helpful to have him as a part of the team.

So thank you so much.

Thank you. Madam Chair. Members Kendra Dijogo with the Goalko Group on behalf of the California Council for the Environmental and Economic Balance in support of Mr. Rakestraw's appointment. Thank you.

John McHale on behalf of Waste Management here in support of Mr. Rakestraw's confirmation. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Anybody here in opposition? All right, seeing that no one is here in opposition, we'll bring it back. We have. For any comments or questions or final.

Ones, I actually have a motion. I would move that we approve this in the Committee and forward it to the Senate floor for a full concert confirmation vote.

Thank you very much, Senator Laird. So we're going to go ahead and call the roll and I will say it was very touching to hear you described as part of the team. That was very touching. Yes.

Thank you. I'm going to abstain today. I had no recommendation coming into the meeting, but I do appreciate your candor and your responses to the questions. I going to circle back with some of my concerns and dig down on those a little bit more and then have a better answer for when we're on the floor.

So thank you. Thank you, Senator.

Thank you, Senator Jones. So we're going to go ahead and call the roll.

[Roll Call]

All right. That appointment has been approved to move to the full Senate for confirmation with three aye votes. Thank you very much. And this concludes today's agenda.

I want to thank everybody who is here who provided public testimony and came to speak in support of some of the nominees that were here and I want to thank everyone for their cooperation today. This meeting is adjourned.