Assembly Standing Committee on Emergency Management

You might not be...

Okay. We're gonna postpone the meeting, at this time...

They can hear you.

I didn't have to

Oh, I keep muting myself. I did that. Clearly, I'm out of practice. Alright. Good afternoon, Senator. Thank you all for being here. This is Assembly Emergency Management, and this

It's okay. Go ahead. Get settled.

What's going on?

I know you just ran from the floor.

Alright. Sorry. Go ahead, please.

Alright. So before, like, before we get started, just because there's been a lot of of movement, Senator, you had communicated and agreed that you were okay going back to the original version of your bill. So before we open, I just wanna ensure that we're all on the same page.

Yeah. I I would be my my precaution for you would just be that if you were to strike the floor amendments that it would add no bid contract authority back to the fire innovation unit. So if that's the will of the Chair, I'm willing to do that. But the floor amendment, it had two pieces. One was to add something to OES, which we're fine striking.

We're fine striking both. You're you're the Chair. But just I wanna sort of precaution that if you were to strike the the other cleanup language we had added on the floor, it would explicitly then allow the fire innovation unit to have, no bid contract authority. So I'll defer to you.

Okay. Thank you for that clarification, Senator. We're gonna go ahead and open up the meeting, and then we'll go ahead and do clarifying. So we're gonna Okay. This meeting is officially open.

Assembly Emergency Management, 772 hearing, regarding SB 1079. And so, again, I wanna thank you for bringing up the importance of, developing innovative engineering technologies to improve the state's approach to ever increasing scale and frequency of natural natural disasters and emergencies.

I know your staff, you know, worked really hard, and so I wanna thank you you and your staff, you know, for accepting and agreeing to amendments, which would take the bill back to its last version, which retains the proposal of the bill that places Cal Fire's fire innovation unit programmatic structure into statute.

And and definitely, we will help you to correct those technical floor amendments and and figure out what needs to happen to ensure that your intent and your cleanup does continue to follow the rest of the bill.

And in regards to all of the other things that you've talked about, we definitely look forward to working with you on the FIU, and make a commitment to reviewing the important ideas, next section on how you can, you know, successfully and thoughtfully, introduce some of the other concerns that you had.

For the record, it's important to note for those who are not aware of why we're having, you know, a hearing is whenever substantive changes are made in a bill, we need to ensure that the policy is clear that we had a chance to analyze it and that all of the things were addressed.

And so we were definitely concerned about some of the things that had not been vetted, including as Senator Stern mentioned what would be coming out, the additional unit in Cal OES, and the proposal for no bid contracting for that department. So with that, again, we've opened the meeting. Senator, would you like to make any statement regarding the remainder of the the the bill is oh, so sorry. Let me stop.

Let's establish a quorum. Secretary, please secretary, please call the row.

Quorum call. Ransom? Present. Ransom present. Hedwick?

Hedwick present. Arambula? Arambula here. Banes?

Or a man. Sorry.

Banes here. Bennett? Bennett here. Calderon? Here.

Calderon here. De Maio? Here. De Maio here.

Alright. So this is the only bill we have eligible. The bill is entitled to a primary witness. Senator, you're welcome to make an opening statement. Your primary witness will be allotted two minutes if you have testimony.

Okay. Thank you, madam Chair. Appreciate, the the scrutiny and the the rigor of the review here. The goal of this legislation is to get technologies tested in the field before we go to major procurements. You all have had major fires in your areas, many of you.

Also, many other disasters, other factory fires in in Tracy or in Ventura County? You've had floods in the Central Valley, and even down in Southeast Los Angeles as well as the Far North. We think it's really important to equip both CAL FIRE. And as we had been proposing, both CAL FIRE and OES respond to these emergencies.

So in the the version that's that's gonna be amended, we had tried to empower them both to be able to test innovative technologies for which they were not gonna be scaled or deployed at sort of any kind of large scale, but instead to try to figure out whether it made sense to procure these technologies and to do small pilot tests.

