Ready?

Good afternoon and welcome to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors Personnel Administration and Legislation Committee meeting for Monday, February the 23rd, 2026.

We have roll call, please.

Supervisor Portana Bass.

Present.

Supervisor Town.

Present.

We have a quorum.

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Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's start with the federal legislative update.

Good afternoon.

Lin Haquez, and I am very pleased to be with you this afternoon to give you the update uh from the nation's capital, which was a very snowy nation's capital this morning.

As a result of that snow, and you know what we do, right?

Um we had a postponement of the reconvening of the House and Senate.

The Congress was on recess last week, scheduled to come back today as fly-in day with votes scheduled and some markups to begin.

However, due to the near blizzard conditions on the east coast and snow in the nation's capital, the um house sessions were postponed uh with no votes tonight, so activity will not begin until tomorrow, Tuesday.

And accompanying that activity tomorrow will be the first State of the Union address given by President Trump in his um most recent term.

So we are expecting some update policy updates, and it will be very interesting to hear from that perspective.

At the same time, he's giving a State of the Union address when the Department of Homeland Security is still uh on shutdown due to the failure to reach agreement on the spending and appropriations bill.

I did note that late uh I was advised that late uh Sunday night um last night, the White House did uh send over a list of items to the Senate Dems indicating what they would be willing to codify as a result of the um changes in operations that uh Director Holman made in Minneapolis.

The White House is agreeing to codify in legislation some of those initiatives at greater transparency and accountability and investigations and warrants and other kinds of things.

It is not the entire list that the Ds have insisted upon in order to reopen and provide the votes for that agency to reopen, but it is an indication of ongoing conversation and negotiations.

At the same time, it is the non-immigration related functions of Department of Homeland Security that are mostly impacted by this shutdown because a great deal of funding was provided to ICE and others in the reconciliation package, as we've reported on previously.

So as uh FEMA continues, especially the uh five states that declared states of emergency on the East Coast as a result of this storm.

The resources at FEMA continue to be depleted, TSA and other kinds of activity uh along the customs um initiatives and others continue to be impacted by the shutdown.

So we are hopeful that these conversations will continue and result in some type of possibly even year-long CR at this point, continuing resolution, but hopefully some type of of negotiation that contains some of the protections that um that are being converse uh that are being discussed.

In addition to um that sort of primary activity being the State of the Union and the ongoing negotiations over the government um funding for Department of Homeland Security, there are a few pieces of legislation that are uh slated to begin the legislative process through either hearing and/or markup form, first and foremost uh being the House Farm Bill and the authorization so-called skinny skinny authorization bill that needs to implement the underlying authorizations for programs not included in the reconciliation bill.

The House bill was dropped uh last Friday the 13th uh in its text and scheduled to begin consideration at committee level today.

However, due to the storm, that markup has been postponed until next week.

The salient points, although expanding market access and doubling the market access program and some other things, but the salient point for us in the county uh primarily deal with the nutrition title, authorizing the uh nutritional assistance and food distribution programs targeting our low-income county residents, uh, including SNAP.

So we are awaiting the results of what that markup might be for that program, although we do expect a primarily party line vote coming out of committee and potentially making it onto the floor a party line vote there, as the Ds are not supporting this legislation in its current form.

The bill itself, as introduced, would require USDA to include SNAP payment errors, uh discounting and not providing for margins of errors and dollar amounts anymore in an annual report under auditing requirements.

It also establishes the regulations to increase SNAP electronic benefits cybersecurity uh initiatives, requires GAO office investigation of SNAP administrative costs and overhead, and finally it reauthorizes the nutrition incentive program by including cost share waivers for persistent poverty counties and expanding access.

Another um element that is occupying much of our attention in DC has been the Supreme Court ruling last week negating the claim of presidential authority to impose tariffs under the economic uh IEPA Act, and therefore ruling that all of the various tariffs that that the administration has imposed are illegal.

It made no mention or uh pathway to how to undo or provide refunds for individuals and companies that have had to pay those tariffs.

So that is very much an uncertain result that that remains to be sorted out.

However, the president immediately announced that he would turn to Section 122 uh in order to increase across the board tariffs for everyone from 10% to 15%, however, that does require clearly congressional authorization and that ability will expire in 150 days if Congress does not act.

So the tariff uh debate continues and the impact continues to to some extent.

Um that is kind of the uh upshot.

The only other thing I wanted to share with you all as well is another executive order that uh that came out last week on election security, and particularly targeting um voter fraud in the immigrant and unauthorized uh immigrant populations, and we've already seen an uptick in um outreach from various electoral agencies to individuals, many of whom are in LPR status, many of whom are awaiting adjustment or in Docker stat in DACA status, with inquiries as to whether in their high school years or whatever, they were improperly registered to vote and did in fact vote and then are losing their status as a result.

