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.

Need to go for instructions on participation.

For all participants, please state your name for the record prior to your comment.

If you wish to speak on a matter on the agenda, please wait until supervisor TAM calls for public input on non-agendized items.

Only matters within the committee's jurisdiction may be addressed to notify the clerk that you wish to speak.

Please listen closely to the following for in-person participants.

Please fill out or speak a card in the back of the room.

And here's the clerk.

The clerk will call your name to allow you to speak at the podium.

For online participants, please use the raise hand function.

The clerk will call your name and allow you to mute when it is your turn for doubt and participants.

Please dial star five to raise and lower your hand.

The clerk will allow you to unmute when it's returned.

If you no longer wish to speak, lower your hand on Microsoft Teams or simply notify the clerk that you no longer wish to speak when it is returned.

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.