Senate Standing Committee on Local Government

The Senate committee and local government will come to order. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for this meeting. The Senate welcomes the public in person, and we are holding our committee hearings in the Capitol Building. I ask all members of the committee to be present in Room 112 so we can establish our quorum and begin our hearing.

We only have one bill on today's agenda, AB 817, will be presented by Assemblymember Mark Gonzales. We will now establish a quorum.

[Roll Call]

Thank you all very much. We are now ready to start with Assembly bill 817. Assemblymember Gonzales, you may proceed.

Thank you, madam Chair and members. I'm here to present AB 817, which will address several pressing issues brought about because of the lineage fire, that occurred in my district and, respectfully, in the Senator's District as well. Two months ago, a fire broke out a 500,000square foot cold storage warehouse in the heart of my district in Boyle Heights.

For those who are not familiar with Boyle Heights, it is a neighborhood in East, neighborhood near East LA, neighborhood surrounded by freeways that has been historically underinvested and the victim of one of the largest environmental disasters in California's history. The fallout of Exide Battery Recycling Plant as well.

But that is not what today is about. Today is about a devastating fire, a fire that lasted eight days and spewed out smoke that choked the surrounding community. A fire that left a warehouse with 88,000,000 pounds of rotting food and attracted untold amounts of flies and rats. My community has been in a situation for almost two months now where residents cannot even live in their homes.

And when the heat rises and temperature spikes like they are this week, residents can't eat, they can't sleep, and they cannot simply even breathe.

While the city and county have been working hard to keep Lineage on a tight cleanup deadline, more can be done, and that's what AB 817 is about. And just last week, we had heard how the city, the deadlines by Lineage were both completely missed by the city and their own deadlines set by themselves. AB 817 will tackle two key issues brought about by this fire.

First, by preventing any new building permits for companies like Lineage until they can show they have a contingency fund of up to $20,000,000 set aside for disasters like this. This fund will exist to ensure that money will be available for food assistance, housing assistance, air quality monitoring, and health care.

Because if you're gonna do business in our community, you better be ready to support it when you mess up. Second, it will ensure that any settlement that a resident or business gets from any future litigation because of this incident is tax free on the state side. Should the community wish to pursue legal action, we wanna stand by their side. That money is not income. It's compensation for suffering.

They have been through enough, and they shouldn't have to worry about paying taxes on money that is rightfully owed to them. AB 817 will undo what has already been done, but it will make sure for every community in California that this has never happened again without a plan, resources, and accountability.

Primary witnesses in support of this bill are Willie Armstrong, senior director for state affairs for Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, and Shana England with the California Community Foundation, reading a statement on behalf of one of our local nonprofits who has been on the ground since day one responding to the needs of the community due to this fire, who unfortunately couldn't be here with us today. I'll have you take it away.

Good afternoon, madam Chair and members. My name is Willie Armstrong. I serve as senior director for state affairs on behalf of Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, proud supporter of AB 817. We wanna thank the author for bringing this timely legislation forward, and we will continue to support this endeavor to bring relief to an accountability for the Boyle Heights community. The lineage fire was not just a fire.

It became a crisis for families across Boyle Heights. Families have dealt with unbearable odors, rotting food, rodents, and flies while simply trying to work, run their family businesses, send their children to school, and live their lives. Absolutely no family should have to live like this.

As a consequence of the Lineage fire, mayor Bass has issued emergency orders, demanded the removal of 85,000,000 pounds of spoiled food, provided emergency housing assistance to more than 1,300 impacted residents and families, helping them to temporarily relocate and get connected to critically needed resources during the crisis. We cannot change what happened to Boyle Heights, but we can change what happens next.

AB 817 sends the message that number 1, companies must be prepared when something goes wrong. And number 2, communities must be protected. The bill receives the bill requires large coal facilities to maintain a contingency fund before receiving new building permits. These funds could support food assistance, temporary housing, air quality monitoring, health care needs, and vector control, among other things. AB 817 also includes tax relief provisions for qualified residents, property owners, and businesses affected by the Boyle Heights fire.