We had five cases in Florida already last week, and the executive order increases the scrutiny and uh enforcement on that side of electoral security, if you will.

Um, and of course, we also have the disruption in commerce and um entry uh and immigration procedures that is a result of the consulate's closing in Mexico temporarily due to the upheaval there along the border as well.

Um, so never a dull moment uh in the nation's capital and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for that update.

Uh despite being snowed in, that's quite um informative.

Supervisor Fortunately asked questions, comments.

Yes, thank you so much for joining us uh for the update as well as for the Monday morning memo.

Um, I was wondering if um there's any more to share regarding the DHS negotiations, and so uh the memo was helpful where uh it talks about how the White House sent a one-page briefing to members of Congress in regards to including some uh some of the issues, body worn cameras, clear badge policies, and the dissolution of roving patrols.

I'm just curious if you can speak to how the Democrats are receiving or reacting to that memo.

So, and that was so of course, as you know, the Dems had sent over a three-page memo outlining a long uh list of requirements, only a few of which had been incorporated already into the uh bill that had that had passed the Senate previously.

And the White House then, as I said, sent over their willingness to abide by some of those elements that had been announced by Holman and would codify those.

And at this point, and again, although there are some conversations that were taking place, you know, today, but given the inability of all of the members to get back in town and continue those conversations, we expect to have a little bit more.

I would have a little bit more insight on how the offices are receiving that at the leadership level when they get back in town, if that makes sense.

So a little bit later this week.

Sure, that does make sense.

And then in terms of the House Farm Bill, um, I thought that when we got through the last budget or the last government shutdown, that SNAP had been sort of or preserved for three years.

Is there still some, are there still some issues at play in terms of preserving uh SNAP in CalFresh?

Yes, so it's not, it's not necessarily so um let's differentiate funding levels from authorization provisions.

Okay, and so the um appropriations bill that was provided for for USDA after the you know 54-day shutdown uh last November did provide funding and sufficient numbers of funding levels, but the farm bill is the authorizing vehicle and adds additional provisions and requirements related to the implementation of that program, and that's what I described.

Right.

And will there potentially be any more barriers in addition to what we're dealing with?

You know, we've already got work requirements and for example, so do we anticipate there'll be additional barriers for people to access these?

So we so we don't anticipate additional barriers coming out of the House bill other than the sort of fraud oversight investigation auditing provisions that I described.

However, because those uh increased uh criteria and threshold requirements that were included in the reconciliation package were opposed by the Democrats, the Senate Ds have indicated their absolute refusal as the House Ds to support the Farm Bill package unless there are revisions in some of those threshold criteria, uh and that's why we're not seeing action on the farm bill in the Senate at this point.

Thank you.

So that's gonna be a sticking point.

They want to roll them back.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Thank you.

Just to follow up on that, what incentives would the Senate or House Republicans have to make some of those adjustments on the farm bill?

So the leverage, right?

So in, and there's there's a great deal of uncertainty whether in fact the skinny farm bill can move forward because so much of the programs were already funded and or are being, you know, individually implemented, such as the economic aid package of 12 billion dollars, you know, that's coming out from CCC as to whether this really is going to gain any traction.

But the leverage on the D side is that there still are some critical underlying uh crop insurance revisions.

There are expanded specialty crop uh support mechanisms, economic aid packages, um, marketing access programs, which are of significant interest that are still part of the authorization package, and that you know, the administration and and ours and anybody in farm country if you will want to see move forward.

And so that is to some extent the leverage, you know, that the that those that want to see uh some more measured criteria be replaced of than the reconciliation package, they're going to try to leverage that desire in order to reach something.

Again, I'm not um super hopeful uh that we will get a skinny farm bill through because of those dynamics, and that's always the case, right?

The farm programs versus the urban price support programs.

So we will see.

Thank you.

That's helpful to understand.

Um, I have no other questions.

Are there any public comments on the federal legislative update?

I don't see any hands raised.

Okay.

Um let's move to the state legislative update.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

Gyal Dentas here with Fulmone Strategy, she'll provide you uh update on your state legislature.

Starting last Friday, February 20th marked the deadline for bill introductions in California.

This is the second year that both houses are under a new revised bill limits, right, uh for 25 and 26 session.

Under the current rules, legislators are limited to the maximum of a 35 bills for the entire two-year session, uh, representing a reduction from previous limits uh from 40 bills on the Senate and 50 bills on the assembly side.

Consistent with this uh limit, uh fewer measures were introduced this year uh between both houses.

We had just under 1800 uh bills introduced statewide and uh nearly 600 bills about 33 percent are placeholder measures.

What do we call it spot bills and uh intent bills?

