Interagency Governance Review Committee for Violence Prevention - Regular Meeting

Are we live? Yes. Okay. Calling in order. Do we have any additions or corrections to the agenda?

No. There's no additions or corrections.

Alright. Thank you, Annette. We have both supervisor, Leo, and I are here. And is there any items on the agenda? Excuse me. Is there any public comment for items not on the agenda? Nobody in the room? Anybody online?

I see no hands raised.

Okay. With that, we'll move on to approval of the minutes. Any changes you see in there, Shabran? No. They're good. Okay. We can approve those by consensus and move on to reports from legislative offices. I always go through this too fast, so I'm gonna try to do it little slower today. Do we have anybody from anybody online from either the senator's office, Badea or Schiff? Chance? Probably not. And, how about, congressman Panetta? Congresswoman Lofgren? Senator Laird.

Good morning. I am here on behalf of state senator John Laird. I just have a quick up quick update. The legislator the legislature will reconvene from summer recess on Monday, August 18. A senator's legislative package is still going through the legislative process. I would like to mention just one bill, s b two eighty three, the energy storage system is and it's currently in the assembly. And it does have two new coauthors, assembly member Davies and assembly member P. G. Norris. Other than that, senator O'Leary continues to be engaged in the district. He this week alone, he visited all four counties he represents. In the Monterey County, he recently recently spoke at the Panetta twenty seventh congressional interns. And that's it for me.

Alright. Thank you, Isabelle. Do we have anybody from speaker Revis' office?

Yes. Hi, everyone. Gilbert Ramos with the office of speaker Robert Revis. Thank you, board, for giving us an opportunity to just chime in here. I have a few updates.

As Isabelle had had shared, members of the legislator were on legislative recess. The speaker, you know, attended many district events, meetings, tours within his his district, but then also with his role was up and down the state and had a few press conferences in Sacramento as you all have seen. We are still in the process of digesting HR one, so it's gonna take some time to understand those impacts just given the need for federal guidance. You know, impact is pretty broad recognizing that CalHHS is gonna be the the agency most impacted. The other big topic, and it's it's in the news, is is just redistricting.

You know, one of those reasons why he was also called up is is, you know, the the Texas delegation that came to visit during their, their time away from their state. The speaker's been pretty clear on theirs. This is a a in response to federal administration and states, who are are making efforts to do a mid year mid decade, redrawing of of our congressional districts, and so this has broad support from a congressional delegation. I think every member of the California congressional delegation is in support. And and the speaker has said it.

We will fight fire with fire. So just wanna share that. The goal is this week to release those maps. No other state is allowing, you know, months for, voters to go ahead and digest, the maps. And so, it'll be ultimately up to, voters, whether or not this is approved.

But yes. And then those those, that proposal would be have to be approved by August 22, the week that they get back. Assemblywoman Pelerin, also one of our local colleagues as chair of the elections committee, has now released a public comment forum on on the elections committee, website. So just, wanting to flag that as well. Thank you all.

They're called portals,

Gilbert. Portals. Yes. There you go. Thank you, supervisor.

I have a I have a question for you. With the, special election that's being planned up here at, or, Virginia Martinez of county elections department says it's gonna cost a million, million and a half for the county. Is the state gonna is there any talk with the I hadn't heard anything thus far, but is there any discussion from the state that they're gonna go and help reimburse counties for the cost of these elections?

At this moment, I'm not aware of any of those conversations. I'm happy to to circle back and provide that to your office.

I I have an answer to that. I think CSAC is in conversation with the governor's office as I I connect with Graham Knoss, the executive director this morning because Tommy Rusek wrote something. I think it was gonna cost them at least $15,000,000 to hold a special election. And the fact that it's even a request, the end is troublesome. But the state's gonna hold a special election, they should fully pay for it. And it's in the state's interest to give counties the resources to conduct what is gonna be a very difficult election with the such as our timeline, they the resources should not be the reason not to conduct it the way it should election should be conducted. So, anyways but but there were the county's association is in discussions with the governor on this.

I'm glad to hear somebody's advocating for that because I agree with you entirely. This is something But any county chief.

