Good afternoon and welcome to the Almee County Board of Supervisors Personnel Administration and Legislation Committee meeting for Monday, May the 4th, 2026.

Yeah, real cold, please.

Supervisor Fortunatabas present.

Supervisor Tam.

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

Good afternoon.

You've got Emily Bacet Silva here and John Assini as well.

Um the House and Senate are both in recess this week, so it should be a pretty quiet week.

Um the House in particular uh voted on uh a number of big bills last week, but they will both return to Washington um next Monday.

You know, I feel like we've been talking about uh FY26 funding for the Department of Homeland Security uh for a couple months now, and finally that 75-day shutdown ended last week.

Um the House ultimately passed the same bipartisan bill the Senate had previously approved, which basically funded uh the department with the exception of um ICE and uh CBP.

Um, you know, that prolonged standoff that I know we talked about numerous times on PAL, centered on disagreements over whether to fund those two agencies through the regular appropriations process or through reconciliation with Senate leadership ultimately prevailing on moving it through reconciliation.

So the Senate has started that process, and um the expectation is that a separate three-year funding bill uh for those two agencies uh will now be taken up as a standalone reconciliation measure when the Senate returns um next week.

Uh the House also passed the budget resolution last week to begin this reconciliation process.

If you remember, the Senate passed the budget resolution uh the week prior.

Um and of course, that that is what unlocks uh the actual reconciliation bill.

In addition, the House passed its farm bill.

Um, and I know uh, you know, we had talked about that the House farm bill a good bit.

You know, it did not include any language to reverse uh the SNAP cuts enacted under the budget record reconciliation bill from last year, HR1.

Um, the bill's path uh was complicated uh through the House last week, and there was uh quite a bit of kind of fits and starts.

Weren't sure that uh House Republicans would even find the votes for passage.

Um disputes around pesticides, disputes about um E15 fuel um and just a number of amendments.

And so, you know, there is no guarantee that the Senate uh will the Senate will not take up this House pass bill.

The Senate would mark up its own bill, but um there's not even a guarantee that that will happen um, you know, in the next few months.

And then the other big bill that the House passed last week was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702 FISA.

That was reauthorized for just a 45-day extension.

Um so uh the House and Senate will need to reach some sort of agreement uh before the next uh within the next 45 days um in order to fund a or to authorize a long-term uh FISA uh bill.

Um, John, I'll turn it over to you to talk about kind of the issues that will be coming up once they return uh in May.

And you know, any any comments you want to make on the the big bills that passed last week.

Uh thanks, Emily.

I don't have any additional comments for the uh bills that were passed out of the House last week.

Um for the next couple of weeks when Congress comes back in session, uh, they will have a number of items that will have to be addressed.

Um, first and foremost will be the completion of the reconciliation 2.0.

This is the bill that will be unlocked by the budget resolution that was agreed to by the House and Senate last week.

Um, it will be the vehicle for the ICE and CVP funding, which will largely extend uh federal funding to those two agencies for the remainder of the Trump administration, essentially taking them off the table for the remaining funding fights um next year and the subsequent years.

Um additionally, there's discussion of a reconciliation 3.0 that could potentially carry um Iran supplemental funding, but that prospect has run into significant snags on both the how the Republican and the Democratic side.

Umly because if a reconciliation 3.0 bill would have to go, it would likely have to have offsets and those offsets would likely come from popular um programs, including the Medicare and the Medicaid program.

Um, and they are trying to jam other things into reconciliation 3.0 that they were unable to include in this most recent budget resolution that could include the Save America bill, but that runs into significant issues because of the Senate's bird rules and budgetary constraints around that bill.

Um and then outside of that, uh, we'll continue to see progress on the uh subcommittee markups and full committee markups, um, at least in the house on the FY26 or FY27 rather appropriations process.

Um and then finally we'll see um additional uh legislative activity on trying to get FISA reauthorized beyond the 45-day window.

Um, but there continue to be some pretty hard uh objections from uh various factions in both parties and both the House and the Senate on trying to get that over the finish line um with uh some very conservative Republicans and more liberal Democrats um essentially joining forces to come uh additionally constrict um the ability for the federal government to surveil um U.S.

citizens without a warrant.

Um but those are kind of the big ticket items that we're going to be seeing in the near future.

Um the other thing that I'll just mention before we open it up for questions is now that the House has passed its version of the farm bill, it gets kicked over to the Senate.

Uh so conversations may start on the Senate side, but in conversations that we have had with Senate um staffers, there doesn't really seem to be a whole lot of activity going on between the majority and the minority staff.