Good afternoon and welcome to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors Personnel Administration and Legislation Committee meeting for Monday, April the 27th, 2026.

May I have road call, please?

Supervisor Portonato Bass present.

Supervisor TAM.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Would you like to go over instructions on participation?

For both in-person and remote attendees when addressing the committee, please give your name for the record prior to your presentation.

If you wish to speak on a matter not on the agenda, please wait until the chair calls for public comment on items not on the agenda.

To notify the clerk you wish to speak.

Please follow a speaker card, speaker card at the front of the room and submit it to the clerk.

For online participants, please use the rant raise hand function.

If you're calling in, you can use the raise hand function by dialing star five.

May dial it again to lower your hand.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

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

Good afternoon.

We are all hearing.

Try again, please.

Thank you.

Hi, this is finally with HJ Lake, AJ Lake, AJ Lake, and the link and live and could we try John maybe to see if we're still experiencing the echo.

Sure, test.

Rebecca?

Yeah, you're good.

There's no echo when you speak.

Okay.

Emily, I can I can take over in case it's on your end.

Um in terms of the schedule, both chambers are in session this week.

Um the Congress will recess on Friday, May 1st, and then return for legislative business on May 11th.

Um the House in particular has a very crazy week with three big ticket items that they'll be trying to consider um before they recess at the end of the week.

The first of which is the uh DHS funding bill or the budget resolution um that passed the Senate last week.

Um after a six-hour vote of Rama, the Senate adopted a budget resolution um on Thursday morning, allowing Republicans to use the party line reconciliation process to fund ICE and CBP for essentially the next three and a half years.

That vote was 50 to 48 with Senators Lisa Markowski and Rand Paul joining all Democrats in opposing the measure.

On Friday, Speaker Johnson announced his plans to act this week on the Senate bill with the goal of finally ending the more than 70-day shutdown uh for the Department of Homeland Security.

Um it was revealed to lawmakers through a letter from Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen that DHS is expected to run out of money to pay its employees by April 30th, which is if you can believe it, in three days, to bring along skeptical, skeptical members who want a broader DHS bill.

Republican leadership is also planning to unveil a framework for potential third reconciliation package.

This is largely designed to reinsure conservatives that leadership has not abandoned uh their priorities.

Um, and this will potentially include additional defense spending.

Um, several influential House Committee chairs, including Jim Jordan, who is chair of the Judiciary Committee, Jody Arrington, the chair of the budget committee, and Jason Smith, chair of the Ways and Means Committee are still pushing colleagues to expand the current bill rather than wait for that third future package.

I'll remind you that if they do do a third future package, they'll also have to go through the budget resolution process, which will require a vote of rama in the Senate, and then they have to provide allocations uh to the various committees and go through that whole process all over again.

And they go through a second process by using a different budget resolution.

They'll have to just use that single process and then send it over to the Senate.

Speaker Johnson and his team are working to contain that sentiment that was expressed by those committee chairs before it reaches contagion and spreads throughout the rest of the caucus, and then really provides a more difficult path for them to get this budget resolution over the finish line.

Even if leadership does hold the line, passing the budget resolution could still take a few weeks and would put Speaker Johnson in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether to move the FY26 DHS funding bill before the new reconciliation blueprint is finalized, which could aggravate many of the House conservatives who want to see the reconciliation bill pass and then the DHS bill funding pass.

Over the weekend, Leader Thune uh signaled that the Senate may pivot to a budget reconciliation measure tied to DHS immigration enforcement immediately after the FY26 budget resolution is adopted by the House, which would continue the momentum on moving the bill forward.

In addition uh to the budget resolution and the subsequent reconciliation package, House Republican leadership is also uh pressed to pass the FISA Section 3702 reauthorization bill.

Um House leadership released a three-year reauthorization bill over the weekend, um, and they are trying to pass it before the program expires next Thursday.

The legislation includes new penalties for FISA abuses and additional oversight measures, but stops short of the warrant requirements that many uh members have been demanding.

This is an interesting one because both uh uh hardline conservatives and most of the Democratic Party agree that warrant requirements are necessary to get their vote.

So uh Speaker Johnson is likely having to go to more conservative Democrats uh in order to get over the finish line and pass the bill.

Um Speaker Johnson is bringing the bill to the floor under a rule, which means that he'll need to clear a procedural vote with Republican votes alone, which is of course a tall order given conservative dissent.

Um they may have to pull some Democratic votes who have passed or have voted for the Section 702 reauthorization bill in the past.

There are a handful of Democrats that did this five years ago during the Biden administration.

Um, but that was a very contentious, um, a very contentious reauthorization process.

A handful of members continue to remain dug in on this issue.

One is still pushing for a ban on central bank digital currency.

Another won't support any rule without unrelated legislation that's attached, and a third is opposed to Pfizer reauthorization altogether.

If Speaker Johnson can't wrangle enough Republicans, his fallback is bringing the bill under suspension of the rules, which would of course require 290 votes and make democratic support and democratic leadership support essential.