Settlement funds intended for harm, displacement, and disruption should be available for recovery, not taxed as income. For these reasons and on behalf of Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, I respectfully ask for your aye vote on 817.

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. I'm Shana England, vice president of the California Community Foundation. We have anchored and supported community recovery from the Lineage Fire in Boyle Heights in partnership with many community based organizations, including Proyecto Pastoral. Raquel Ramon, the executive director of Proyecto Pastoral had hoped to be here and couldn't be, so send me a statement to read on her behalf.

For nearly forty years, Proyecto has worked alongside families, youth, workers, immigrants, unhoused neighbors, and small businesses in Boyle Heights and the surrounding East Side.

We are not an organization that comes into the community after a crisis. We live here every day and we experience the lineage fire alongside the people we serve. For eight days, our community lived with smoke, uncertainty, and fear. The prolonged blaze generated significant quantities of toxic smoke, created dangerous air quality conditions for surrounding residential neighborhoods. Summer school, early childhood centers, local businesses were all impacted.

For residents, this was not an environmental or public health issue. This was happening inside their homes and outside their front doors. Our neighbors reported burning eyes, throat irritation, coughing, difficulty breathing, nausea, dizziness and other symptoms. Some told us they were struggling to breathe even while inside their own homes. And while residents were trying to protect their families, community organizations like were forced to rapidly become emergency responders.

Responded because this is what we do. We worked alongside community partners and government agencies to distribute air purifiers, masks, food, and other resources. We helped communicate public health information to residents and supported families who were trying to understand what the fire meant for their health, their children, their homes, and their livelihoods. We purchased a property approximately $10,000 worth of air purifiers and distributed them to community members. We helped distribute ap-100 masks and kn95.

Our staff and volunteers spent days responding to immediate needs. But let me be clear, community should not have to shoulder the financial and operational burden of an industrial disaster. And what was particularly troubling was the limited support our community received from those responsible. We should not have had to organize our own response while the company operating a massive industrial facility in the middle of a residential community was largely absent from that response. This was not an isolated incident.

Between 2020 and 2024, The US averaged approximately 1,500 warehouse fires every year. Large warehouses and cold storage facilities like Lineage are increasingly located in communities near schools and homes and small businesses. And when something goes wrong, the consequences do not stay inside the warehouse. Alright. But, yeah, the burden of this industrial disaster should not fall on neighboring residents, small businesses, schools, community organizations, or taxpayers. Thank you for your time and I respectfully ask for your aye vote on AB 817.

Thank you very much. Anyone else wanna speak on in support of AB 817? Please come forward. Your organization and

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Carol Gonzales on behalf of Inclusive Action for the City, a local CDFI, seeing the impacts by community and small business owners in support. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Afternoon, Chair and members. Sasha Horwitz, Los Angeles Unified School District in support.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Tyler Alexander with Ultimate Health Services here in support. Thank you for your leadership.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Melissa Ayala on behalf of Carlos Vaccarano, president and CEO of Clinica Romero, in strong support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Rolando Chavez, AVP of government affairs and community engagement for AltaMed Health Network, in strong support.

Thank you very much. Do we have principal Witnesses in opposition? You could that that's okay. They could come up here.

Forgot about that.

There are more chairs.

Good afternoon. Welcome. And members, thank you for having me today. I'm Katie Little with the California. Okay. So I'm not on.

Oh, there we go. There you go. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Katie Little with the California League of Food Producers, whose members represent a wide variety of food processors, beverage producers who handle fruit, vegetables, olives, dairy products, and snack foods, to name a few. Thank you for the opportunity to share our thoughts on AB 817. First and most importantly, I wanna recognize the devastating impact the June 17 fire had on Assembly member Gonzales' and Senator Durazo's district.

We have deep empathy for the Boyle Heights community in Los Angeles who are suffering and truly understand the desire to put strong procedures in place to support communities in similar incidents that may occur in the future. However, as currently drafted, we believe that 817 could create unintended consequences for a wide range of industries that provide Californians with essential products and services, and therefore, we are opposed unless amended today.

