Assembly Standing Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection

Good morning. The Assembly privacy and committee hearing is going to start momentarily. Not only is the Senator here thank you, Senator, for being so prompt. Both Assembly members, Lowenthal and Ortega, were early to the hearing. We so appreciate that, but we are waiting on a few more members, including a member of our Republican caucus.

So come on over. Okay. We just have one? We have one bill on the agenda today, Mister Laird's SB 1078. I don't believe there's any opposition on the bill, so we'll be taking two minutes from his support witnesses each and, of course, Mister Laird's wonderful testimony.

Come on up, Senator. Oh, the gavel. When you're ready?

Well, thank you very much. I'm not sure this is on, but No, your honor. Perfect. I appreciate you hearing this bill. I'm sorry it's the only one that you had to come in this morning for.

And yet, there is some urgency to the situation. This bill 1078 allows businesses who are acting in good faith to issue gift cards that have outdated disclosures for a limited time if the consumer is accurately notified of their right to redeem the card for cash at the point of sale.

Last year, the legislature adopted a bill that sort of did an inflationary increase from the first time the Assembly member from Assembly member Ortega's district did the gift card re redemption almost 20 ago, and it was $9.99. And so last year, the bill took it to $15. But what happened and I have a representative here from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk who will testify.

What happened is is it for example, in this case, they had thousands and thousands of dollars of gift cards that had the prior instructions on them. So what this bill does is allows them to use that and not have to dump them at a cost of thousands of dollars while they still advise consumers what the accurate redemption value is.

So this still is true to the bill for the actual redemption value, but it allows the boardwalk and any other company that would fall under this not to have to destroy thousands of dollars worth of gift cards because of that that change. And so the bill has no registered opposition. And with me today to testify and support is Chris Reyes, the director of strategic development and external affairs for the Santa Cruz Seaside Company, which owns and operates the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. And I already apologize to him for doing the five hour round trip I do every week for speaking up to two minutes.

Well, he gets four minutes because he's the only one if that helps, Senator.

Well, don't take too much of this. Like but let me turn it over to Chris, and at the appropriate time, I would request an aye vote.

Thank you, Senator. Yep.

Thank you so much for having me here today. Thank you for your willingness to consider this bill. I know it's a very busy time for you. My name is Chris Reyes, and I'm here on behalf of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. It's a place I've proudly worked since I was 14 years old.

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is, owned and operated family owned and operated by the Santa Cruz Seaside Company, and we're proud to support SB 1078. Thankful to our hometown Senator for author authorizing this legislation. He actually lives on the same street as my parents, just about two blocks down. And I think my father walks by his house all the time and blathers at him about politics. So I'm grateful he's still willing to do this today.

His father was, an officer in the sheriff's department when I worked for the county. So yeah. It's a small town.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very small. So, as you probably know, SB 1078 proposes a technical revision of SB 22, which went into effect in April this year and increased California's gift card cash redemption threshold from under $10 to under $15. We supported that legislation. The boardwalk uses reloadable my boardwalk cards. They can be used to buy food, attractions, and other purchases. We're almost entirely cashless facilities so that my boardwalk cards are a critical piece of our operation.

We're fully compliant with the new law. We'll still be fully compliant with the new law if this legislation passes. But, once the legislation passed, we, became in possession of we were in possession of a million preprinted My Boardwalk cards that had the under $10 redemption language on them. And those cards represent a cost to us about $250,000. So those cards were essentially obsolete.

So this legislation allows us the abilities to start using those cards without weakening any consumer protections or redemption rights. So without the transition period, we can't continue using those cards despite fully complying with the law and honoring the under $15 redemption. Those cards would essentially have to be destroyed if we're not able to do this. So SB 1078 creates a narrow temporary safe harbor allowing business to use gift certificates that have outdated disclosures for a limited time.

In this case, that limited time is two years, and only if, certain requirements are met.

As I mentioned, SB 1078 does not weaken any consumer protections or redemption rights. Consumers retain the full right to redeem gift cards with a balance under $15. SB 1078 simply offers a common sense solution that prevents operational waste to protect compliant businesses from unnecessary liability while supporting consumer rights. Thank you for consideration, and I hope you'll vote yes.

Thank you. Anyone else here in support of this measure, name, position, and organization?

Good morning. My name is Sabrina Demayo Lockhart. I am the CEO of the California Attractions and Parks Association and a board member of the California Travel Association. Both organizations are grateful for and in support of this bill. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no additional support, we don't have any registered opposition, but anyone in the room wanna surprise us? Okay. Seeing and hearing now, I'll bring you back to the dais. Questions, concerns, thoughts? Any boardwalk lovers?

Okay. I do love the boardwalk. I'm a Bay Area girl. So thank you for being here, and I just wanna thank the Senator. We do we are not perfect here in the legislature, and we make mistakes. And so I appreciate you cleaning this up on behalf of, especially our, smaller businesses here in California. So with that, we do not have a quorum. We are working on it.

Yes. But we will we will call the members, and we'll take a vote when we can. Would you like to close? I forgot that part.

I appreciate the consideration, and I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you, Senator. K. So if you have a member that is on privacy that is not sitting in Room 444. 444 right now, please send them over. We're done.

Well, I'm I'm on a committee where he's presenting, so I'll go down and try to get him kicked out.

Okay.

And we have a quorum. Let's call the roll.

[Roll Call]

We have a quorum. Do the motion on the bill. There's a motion. I'm gonna second it. Motion and a second. Let's call the roll.

[Roll Call]

We're done. I'm done. That bill has eight votes. It is out. We will leave the roll open for absent members for all of five minutes. Mister Patterson, he is here. Let's call the absent members.

[Roll Call]

We'll call the additional absent member.

[Roll Call]

The bill now has 10 votes. We are adjourned.