So this is really about sort of field testing and giving more nimbleness to try things out before going through the sort of traditional procurement process. I will, I'll defer to my witness on some of the technical amendments. We had we we wanna offer the committee just to consider to respect and try to adhere to the chair's concerns about about contracting authority.

I I did wanna just clarify that if if it if it is the will of the committee to strip the bill back to the April 28 version, you will be then the then CalFire will have no bid contract authority. So just to be super clear, the the the amendments on the floor would have taken that no bid contract authority away from Cal Fire.

We were we were trying to constrain that that authority and put more DGS oversight on it after feedback from the administration. So just to yeah. I just want everyone eyes wide open. If you do end up stripping that out, there's a critical provision set of provisions in the fire innovation unit that that ensure that DGS would have oversight and that they would not have I believe it's on page 15 if you all are following along under c one's section seven eighty nine c one.

We had we had proposed in the floor amendments to strike the provision saying that the fire innovation unit may award a technology vendor that completes a pilot, a follow on contract without a separate competitive solicitation process.

So we had we had proposed to strike that. But if you would like to have that back in, we will we will absolutely defer. And then we wanna just offer if it is the will of the Chair that there are further refinements that we think will further constrain that contracting authority so that it's not open ended, then it's not no bid or that it is, you know, expressly competitive. So that's that's it. I just don't think we have time to wait on these issues.

There's amazing technology out there that can save people from catastrophic fires, and we really don't have a good way to test new things right now. So this bill is a way to test innovation without getting into the procurement process yet. And then once we figure out whether it makes sense for California taxpayers to be paying big bucks on this stuff, then we'd go for a more fully fleshed out process.

That's why fire chiefs around the state, many of your districts, and, county cities, the a lot of the departments that do this stuff are in support, and I respectfully ask for your support. I'm refer to my witness.

Madam Chair, members of the committee, I'm Daniel Kim, the director of procurement for the Weideman Group. Previously, I served as the director of the Department of General Services under governors Brown and Newsom and oversaw statewide procurement. I'm here today on behalf of MegaFire Action, the sponsors of SB 1079. Senator Stern already spoke to this, but we are reverting back to the original bill that that you saw and approved in April. We have some minor technical adjustments.

Most of these are based on some input from Cal OES to help distinguish between the roles of Cal OES and Cal Fire. Another minor adjustment that would make it clear that the new Fire Innovation Unit could also issue both grants and contracts. So that's what we've proposed. We have shared the language with the consultant. Should the Chair and the members of the committee want to add more restrictive language regarding the contracting process, we're happy to provide some additional language on that.

That language would effectively make it clear that the initial contract that Cal Fire would award would have to be done so in a competitive manner. Subsequent additions or amendments to that contract could be done on a sole source basis, but but the initial contract has to be done competitively. We're happy again to share that language with you.

Thank you, Senator, and thank you for your testimony. At this point, is there anyone who'd like to give me to test testimony and and support?

Good evening, madam Chair and members. Robert Frankel here on behalf of the California Fire Chiefs Association and the Fire Districts Association of California in support. Thank you.

Good evening, Chair and members. Keshav Kumar registering support on behalf of fireworks. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any witnesses in opposition? I see none. I will bring it back to the committee. Okay.

So thank you for that. And before we move into what that motion looks like, I just wanna be clear. Senator, did you accept the amendments that would put the bill back to the original state with the amendments the technical amendments that were made on the floor?

Just to be clear, with the technical amendments?

With the yes. The with us considering the amendments, the technical amendments for the original bill, which was for the the FIU.

I'm gonna accept whatever you say. So let's just be clear.

Well, let's not do it. I mean, we need to be clear for the record. We definitely I appreciate that.

Just yeah.

We just wanna accept the amendments to return the bill to the original state and then the technical items that will be cleaned up later.