As written, AB 817 reaches far beyond the dedicated cold storage warehouses, and it could affect food processors, food processors, distributors, growers, packers, frozen food manufacturers, agricultural Cooperatives, retailers, dairy facilities, and even pharmaceutical distribution centers. Requiring a contingency fund as a condition of a permit could discourage investment in new and existing facilities at a time when California's food supply chain already faces capacity challenges.

Many different types of facilities have refrigeration as an aspect of their building in order to safely store a variety of products like temperature sensitive medicines such as vaccines, insulin, and other medicines and medical supplies, as well as fresh produce for processing and dairy products.

All of these types of temperature control facilities play a critical role in California's supply chain, and imposing a contingency fund of up to $20,000,000 could jeopardize their ability to operate, expand, or make needed improvements like energy efficiency measures. To lessen these impacts, we would request that AB 817 be narrowed to apply to only new facilities that are 20,000 more or more square feet and are fully a refrigerated space and located in urban environments.

We also ask that the fund amount be tied to a risk posed by the material stored and that the portion of the fund should be dedicated to emergency cleanup efforts to ensure swift action when incidents do occur. Finally, the bill lacks clarity on how the contingency fund will be calculated, administered, or audited. Without clear standards, businesses would face uncertainty and inconsistency in local requirements.

In its current form, AB 817 would affect food prices, pharmaceutical availability, family owned businesses, jobs, sustainability efforts, and the shared responsibility of disaster response from across multiple levels of government. Cold storage is essential to delivering food and medicine in Californians, and we are committed to working with the author and stakeholders to find a balanced equitable approach.

We urge you not to rush the legislation legislation for through and allow more time to gain a better understanding of what is lacking in current law and will be most helpful in communities in the future. For these reasons, we are opposed unless amended.

Hi. Good afternoon, Chair and committee members.

I forgot to ask two minutes. Yeah.

Took one of you. No. I'm just kidding. Oh. Go ahead.

My name is Katie.

My name is Katie Davey. I'm the executive director of the Dairy Institute of California. Dairy Institute represents milk processors and dairy product manufacturers with processing plants based in California. Our organization's goal is to support our members' ability to operate sustainably, innovate, and improve efficiency in their company's operations as they strive dairy products to Californians. Thank you for the opportunity to share our concerns regarding AB 817.

We acknowledge the heavy toll of the June 17 warehouse fire in Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, and we agree on the need for clearer procedures to handle

future emergencies efficiently. However, the one size fits all solution being presented by AB 817 to this solution will hamper the ability of dairy processors to continue to operate their cold storage facilities, discourage investment in new facilities, and will harm the ability of Californians California to attract new processors to our state. There are a 114 active dairy manufacturing facilities across California. Many of these manufacturing operations have a cold storage facility.

Dairy processors hold products in cold storage immediately after processing to prevent microbial growth, preserve product quality, and satisfied strict food safety regulations at the state and federal levels.

California is the number 1 dairy state in the nation, employing over a 150,000 people in our state, many of which are unionized. Our members have manufacturing plants, distribution centers, and cold storage facilities across our state. Our members' facilities are in urban, suburban, industrial, and rural settings. For California's dairy industry to grow and provide good manufacturing jobs for Californians, we need cold storage facilities for the products we manufacture.

Imposing a 20,000,000 contingency fund on cold storage facilities threatens our members ability to grow their operations and directly compromises their ability to invest in growth and expansion of current facilities, as well as fund energy efficiency operations.

To lessen these mandates, or excuse me, to lessen these impacts, we would request AB 817 be narrow to apply only to new facilities that are over 20,000 square feet or more, a fully refrigerated space, and are located in urban environments. We also ask that the fund amount be tied to the risk proposed by the materials stored, and that is a portion of the fund should be dedicated to emergency cleanup efforts to ensure swift action when incidents occur.