We sent out uh earlier uh today a full report uh to the county with all the measures of interest.

Uh on this wave of a building reductions on Friday and Saturday, I bring good news, SB 1400 by Senator Adagin was introduced last week.

This is the Alameda County sponsored bill, uh the measure 6 to amend the health and safety code to modernize the governance structure for AHS.

Uh now that the bill has been introduced, he enters the legislator, legislative uh 30-day requirement in print.

So the bill will also in this 30 days will be referraled to policy committees.

Uh the full moon strategies team, we are working right now closely with the author's office to conduct a outreach to the members of the Alameda County delegation uh just to secure uh a few more members as co-authors on this measure.

Also, last week, the Department of Finance released their bulletin showing revenues, in particular the personal income tax, is better than previously projected.

That the administration shows income taxes at 4.7 billion dollars above the forecast in January.

Uh, that the administration also noted that this is strong revenues are drivenue assumptions into his main revision budget proposal that we will have access in the future.

At the same time, the California legislative office, the LAO, release an update on the fiscal outlook projection projecting the big three revenues the personal income, personal income taxes, the corporate and sales taxes.

For the current fiscal year, um all of them they exceed the governor's January budget proposal by $8 billion.

This current year increases are most driven again by a higher uh and stronger than expected personal income tax collections tied into a growth of the artificial intelligence sector and the AI stock projections.

However, the LAO cautioned uh some uh lawmakers that these gains uh depend on the variance of the capital markets and should not be treated as uh uh ongoing revenue.

The LAO warned the lawmakers that this shouldn't be treated as one time funding.

Uh last week, the California Attorney General Rob Bonta, alongside the Governor's Office of Businesses and Economic Development, Go Biz, and the California Energy Commission co-led a coalition of 13 attorney generals in filing a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump's administration decision to terminate billions of dollars in congressionally authorized energy and infrastructure uh funding established under the inflation reduction act and the infrastructure investments and jobs acts.

In California, the administration terminated uh more than 1.2 billion dollars in the alliance for renewable clean hydrogen energy systems projects and a four million dollars for the resilient and efficient coast implementation program.

Uh the coalition seeks a court order to restore uh this funds.

Uh you might be aware also from last week, the governor Gavin Newsom signed early action budget bills, including AB 117, which authorizes uh $590 million in emergency loan to support the Bay Area public transit systems, providing a short-term financial relief uh to the Bay Area Rapid Transit Bart, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the MUNIC CALTRAIN, and the AC Transit as they continue to recover from the pandemic-related uh revenue losses.

Uh, in our report, we added a coverage to the governor's signing, uh, the early action bills uh with uh with some links as well.

Um, lastly, there are two budget hearings this week that I would like to mention, starting on Wednesday with the assembly subcommittee too in human services, where uh members of the committee will be covering uh a high amount of issues going from cow works, housing supporting programs, impacts from uh uh from federal HR 1, uh also going over uh cow fresh enrollment and eligibility.

Uh again, we are still waiting for more guidance from the Fed federal level to see how we can better respond to it, but these hearings are going to be for us to understand a little bit more, you know, what is possible uh for this day.

And uh again, after this hearings, uh the full moon strategies team will be sharing notes and our insights with the county as well.

With that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much for that report and also your memoir of your um supervisor Fortunatas questions.

Um, I actually don't have any questions.

That was very comprehensive and very glad to hear that SB 1400 was introduced.

Likewise, I don't have any other questions.

Um, our next item is about um it's an informational item for AB 96.

Is there a request for action?

Uh no they needed to submit a comment letter before the deadline so the department had signed it so it's informational.

Okay.

Do we have any public comments on the legislative update from the state?

No public comment okay so on AB 96 did you just want to give us an update on it or I don't see Jessica on I can ask her to follow up with you.

Okay so I mean what what we have in our packets is basically a support position that was recommended by Alameda County Health to remove the requirement for high school uh diploma or equivalent degree in order to expand the availability of peer support workers so that's um what's being put forth as a support position from the counties at the recommendation on mental health.

Yes with Dr.

Triple and the their association I believe this is an association sponsored bill um mental health directors association sponsored bill and so she signed a letter on her department's behalf in support of the bill and um this is it to inform you of that okay thank you so the next item is a request for a legislative position from uh the county welfare directors association um to champion some of the CalFresh uh HR1 priorities in terms of eligibility investments in the workforce and the March uh waiver for the upcoming budget um there's a recommendation to support it from social service um do you have any questions no I am supportive and I'm happy to make a motion um to support this request so I will second the motion fortunately aye supervisor tap aye passed was there any public comment on no public commenters either item but and no public comment on non agenda items right no public commenters no okay I am not going to test our technology further by asking for participation so this meeting is adjourned