Okay. Sure.

Is that the okay. Awesome. Thank you. So there's a motion in second. Is there any discussion, doctor Banes?

Assemblyman?

No. Thank you for your guys' work on this. Just a couple of things when it comes to the innovation part is as our fires get different, right, now we've got toxic fires that are happening because of battery power plants that are being caught on fire as well.

So I would like to well, I looked up some of the work that the group has been doing, but what I see is lacking is more work on toxic fires and protecting constituents and getting proper word out on, what proper prevention is, what do we do. I think on the health care side, we're still trying to figure out the proper protocols for those types of fires.

So that would be one. Second is, federal coordination as well because a lot of these fires are both CAL FIRE and US the forest service as well. And sometimes they have their own ideas of doing it, and then CAL FIRE has their own way of doing it. So I think there needs to be some collaboration with what's happening on the federals. I know that could be hard.

However, that should be that was some focus of this group that I saw lacked. So those are two places that I would definitely love to see more work on. Great work on that. And then especially with the concerns from before, if that's all clarified, then you will have my support for this bill. Thank you.

Thank you. Assembly member Baines. Assembly member Bennett.

Thank you, madam Chair. I I would just like to make sure I understand what we're not doing and what was the, you know, what what what was what was the approach trying to do when they when they added the amendment. So just for the benefit of the big picture here, the bill came through. It got to approach was were the amendments were added in in the appropriate

On floor. But yeah.

On the floor. They were added on the Senate floor.

Yeah. Assembly floor.

And what was what was the basic can you summarize what the basic commitments were that you were trying to accomplish?

If if it please let me share.

If you must.

Sure. Sure. Cal OES was concerned that, to doctor Bain's point, that, some aspects of fire some aspects of the technology, when you limit it only to the a fire innovation unit strictly within CAL FIRE and you don't include OES as the amends would do, you're no longer able to do the notifications to local health agencies. You can't work on technology, for instance, related to evacuation per se.

There's a lot of tech that's being developed at OESA to be able to identify quickly where peep what people are left behind, who's in their homes.

In case of, say, earthquakes, they have technology they're looking at to try to find people in rubble. So we were trying to integrate that emergency service side along with the the cal the firefighting piece or the fire mitigation piece as well as the hardening side of things. So we were trying to sort of round it out to be a multi hazard approach, and then so that's one piece.

And then the other the other piece was was the the cleanup that Mister Kim had talked about to just make sure that, we had this we had good oversight from DGS and that that it was clear there wouldn't be, no bid contracting, that it would be, that that we would've we were striking that provision.

And and so the concern was, those were policy that's just those things hadn't come through policy committee and needed to come through policy

Yes. The proper procedures were not followed, and there is some discrepancy regarding the language because the bill that was in print absolutely had no bid contract language, multi phase, no bid contract language, as well as creating an additional unit that has not gone through geo, has not gone through natural resources, and has not gone through emergency management. So this is a procedural concern, and as stated, we're happy to help the Senator. We have plenty of time.

We can help the Senator in the next iteration to get the bill that he wants so that we have an opportunity to fully understand and get the bill to the place he'd like it to be.

Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Are there any other questions or comments from the committee? So we have an we have a first, I believe, from Assembly member Calderon. Was there a second? I've I missed the second. I'm sorry.

Oh, the second from was from Assembly member Baines, and the motion is do passed. And to be clear, as amended, and the Senator has accepted the amendments. Secretary, please call the roll. SB

ten seventy nine, Stern. The motion is do passed as amended and re referred to the Assembly floor. Ransom?

Ransom, aye. Hadwick? Aye. Hadwick, aye. Arambula?

Aye.

Aye. Arambula, aye. Baines? Aye. Baines, Aye.

Bennett? Aye. Bennett, Aye. Calderon? Aye.

Calderon, Aye. Di Maio? Aye. Di Maio, Aye.

The bill is out. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you all.