Finally, the bill before you lacks clarity on how the contingency fund would be calculated, administered, or audited. Without clear standards, businesses would face uncertainty and an inconsistent local requirements, ultimately disincentivizing investment in our state. Yes.

For these reasons, we are opposed unless amended today. Thank you.

All others who want to stand up in opposition to AB 817, please come forward.

Madam Chair and members, Kirk Kimmelshue here today on behalf of the International Warehouse Logistics Association, also with an opposed unless amended position. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Dennis Albiani with California Advocates, who we represent Consumer Brands Association, as well as several agricultural entities, cherries, pears, and seed that, also are opposed unless amended. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Audrey Ratajczak on behalf of the California Business Properties Association. We have some concerns about just the making projects infeasible, and we've submitted amendments and thank the author for continuing to work with us.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Taylor Triffo on behalf of a variety of agricultural trade associations and the California grocers respectfully. Opposed unless amended.

Good afternoon. Nicole Quinonez on behalf of the Global Cold Chain Alliance. Opposed unless amended.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Tricia Geringer with Agricultural Council of California, respectfully oppose unless amended. Good afternoon. Erin Norwood on behalf of the Almond Alliance, also respectfully oppose unless amended. Thank you.

Corianna Miller with the California Chamber of Commerce also oppose unless amended respectfully.

Thank you.

Chloe King with political solutions on behalf of the health care distribution alliance. Opposed unless amended. Thank

you. Jack Yanos with Sloat Higgins Jensen on behalf of California fuels convenience alliance. Respectfully opposed unless amended. Thank you.

Randy Pollack on behalf of the American Chemistry Council, opposed unless amended. We believe that there's a way to get to a more balanced approach. Thank you.

Elizabeth Esquivel, California Manufacturers and Technology Association, also oppose unless amended. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Adam Regele on behalf of CRITA SoCal in respectful opposition unless amended. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Yes. Come to the dias. Any questions or comments? Yes. Senator Arreguin.

Thank you. So on the the contingency fund, so as drafted, it's really the purpose of the contingency funds, question the author, is to help those that are impacted by some sort of health environmental disaster that results from a cold storage facility. It's it's to provide, you know, pay for medical coverage, relocation assistance, and to help the people that are impacted. Correct?

Correct. Okay. So the question was based on the contingency funds. For context, Lineage spent about $3,000,000 on community assistance, and considering the size and the impact of this disaster, it it should have been more. The reality is that they've already spent nearly to 80 to to 100,000,000 on just the cleanup alone, but none of those specific dollars went to anybody in the community to air purifiers, to displacement, to housing, to the lost wages that many people, including the business community, who lost wages as well.

So the contingency fund is set up so that it holds, folks accountable should a state of emergency occur, should a disaster occur. And I do wanna say that that I do appreciate the opposition, but I did also get reached out by a number of folks who said this is eye opening for us to think about our own cold storage facilities and making sure that we are up to par with our technology to put out a fire, so we don't become the next Boyle Heights.

I wanna thank you for bringing this book forward. What happened was completely unacceptable, and people are still dealing with the impacts of this disaster. And I want to thank the Chair for her leadership on this. I don't think, respectfully, to the opposition that money that should be going to help those that are impacted should go should be used to clean up the disaster that the company had caused.

So the idea that rather than having money to mitigate the impacts, that could be used for cleanup, I would argue the companies have an obligation to clean up. So I will move the bill to the appropriate time.

Thank you. Yes. Senator Seyarto.

Thank you. I have a question regarding the cleanup effort right now, and it's LA City. What is is LA City leaving this completely up to the private industry to clean up or or do they have a plan with the private industry to assist in that? Because this kinda is one of those issues that needs to be all hands on deck. We'll figure out the the finances later type of thing and and get it done as quickly as possible. And what are the impediments to getting it done?

So from day one, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass has been on the ground. She deployed all of her city resources to assist in the cleanup of the Lineage Fire. And and those efforts still go on today.