But for our legislative offices, that's not something they should Yep. Flag with their their bosses because I I think from our county perspective to a million million and a half for our county to do it is a significant number, and it should be one of those things that we we should be raising with our legislative delegation. True. But I

think you have a consensus here and informally from this from this this committee that, you know, to to bring it up with the speaker and, you know, urge your support for that. Mhmm.

I'll go ahead and flag that. Thank thank you for for highlighting that.

K. Thank you. And assuming member, Addis, do we have anybody on from our office? K. Think hopefully, I haven't missed anybody. If I skipped over anybody, please speak up. But with that, we'll move on to the federal report with Maria and Caitlin. I'll pass the baton to you two or whichever one of you. Caitlin, I guess you're up there, it looks like.

Yes. Thank you, supervisor. I'll go ahead and jump right in here. So after passing the one big beautiful bill act last month, Republican members of both houses have returned to their home districts in an effort to tout and advocate for the bill. In the house, speaker Johnson did close legislative business early in an effort to stop democratic efforts, to release the Epstein files.

The senate remained in session through the July and ended up passing three appropriations bills, which I'll discuss in a little bit more detail later. The senate is still deadlocked on approving executive branch nominees, and there is speculation that upon its return, there go is going to be an attempted rule change to bypass the 60 vote threshold. This isn't uncommon as both Democrats and Republicans have changed the rules in the past. In regard to executive orders, in July, president Trump signed an executive order making America beautiful again by improving our national parks. He ordered the secretary of the interior to start increasing revenue in national parks and trying to improve infrastructure by increasing the ticket price for non American residents and decreasing the ticket prices for American residents.

This is an effort to get American resident residents preferential treatment in regard to national parks. Also in July, president Trump signed an executive order pushing the effective tariff date until August 7. That has passed and many of those tariffs did go into effect. A notable exception is the Chinese tariff, which was again extended by both countries. We're continuing to monitor these tariffs and any developments and report updates that may be pertinent to the county.

In regard to appropriations, as I mentioned, the senate did, pass its first three funding bills with bipartisan support. These allocated 154,000,000,000 to military construction and veterans programs and an additional 27,000,000,000 to the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. In both cases, this was a 2% upward adjustment from current funding levels. The senate does need to pass an additional nine appropriations bills by the September or a stopgap measure to prevent a government shutdown by the September. In regard to community project funding requests, good news, we heard back from representative Lofgren's office that draft initial funding levels were released from the house committee.

And these included the San Lucas Clean Drinking Water Project at $1,092,000 and the Salinas Regional Soccer Complex at $500,000. While these are initial and drafts, historically, the draft levels have been very close to the final appropriations levels. The next step here is for congress to pass the final fiscal year twenty six appropriations legislation, which we don't anticipate until September at the very earliest. And in fact, it's possible that we see another stop gap measure which would push this process until after fiscal year twenty seven begins in October 1, or we may see some bills passed now and others postponed until after October 1. Of course, we will provide any updates and any notable changes here as the EMROR process progresses.

In federal advocacy efforts, the County Of Monterey applied to the Department of Defense for a Defense Community Infrastructure Program fund for the Holone Road Safety Improvement Project. We worked with the federal delegation to obtain support letters from each of the federal offices that the county included with its grant submission there. Earlier this year, the Secretary of the Interior directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to begin a new schedule for offshore oil and gas leases. The county has historically been very opposed to this program and also has opposed legislative efforts and also the program outright. At the county's request, we have drafted a letter directly opposing the development of this program and as we'll discuss in the legislation later, support letters for legislation preventing these programs moving forward.

The county also drafted and recirculated a letter supporting funding for the migrant education program in the fiscal year twenty twenty six budget. We received back after this report was published a letter from representative Lofgren, and she agrees with the county and is advocating on behalf of funding this very important program. Earlier this year, the White House also withheld other appropriated funds for education categorical spending. California and 23 states sued to release that funding and was successful for a majority of the funds, but that does not accept these categorical funds from the chopping block on the fiscal year twenty twenty six budget. And as a result, the county has asked that we draft, and you'll find in your materials, another letter supporting these educational categorical fundings, which include title one supporting students from low income families, title three which supports English language learners, title two which helps recruit and retain highly qualified teachers, as well as funding for individuals with disabilities and funding for career and technical education program funding.

