Good afternoon and welcome to the Alba County Board of Supervisors Personnel Administration and Legislation Committee meeting for Monday, February the 9th, 2026.

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Let's try this again.

Let's start with the federal legislation update from CJ Lake.

Good afternoon.

You've got Emily DeSilva and John Assini here from CJ Lake.

Again, top of mind remains FY26 appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security.

Both the House and Senate are in this week.

They're both in recess next week.

Uh runs through this Friday.

And again, I know when we talked about it, you know, that when they pulled out Homeland Security out of the larger package, by the time it passed, it only gave them two weeks to figure things out.

And so we could be looking at another continuing resolution or potentially a partial shutdown for the department.

I think mentioned the fact that ICE has so much money from HR1.

That you know they don't really have a problem with funding, but the department itself, you know, includes TSA, it includes FEMA, it includes the Coast Guard.

Um, and so I think you know those are some of the kind of larger concerns.

Um Republicans had been saying that democrats needed to share kind of bill text with them, kind of what they wanted included.

Um, we did hear that Dems did share with Republicans over the weekend, but it's been very close hold, and they have not it has not been made public yet.

Um, you know, some of the demands I think we talked about last week from Democrats, but they want it codified in statute, kind of removal of masks and requirements of wearing body cameras by federal agents, requiring DHS to obtain arrest and search warrants from judges rather than administrative warrants, and then in general, more local and state oversight of immigration operations and investigations.

Um, I know you mentioned that a little bit earlier that you have a the letter that the Senate Dems uh released.

I'm not sure if you want to talk a little bit more about that as it relates to their demands.

Yeah, they just um Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer sent a letter to congressional leaders last week with 10 requests for policy riders that would be attached to the Department of Plum and Security full year appropriations package.

Um similar to the three that Emily just listed.

Um there are a couple more that have been mentioned and sort of the general conversation around the DHS bill.

Needless to say, the likelihood that any of these get attached to a defense of homeland appropriations bill is fairly low.

The White House is very strongly opposed to attaching any sort of restrictions that are codified on ICE or CBP.

Um they are looking to do things on an administrative level, um, which would provide or retain a lot of the flexibility that ICE and CPP have been provided uh under current law.

Um the uh chairman of the Homeland Security Appropriations Committee in the Senate, Katie Britt, uh, over the weekend said that she has not started negotiations with her Democratic counterpart, Chris Murphy.

Um, so the conversations that should be happening to extend funding um on this on this important uh agency is not really happening.

Um similarly, House Republicans have indicated their opposition to another continuing resolution saying that the House has already passed uh a homeland fully appropriation, and the only group of people that's opposed to that are Senate Democrats.

So they are almost welcoming uh a partial government shutdown because of the fact that the only agencies that will really be affected by this are the ones that are not CVP or ICE.

It would be FEMA, it would be uh TSA and Coast Guard, and their calculus is that that's something that they believe an argument that they can win uh in the event that the Coast Guard is not getting paid, regardless of their position on CVP and ICE operations in the in the country.

So it should be a pretty interesting week uh if they're able to come up with another CR or if we are hurling toward another partial government shutdown.

Um I guess kind of next up, just kind of what's happening on health care policy.

And honestly, I know we had talked about it last week.

Discussions really have not kind of um moved forward as it relates to the um expansion of the premium tax credit.

So uh, but um the House Energy and Commerce Committee continues to hold hearings focused on insurance affordability.

And so they're gonna continue kind of those hearings this week.

Um there's one focused on examining the prescription drug supply chain, um, and that's gonna focus on pricing dynamics and areas of potential congressional oversight as they try to kind of evaluate different strategies to reduce prescription drug cost.