Right. Are there resources of the public works? Are are they involved in removal and and disposal of this of of the stuff that's left over that's rotting? Because I can't I just can't imagine why two months later they're still pulling product out of a a I mean, it's a large warehouse. I get it.

Sure. But we clean we clean buildings like this in California all the time as far as as knocking them down and clearing them out. And, it what is holding up the show? What is holding up the show?

So to answer the senator's question, the the the property itself, one side of it sits on the city of Los Angeles. The other side sits on the county side of it. So both the county and the city have both been using every resource, not only a to put it out, but to clean it out, and then it's they're still transporting the millions and millions and millions of pounds of food. So it's already taken two months to do that on the daily.

In in fairness, the city and county can only do so much because they don't have the right to step into the physical property.

It's Lineage that is delaying the process for cleaning it up. The LA City portion of it, respectfully, you can jump in, can only do so much to enforce them to do that, which is why we're forced enforcing more penalties for them for not for cleaning up sooner. But it's taken two months even to get to this point for the millions of pounds that are in there.

Frankly, they probably should have just destroyed the other side of it, but they're they're still literally cleaning out as of today, which has led to more rats and flies in, infiltrating the area.

Right. So when there's a public health emergency like that and you can declare an emergency We did. They can go in and and clean that up if if the progress is not satisfactory. There is nothing that says you cannot just because it's somebody else's land, you can't enter their land. You absolutely can go in and clean up a public health hazard, when when the response that is occurring isn't good enough to do that.

We are always going to have these type of fires. Nobody wants them to happen. No industry wishes that, you know, they their equipment would fail or anything like that. We have public public we have building and safety inspections. We have fire safety inspections and especially on facilities like this every year.

And they're they're specialty. They're not the fire station that comes out. They're people that are in fire prevention. This is their job. They go out and inspect these facilities.

We also have hazmat, and they have plans and all of those things. I I just other than making some businesses that aren't as wealthy, less likely to be able to do business with a large contingency fund that is needed, other than I I I'm not sure that this actually attacks the the lack of preparedness on everyone's side. That's not just them. Incidents like these are a a community and sometimes a county and then also sometimes a state issue, to get it mitigated.

Because that's what we need to be better at, is mitigating these incidents.

And and those are the type of responses that I wanna see is how come we're not good at mitigating these incidents? We have all these technologies. We have all this equipment available. And and yet somehow when something like this happens two and a half months later during the hottest part of the summer, we've got rotting food. And and and it the the money part of it should not be the issue.

The process part of it needs to be addressed because there is no excuse for that not being cleaned up by now. And and so there's there's problems, I think, on everybody's side. I think the state, from an emergency management position, is woefully inadequate in addressing the potential issues that are out there. We're trying now. I see some efforts to try.

But, you know, I I think, you know and I don't wanna call this knee jerk because it isn't. You guys have you know, you're trying to do it quickly. But I don't know that this is helpful in the big scheme of things. I think what's more helpful in the big scheme of things is understanding how the two community or the communities, city and county, worked together. The response, I mean, that's just that's the fire and and health and all that others, health hazmat.

All those folks are already in place. It's what happens after that fire, after the response that we need to be better at, and and we're not better at that. And and so, you know, the evacuation of people, the care of those people, making sure they get medical help, and all of that stuff is a county and a a state, county, and and city responsibility. And because the people that who who are having the fire, yes, there will be some consequences down the line financially for them.

But, those consequences are not, something that we should be doing, trying to, enact immediately, which hampers the effort that we need to do to get to get people back on the road to having a healthy environment for themselves.

So I have concerns about the bill on in that regard and whether it's going to be helpful for these type of efforts or not or even, our ability to have food to distribute to people. We have a lot of logistics center out in out in Riverside, and I can't imagine, them having to move the food from from the port to there to then back over to to LA. They're gonna be around.

What we do about it is is the thing that we need to do better as as communities and and planners and working with private industry to ensure that we don't destroy their industry while we're trying to deflect their inadequacies that that we have. And, so, I appreciate, you guys, trying your best to, address the issues of these poor folks in in Boyle Heights.