So you'll find that letter in your materials. Turning now to legislation, we have a variety of bills, the majority of which are reintroductions of bills from 2023, which the county supported then. Our first bill is the FEMA Independence Act. This one is not a reintroduction, but it seeks to establish the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an independent agency. This would take it out of the bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security and overall make it more flexible in responding quickly to emergencies.

This does have senator Padilla as an original cosponsor. Our next bill is the Secure Rule Schools Reauthorization Act. The County Of Monterey currently receives some funds from the Secure Rule Schools program and without reauthorization, the County's funding would go away. So this act just reauthorizes that program. And both senator Schiff and senator Padilla are cosponsors in the senate.

Our third bill is a reauthor a reintroduction that is the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. It's introduced by representative Lofgren in the house, and this would really create a workforce solution for the agricultural industry. It would reform the h two a program. It would establish a program for agricultural workers to learn earn legal status and overall modify the program to make it more responsive and user friendly. The county did support this legislation back in 2023.

As I discussed earlier, we have the Central Coast Of California Conservation Act, which would amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act prohibiting the Secretary of the Interior from issuing leases for oil and gas production in any area off the Central Coast Of California as introduced by representative Panetta, and representative Lofgren is an original cosponsor. Similarly, the West Coast Protection Act would prevent oil and gas leasing off of the entire West Coast. Again, representative Panetta and Lofgren are cosponsors. And Padilla introduced the senate version in the senate. We have the Reentry Act of 2025, another reintroduction of a 2023 bill.

And this would allow Medicaid payment for medical services to be furnished to incarcerated individuals during the last thirty days of their incarceration and it would facilitate a cleaner, smoother transition into the community and also reduce the risk of overdosing post release. Our next bill is the Bipartisan Background Checks Act. Again, a reintroduction. This would extend the requirement of background checks for unlicensed gun sellers. In essence, unlicensed sellers would need to meet their buyers at a licensed gun dealer who would then run a background check using the same process that they already use.

Both representative Lofgren and Panetta are co sponsors. The Enhance Background Checks Act, another reintroduction, would close the Charleston loophole, which currently allows for the sale of a firearm while the FBI is still completing a background check. And under this bill, after ten days of no background check response from the FBI, the buyer can request an escalated review of their application. And only after a ten day business period with no response, then the dealer can sell the gun to the buyer. But this extends that background check period.

And finally, we have the renewing immigration provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929, another reintroduction. This was introduced by Lofgren in the house and senator Padilla in the senate. And this would make it easier for residents of The United States to obtain legal status, about 8,000,000 people, including DREAMers and other persons who have been in the country for at least seven years and are of good moral character. And letters supporting all of those pieces of legislation are included in your packet. Thank you.

Yep. Thank you, Caitlin. Any comments you have prepared? I don't really have any either. Appreciate the, the rundown. I forgot to ask for any public comment on the legislative offices, so I'm gonna include it right in with with this federal update too if anybody has any public comment on either one of those. I see nobody in the room here. Nobody online. K. We will move on to the the next item then, which is the state report. And

I'm sorry, supervisors. Can we have you take action on the position recommendations, please?

Sorry. I missed that in there.

Thank you.

On, which one do we need action on?

Action on all of the recommended letters and positions.

Yeah. Absolutely. I'm good with those. Yeah. I'm good with that too. I think we, we have a consensus here to, move ahead with that there, Annette. Thank you for catching that. Can we move on to the state report? Ashley Walker and Asha Hunt. I see Ashley on there and Asha too. Okay. Turning over to whichever one of you wants to start first.

Sounds great. Thanks so much, and good morning. I'll start with an update on the status of where the legislature is at in their session this year. As you know, right before we recessed for summer break, there was a policy committee deadline. And there are now they're coming back on Monday, and they will be focused on the appropriations committees.

The appropriation deadline is just in a couple of weeks on August 29. Many bills are in appropriations or they are on the floor of the second house. The floor sessions will be held as well to move bills from the legislature off to the governor. As you know, the governor has thirty days to take action on a bill that's presented to him. Thank you to Gilbert for joining and giving an update on redistricting as that is what we anticipate the legislature to be focused on in the first week when they return from their summer recess next week.

