Assembly Standing Committee on Revenue and Taxation

Wanna say good evening, and welcome to the hearing on the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation. Pursuant to rules 77.2, we are hearing items this evening on a regular order on the on the agenda. File item number 1 AB 611 Lee, and we see Mister Lee is present. After bills have been dispensed with, we will hold informational hearing where Assembly member, Mark Gonzalez will present AB 817 for testimony only.

We do we're not we don't have possession of the bill, so we were here only on testimony. Madam secretary, would you please call the road to establish a quorum?

[Roll Call]

Thank you very much. Mister Lee is here. File line number 1, AB, 611. Mister Lee, welcome. The hours far spent, so, you have the floor, and you proceed when ready.

Thank you, Mister Chair. I'll be brief. AB 611 is a measure that establishes a voluntary tax contribution check off to raise funds for spinal cord injury treatment research. Over three hundred thousand people in United States are living with spinal cord injuries. Depending on the type of spinal cord injury, people can expect significantly reduced life expectancy and significant challenges in daily routines of life.

This bill demonstrates our state's ongoing commitment to find treatments and solutions to help Californians living with spinal cord injuries to fill us no opposition. I ask I ask for your aye vote.

Thank you very much. Mister Lee, you have no witnesses. So anyone in the room wishing to speak in support of AB, 611, should you please come to the microphone hearing no one coming? Any primary opposition to this measure, would you please come forward? Hearing and seeing no and bring it back to the.anyone in the room which is just to express opposition to this measure.

You have the same right hearing no one come forward. Is it properly moved by miss McKinnor? Do I hear second? And by who?

Okay. She said she's different.

By miss Quirk Silva. Thank you very much. The motion is is to recommend a concurrence to the Senate amendments. Madam secretary, would you please call the roll?

[Roll call]

That bill is out five

Don't say that. Just say it.

The motion is adopted. Five zero. And we'll keep it open roll for absent members. We're now over here on file item number 2 AB 817 by Mister Gonzales. We will now trans transfer to the information we'll transfer into the informational hearing portion of this evening's hearing. The committees note that we do not have possession currently of the bill.

We will have testimony only by Mister Gonzales. Thank you very much for appearing. Mister Gonzales, you may proceed with your presentation when ready.

Thank you, Mister Chair and members, colleagues. I know it's very late tonight, but I'm here to present AB 817, which will address several pressing issues brought about because the Lineage Facility fire in my district. Two months ago, a fire broke out at a 500,000 square foot cold foot storage in the heart of my district in Boyle Heights, and they literally just cleaned it up yesterday.

For those who are not familiar with Boyle Heights, it is a neighborhood in East LA, a neighborhood surrounded by freeways that has been historically underinvested and the victim of one of the largest environmental disasters in California history, the fall of the Excide battery recycling plant. That's not that's not what this evening is about.

This evening is about a devastating fire, a fire that lasted eight days and spewed out smoke and 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. And again, I wanna reiterate, they barely cleaned out the food yesterday. AB 817 will tackle two key issues brought upon by this fire.

First, by preventing any new building permits for companies like Lineage until they can show they have a contingency fund to set aside a 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 it up. Second, we'll ensure that any settlement that a resident or a business gets from any future litigation because of an incident is tax free. Should this 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. They shouldn't have to worry about paying taxes on money that is rightfully owed to them. AB 817 will not undo what has already been done, but it will make sure for every community in California that the never this never happens again without a plan, resources, and accountability.

I have also taken amendments to address the concerns raised by the opposition on potential unintended consequences for cold storage facilities of varying sizes and uses by narrowing the bill to only apply to Boyle Heights for 2027, delays inflammation inflammation until July '28 for the rest of the state with the goal addressing all the stakeholder feedback the author has received and to create a version of that of this that works for everyone while continuing to hold lineage accountable.

Clarifying that the cold storage facilities that the bill applies must either be at least a 20,000 square foot storage facility or facility that has at least 20,000 square feet of cold storage within if it's not entirely cold storage. Adding an insurance policy as another option for the contingency fund, and I'm committed to continue working on this issue next year to ensure a statewide version reflects stakeholder feedback while ensuring no community to experience what ours has experienced. Because no one deserves to experience an eight day fire.

No one deserves to breathe smoke. We're nowhere to go. No one deserves to be choking on rotting food, odors while surrounded by rats and flies for the last two months. Thank you, Mister Chair, and I appreciate this, committee hearing the bill. And, again, I just wanna thank the opposition for continuing to engage in these conversations, all knowing what has happened, in my backyard. Many of you have reached out to me, about that situation. That's why we are here today to take action on those bad actors in my district. And thank you, Mister Chair.

Thank you very much for your testimony. Do you have any witnesses in support of your No. This measure? Okay. Primary opposition? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I jumped ahead. Anyone wishing to speak in support of this measure, would you please come forward? 817. Your name, your organization, and this is support.

Good afternoon, Mister Chair. Good afternoon. Good evening, Mister Chair, members. Skyler Wonnacott, California Business Properties Association. We initially added an opposed unless amended position.

We are going to be moving to neutral. We appreciate, the author's amendments to really narrow and target this bill in response to the Lineage fire in Boyle Heights and believe that this is a a bill that actually makes a difference and is our appropriate step. Our position to neutrality is based on the predication that we will work on cleanup legislation next year going forward. And just wanna thank the assemblyman. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Primary opposition to this measure, would you please come forward? You can have a seat at the table, and you may proceed when I'm ready.