And also, I I saw the plume that goes all the way up to San Gabriel, up into Duarte. So it was it was a big incident, and we're always gonna have them, you know, no matter how much how we try how hard we try, but we have to do better at the at the recovery part of this. And, and so I'll I'll be working with whoever wants to work on it to make sure that that happens.

May I madam Chair, may I respond quickly? Oh, I was just gonna say thank you. Well, I was just gonna say thank you. And then for context, the fire was on a Wednesday. It was out what we thought Wednesday night.

It reignited again on Friday, and then continued for eight days. They used newer technologies like helicopters to put it out, but because it is a cold storage facility, it might be a 100 and something degrees on the exterior, but the interior was at 40 degrees. And so that took even longer for them to put it out because of those pieces to it.

And and even with the state of emergency, the local city and the county still had to exhaust their resources first before the state could jump in. But I do appreciate your, comments, Senator, and I I align with them as well. And we are gonna work to figure out, some adjustments that we can make in the next couple of days.

Thank you. Senator Choi?

Thank you, Chair. Assemblymember Gonzalez, I have a question and my statements. You'll be largely deals with any, you know, victim settlements shall be income tax free, which is affordable I mean, supportable because I also proposed a similar bill for the Palisade and then Eaton fire early in the year last year, and I was stuck in a committee.

But luckily, governor Newsom took that upon, and then he put that in the budget and has been implemented, which is a good thing that he borrowed my ideas and your ideas is the same thing. Secondly, that is this one, my understanding is that cold storage has been picked up.

And for rebuilding, dollars 20,000,000 of contingency fund is required to get the building permit. And I don't understand why, in particular, cold storage has been picked out. To me, my understanding is that that the cold storage facilities not gonna did not contribute for the fire and then even firefighting. And by requiring this kind of burden extra burden financial burden for cold storages. Cold storages, my common sense of understanding is that is that storing purchable food items, medicine, and all kinds of food.

And by requiring this I mean, distributors of this food items and medicine items, no matter what, they will need that kind of facility in the future. Simply, that will add up to the cost to the consumers. We talk about affordability nowadays. That is hardest, biggest problem. But now you are requiring additional burden on the facilities in particular distribution centers where these food items will be stored.

And what a bad time to implement that kind of things. And then also one particular Boyle Heights situation will be implemented or limiting this kind of very difficult policy throughout the state. That means the the the the negative impact will be entire state at the same time. As soon as this passes, I hope it will not pass. And even if it does, the governor will veto it because he understands affordability is a big issue right now.

So I don't think this timing is correct. And if if not not necessarily timing, but this idea is bad one because of cost of living of everything that we use on daily basis, especially food is essential food and medicines are essential items and these items which we use called facilities. So did you think about this kind of a negative impact? And if you can convince me, you may you own my vote, but at this time, I won't be able to support.

That's that's fine. Look. I wanna thank you, Senator, for your comments. Thank you for acknowledging the fact on the tax free piece of it, why that's necessarily needed, especially for the businesses that have lost customers, have lost an impact to to that community as well, especially the surrounding areas. In regards for context, Lineage had spent about $3,000,000 on community assistance as a result of it, and on their own, they've already spent 80 to 100,000,000 on just the cleanup itself.

The goal here is not to penalize cold storage facilities. The goal here is to pay back the community who's paying the price because of this fire that they didn't ask for. The goal here on creating a contingency plans is an insurance for those industries to be prepared should a disaster like this happen, and then the state of emergency is declared. Front money into a community.

It's more preventative measures to make sure that the community doesn't absorb as a result of the corporation that's coming and not putting out the mess that they started.

And so work with those nonprofits and other groups in our area. Koreatown Youth and Community Center has been a strong, advocate and and helping us with that. But those are dollars that are coming out of their own nonprofit, that it's that that the company should be reimbursing them and paying for. So we're not discussing those pieces of it, but those are dollars that should be going back into the community, not back into a cleanup that a corporation started.