After that, we do anticipate that there will be an additional focus on a budget trailer bills potentially related to the natural resources issues that are still outstanding and were not discussed or finalized rather in the final and active budget. So we do anticipate that will be a big discussion at the end of session. I will just note that the final day of the legislative session this year is September 12. It is the first year of the two year session, so bills can be held over into the second year starting up in January 2026. As I mentioned on the state budget, I do anticipate there to be a natural resources related trailer bill.

Part of that is that proposition four, which is a priority for the county, had not been allocated in the final budget that's already been enacted by the legislature and the governor. So there is still outstanding items to be discussed related to proposition four. Our priority, of course, is to have actual allocations be eligible for disbursement in the current fiscal year. Our county has a lot of projects that are eligible for proposition four funding, and so we would like to see those funds be eligible and eligible for disbursement this year. We'll continue to advocate that that be the case and keep you posted on what that looks like.

There are also a lot of discussions about the Delta conveyance project that we anticipate to be ongoing in a potential natural resources related trailer bill also. And, of course, our budget bill that we passed did not take into consideration the federal tax cuts or implications of the president's one big beautiful bill. And so we may need to, as a state, reconvene on how to address some of those impacts to California. Supervisor Church, do you want me to stop on each item, or should I just continue to keep moving?

You can continue to pick the Okay. That'd fine.

Okay. Great. Because we have been on recess for the last several weeks, we only have one piece of legislation to bring forward today with a suggested support position. This bill was brought forward by the Military and Veterans Affairs Office for the recommended support position. I we have included a draft letter for your consideration.

The bill aims to really strengthen law to protect veterans that are being targeted by non accredited people in the by the VA for their benefit claims. It increases penalties for those folks that are unauthorized to access veterans data on VA computer systems and prohibits them from charging fees that exceed the VA accredited attorney or claims agents. With regard to helping a veteran with a benefits claim, there has been noted abuse of these veterans benefits claims and folks using those in ways they should not. So this is strengthening our California laws for our California veterans to protect them from folks who are doing this and are not accredited. So we have a support recommendation for this bill by senator Archuleta.

The bill is being heard next week in appropriations. We would like to be able to convey our support. So we would ask the committee to take a support position on this piece of legislation.

I think we'll we'll take a position on that after you're done. We don't want to Okay. Before we actually approve or disapprove anything.

Sure. That sounds great. Our second recommendation and requested action from the legislative committee is to sign on to a letter with regard to implementation of a d fourteen thirty nine. We were asked to sign on to a letter from county supervisors specifically to request the implementation of a b fourteen thirty nine, which is has not quite happened yet. That bill was authored by assembly member Eduardo Garcia.

It became law in the 2024. It prioritizes low income housing tax credits for farm worker housing. And so we wanna see the implementation of that prioritization in the California tax credit allocation committee program. That program is called the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, and it does prioritize, like I mentioned, the new construction of farm worker housing. So we have a letter in your pocket for consideration to sign on to along with other supervisors across the state, and our recommendation is a support position on that on that implementation letter.

The letter is addressed to Fiona Ma, our state treasurer. And then finally, we have a list of governor's actions and executive orders that have happened when we wrote this report. Lot has happened since since then. But if you have any, questions or concerns about any of the items that are listed on this, report, please let me know, and I'm happy to expand upon any of these executive orders or actions that have happened since we last met. We additionally have our state tracker attached.

The state track outlines exactly where all of our bills that we have positions on are at in the legislative process. Most of them are either, of course, two year bills or they are on the floor or in appropriations. We are prepared to testify in appropriations as needed and monitor the suspense file for our bills coming off of that process and get our letters and advocacy efforts ready for the governor's office in the final weeks of session. As you see at the bottom of that state track, there are several different items that we track related to budget items or other letters that fall outside of legislation that we have been working on. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Any questions? Nope. I don't have any questions either before we do any action here. I was gonna ask you if there's any public comment in the chambers or online regarding any of these matters, and I see none. I'll just say on