Alright. Good evening, Chair and members. Nicole Quinonez. I'm representing the Global Cold Chain Alliance. Our members represent the entire cold supply chain, including warehouses, storage, transportation, logistics, research, and construction.

First, we and most importantly, we wanna recognize the devastating impact of the warehouse fire and Assemblymember Gonzalez's district. Community in Boyle Heights and understand the desire to put stronger procedures in place, to support communities of similar incidents occur in the future. We also appreciate the amendments and the author's commitment. His amendments would delay that statewide implementation of the bill to provide us the opportunity to work next year to address those concerns. And we are certainly committed to being a constructive stakeholder should this bill become law.

Again, we have no objection to the tax exemption provisions in the bill that the committee is considering. However, we do, just wanna note that if for some reason we're unable to reach a compromise next year, the provisions of the bill as written would have serious, ability to build new cold storage facilities, as well as improve existing facilities throughout the state.

And I'll just note because if, in the bill, it has the potential to increase the price of cold storage, and therefore, that would likely be passed on to food prices. Facility improvements would be more expensive because they would require the contingency fund, and we fear that may disadvantage small and medium sized businesses that may not have the capital to secure that type of contingency fund to do those improvements. But, again, we are committed to work with the Assembly member next year and appreciate your time.

Great. Thank you very much for your testimony. Anyone in the room wishes to speak in opposition to these measures, please come to the microphone, name your organization, and this is the opposition.

Mister chairman, Randy Pollack on behalf of the American Chemistry Council. Just wanna echo the words of miss Quinones. We look forward to working with the member next year as we think that together we can get to a reasonable solution for everybody. Thank you.

Thank you. Next witness. Name, organization, and this is in opposition to.

Yes. Rachel O'Brien, California Grocers Association. Align our comments with those that spoke before me. Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much. Wanna bring it back to the dais for any questions from any members. Miss McKinnor.

Yes. Good good good evening, Mister Chair. I'd like to thank the author for bringing this bill up because this is so important to LA County and so important to your community, and I I know that. I know that you guys have been through something really devastating. When I when I look at the Lineage warehouses, they have about 39 locations across California with about 22 of them in Southern California, 19 in the Greater Los Angeles area.

When we talk about I know that you did this for your district, which I understand that, but the those other 22 areas in your in our district in our area is like Vernon, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Wilmington, Fullerton, and the Inland Empire. I know we need to have these storage facilities, but I would like to see some built in Beverly Hills, Palos Verdes, and Santa Monica, not just in the poor air areas where when these things happen, these people can't. They can't afford to leave.

But, like, in Beverly Hills, if that happened, they could afford to kinda pack up and go somewhere for about two or three months. So I'd like to see that that that our coal storage, which we we really need in California, I like them built evenly in in communities. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Go right ahead, Mister Greenberg. I'm sorry. Yeah. Mr Carrillo.

Yes. First, I wanna thank Assembly member Gonzales for bringing this important issue to this committee. You know, what happened in Boyle Heights should have never happened, and we can never allow it to happen again. I am proud that the budget has allocated $4,000,000 directly to address the cleanup efforts overdue for this community that have been overlooked for too long. I think, you already, you said that they just cleaned it up over the weekend. It's completely clean now.

They man. Yeah. Please. They were able to finally get rid of the rotting food, so that piece is done. Now they still need to clean up the rest of the mess.

You know, the California legislation must also ensure that a disaster like this does not happen again. It is for the reason that I support ABA 17, a bill that shows that a targeted approach to holding those responsible without impacting unintended industries such as restaurants, movie theaters, churches, and libraries. ABA 17 is also a bill that went through the proper committee process to ensure that our stakeholders could weigh in. That is a good policy. So, thank you again for bringing this in.

And we can and must address the Boyle Heights tragedy and support the community by supporting ABA 17. With that, I'd like to move the bill.

Yeah. We're not this is informational, but thank you very much.

Take it.

Any other thank you. I would just wanna ask a question. Have any of the payments related to this incident gone out to any of the affected communities?

To to define payment from the Lineage specifically? They've given 2 to $3,000,000 to California Community Foundation to distribute to the community. Obviously, more is needed, but that is a portion of what they've given. 80 to 100,000,000 has gone in from Lineage to clean up their own personal mess, but not to the community.

Not to the community as of yet. Okay. Let me just also just add one who represents the Los Angeles area, not the affected area. And I wanna commend you on, one, working expeditiously before we conclude our business before the legislature for one, bringing at least raising this issue for your community, for the Los Angeles community. I'm a certain need.

We've been watching this unfold. This is certainly has set precedence, and and we wanna make sure nothing like this ever happens again to any communities in California. And we have to put things in place in a very sensible and reasonable way. So if something like this was to take place, that we have something to fall back on and residents are made whole moving forward.

So I commend the author for for one working expeditiously and making sure that there's something in place that this happens again, that communities are not left, to repeat something like this ever again.

So with that being said, you're welcome to close if you, so desire.

Again, thank you to my colleagues. Obviously, this is a very important issue, and the reason why we are, at this point, for the bill is we do not obviously expect a fire to happen. And so we wanted to, you know, make action now, which is why this bill has has run the course that it has in the last couple of weeks. We are committed to coming back and working to strengthen it. But on behalf of Boyle Heights, thank you for caring for my community.

Thank you very much. And thank you with thank you for coming and expressing your opinion on this matter. Thank you.

Okay. Is Mister Yes. Okay. Wonderful. I think that's all the business before the revenue taxation committee, and this will be the final committee. And so we will stand and adjourn. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mister Chair.

Thank you.