Cold storage facilities did not cause the fire to begin with. And if you make it a voluntary contribution for such a disaster cleanup, I'm sure these companies have since they are using and they also need the good fire protection services and then they are living in the community and serving the community. So they will have a spirit of contributing voluntarily, but to make a mandate, that that makes a heck of a difference.

So that will force for them to raise our cost of living on every aspect as I described. So I don't think that justifies this

Voluntarily is is subjective, but I think mandating it holds them

This is a mandate, a requirement.

Correct. But I'm open to the amendment to possibly amending that number of it, but the goal here is to not have a disaster.

Mandate the the voluntary

Open to it. Okay.

Alright. Any did anything else you wanted to say in response, Assemblymember Gonzalez? Okay. Yes. Senator Cervantes.

Thank you so much, madam Chair. I just, wanna take a moment to recognize the the district in which you represent and the communities that have been affected by this fire and really just making sure that their voices are heard, they're respected, and that they're centered throughout this process, as we discuss rebuilding, healing from this, and how we move forward collectively.

Certainly hear from the opposition and hopeful that perhaps some of those things could get worked out, here in the near future, but happy to support the bill as you continue to address this issue.

Thank you.

Anybody else? No? Okay. I just wanna make a a few comments. I wanna thank my colleague, Assemblymember Gonzales.

Unless you've been there, you have no idea what it's like. It's the the impact that it's had. And by the way, this is a community that has repeated environmental justice issues. It cost our government almost $200,000,000, and it's still not completely cleaned up.

Almost $200,000,000. There was no fund there. There was nothing for the community. Just a few weeks before this happened, before this fire, there was an oil spill in East Los Angeles. Has not been cleaned up.

Still there. Oil spill. Just the immediate sort of impact on going into the river. So this community, like others, especially if they're poor, the immigrant communities, working class communities, the things that get built in their in their areas really could have an impact. We don't even know.

Who would have thought? Who would have thought that a cold storage, even with this size, would have created what it's created? And so we're looking forward. We're looking ahead to say, what can we do to make sure that the minimal the minimal, not the most, the minimal that can be done is to watch out for these families in the future. Families in other communities like theirs in the future who don't have the money to put out upfront what it takes.

I mean, we were scrambling scrambling to buy, the air purifiers, scrambling to get the masks into people's hands, just scrambling one community, one neighborhood for the other. And then the fire the fire's out, the smoke is done, and what starts to happen is the flies. Swarms and swarms and swarms of flies. Then the rats start coming out. I mean, it is beyond belief.

The words cannot describe the stench. The kids are saying when they finally got when they went back to school, they missed their summer. Kids didn't have a summer. They couldn't go outside. The parents couldn't go outside.

If they went outside, look what they face. They couldn't go inside. They don't have air conditioning. The best they can do was the air purifier just to make sure that it was clean air that they were breathing inside their own homes. It it just goes on and on and on.

And I think all that Assemblymember Gonzales is proposing is a contingency fund with a max of 20,000,000. Am I correct? It's not even saying how much, you know, it's just up to $20,000,000. That's that's just that one piece. There's much more that should be done, but there's just that one piece to say for the future that there'll be immediate funding available.

We're not scrambling around, you know, asking for dollars here and asking for dollars there, that it actually is there already. So and, of course, I and I appreciate Senator Choi's comments about how the settlement income would not be taxed. Glad you brought that to our attention in terms of how that was handled. So I think you're very, very nominal what you were asking for. Very, very small compared to what that community.

And I think more should have been done in this case, and we wanna make sure more is done in the future. Hopefully, never things like this don't happen again. I appreciate that. We have a motion by Senator Arreguin.

[Roll Call]

Okay. The bill is out. Thank you all very much for coming and presenting here

Thank you all to our, everyone who participated in public testimony today. If you are not able to, testify, please put your comments or suggestions in writing to the Senate local government committee or visit the website. Your suggestions and comments are very important to us. Thank you to everyone for your patience and cooperation. We've concluded the agenda and the committee, government the Senate committee on local government is adjourned. Thank you everyone.