the a b fourteen thirty nine, the tax credit for farm worker housing by my friend Eduardo Garcia, the the coalition that is working behind this is pushing for the implementation. Certainly advantageous to Monterey County to get these additional points in the tax credit that's going on. I'm thinking, like, Chispa and Castroville project, which is still trying to put the financing together. The law was passed, but it's one of those examples where the treasurer's office had just been sitting on it even though it's been a couple years, and so they're just asking us to sign on to that letter. I just wanted to speak to that because they had reached out to us to to join in this effort, which

is beneficial to us. Well, I'm I'm supportive of of both those recommendations and signing on to both of these in the letter. So think we're good with consensus on that. And thank you very much, Ashley. Appreciate that, and we have approved those items. And with that, we can move on to item five, which is the the grant report.

Great. I'll start with the San Lucas drinking water project. We have been making progress with the state water board in terms of actually solidifying the project alternative. The county has been very involved in submitting comment letters to the state board requesting that the state board select project alternative for that project includes not only wellhead treatment for the water issues in the community, but also the drilling of one new well. We were supportive of that project, and the state board has determined that that project alternative is the best path forward for the community of San Lucas.

We continue to evaluate funding opportunities. We have been successful in being able to identify and secure funding opportunities so far, but we anticipate the need will be greater than what we have secured. And so we are taking a close look at proposition four grant funding opportunities for San Lucas. As you recall, we were able to get language into proposition four that allowed a project like San Lucas, to be eligible for proposition four drinking water funds. That is why it is critical that the legislature and governor consider proposition four allocations in the, final weeks of session and why we are advocating in support of those funds being allocated in the current fiscal year.

Next, we did have a few meetings with the county park staff to discuss land and water conservation fund applications that were open. Ultimately, there wasn't a great fit for the grant program itself, but we were able to brainstorm some projects that the county has, and that will likely be helpful for us as we go through proposition for parks dollars as well, and evaluating the projects we discussed with the county for those potential funds if they are allocated in the current fiscal year that we're in. And we do have our grant tracker attached. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions related to grant funding efforts.

I don't have any questions, but just glad to see San Lucas keeping moving ahead. That's for sure. Well Finally. Finally. Yes.

We're almost there. Getting there. Yeah. We'll we'll feel comfortable. We're quite over

the finish line. We're about there.

It's only been fourteen years.

Yeah. It's stupid. It's long, well, and long needed. Mhmm.

Any other comments? I I want to ask about in our federal report, and thank you to our team for drafting a letter. It was just on the on even though it's it's an education issue, our county is a voice on many issues for our residents, and that was on the categorical funding, which was threatened. The the Trump tried to freeze almost a billion dollars to California on special categorical educational dollars that includes it could've been meth wiping out migrant ed, adult education, a lot of money for students with disabilities, after school programs, teacher training programs like California Mini Corps that is based in Hartnell and CSU Monterey Bay, a wide range of programs. So I'm just glad that we're able to pass away on these issues because they would have a huge impact.

I think our county is one of the counties with the highest number of migrant students out of all out of 75,000 migrant students in California, 10,000 called Monterey County their home. So I'm I'm just wanna thank our staff for putting this letter that we approved it today. But it but as if this is the last item, Glenn, I I Annette, I don't know if this is her last meeting, or she had one more meeting with us. Annette is can we confirm?

I I got one more meeting. So

Okay. Good. We'll save it for next meeting then. Was gonna I'm gonna make sure we're not gonna see the moment. We we like to this could be I know we gotta we're do it at the full board of supervisors, but and Annette is retiring soon, and we wanna make sure we give her proper accolades for just being such an amazing advocate on the legislative side for Monterey County and all our residents and businesses. So, Annette, I I I'm glad we we'll we'll plan for that at our next one.

Yes. Very much. And yeah. Annette, you do a wonderful job, and you will be very difficult to replace. I think we all know that For sure. Very much. We will definitely give you some kudos at the at the next meeting, I think. And, well, I should ask to see if there's any public comment on the grand items here. Anybody online?

None online.

Nobody online? So we'll come comments so we can adjourn here till our next scheduled meeting, which will be Annette's last

on September 8. Alright. September it is. Gotcha. K. Alright. Thank you.

Thanks, everybody.

Alright. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for