Good afternoon and welcome to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors Personnel Administration and Legislation Committee meeting for Monday, May 18th, 2026.

May I have roll call, please?

Supervisor Fortunato Boss.

Present.

Supervisor Tim.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Can we go through instructions on participation?

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

If you wish to speak on an item not on the agenda, please wait until Chair Tem calls for public input on non-gendice items only matters, but then the committee's jurisdiction may be addressed.

To notify the clerk you wish to speak for in-person participants, please fill out a speaker card and hand it to the clerk.

The speaker cards are at the front of the room, and I am the clerk.

For online participants, please use the raise hand function when we are on an item you wish to comment on for dialogue in participants.

Please dial star five to use the raise hand function.

Dialing it again allows you to lower your hand.

The clerk will call your name when it is time for public comment.

If you are in person, please come to the podium to speak.

If you are online or dialed in, the clerk will call your name and allow you to unmute.

That concludes the clerk instructions for public comment.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

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

Good afternoon.

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

But the House uh changed their vote schedule somewhat.

And so they are not coming in this week until Wednesday for votes at uh 12 noon, I believe.

And um there's a chance that they could be in uh well, I should say leadership is threatening that they could be in uh through part of the weekend because there is a push to get a reconciliation bill to President Trump um by June 1st.

Um so uh we'll move to budget reconciliation now.

The Senate is moving this week to pass the 72 billion dollar reconciliation bill, which of course would fund ICE and border patrol.

And once the Senate passes that bill, it would then go to the House for passage.

Um, the central complication remains the one billion Secret Service funding provision tied in part to security for the White House ballroom project.

Um over the weekend, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the provision was out of order under the bird rule.

And Senate Republicans are working to redraft the language so that it fits kind of within the parameters.

Um Senate Democrats have pledged to challenge any revised version of the provision.

Now the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee uh will mark up its portion of the bill tomorrow, and then the Senate budget committee is set to report the bill on Wednesday.

Um it would then go to the full Senate for what's known as a voterama that would take place on Thursday.

Um, and of course, Senate Democrats will plan to force a number of recorded votes on affordability related amendments.

Um, and they will also focus on issues tied to the ballroom provision.

If the bill clears the Senate, um House leaders will then need to navigate kind of the thin margin that they're dealing with ahead of the recess.

So again, um, it wouldn't go to the House until at least Friday.

And so um that is why the House isn't even coming back for votes until this Wednesday.

John, I don't know if you have anything to add there on reconciliation.

No, I think the one thing that I would just mention is that the Senate is just trying to jam the House, and they're using all the control of the schedule that they have to their advantage, and then using that as a wedge up against the Memorial Day recess, knowing that there are campaign events that people are going to, there are vacations that are being planned, and they're really just trying to provide a little as little opportunity as possible for the House to do what the House has done in the past, which is totally screw things up.

So we'll see some fireworks at the markup at His GAC.

Um judiciary, interestingly, has the other part of the bill.

Um, they are not marking up at the committee level, nor are they supposed to be marking up at the budget committee level.

They are likely to incorporate the Homeland Security and the judiciary bills on the floor.

So that will shorten the amount of exposure that the judiciary parts have to uh examination, and also provide Democrats fewer opportunities to uh poke holes and make you know political points on the judiciary part.

So they're really rushing this process on budget reconciliation and trying to get it done before the June 1st deadline, which uh President Trump set several weeks ago.

Um, and then moving on to appropriations, the House is just continuing to uh mark up bills at subcommittee and then full committee level.

Um I think for our purposes, kind of the big one that we're focused on this week is transportation HUD.

Um, and that uh text is expected to be released on Wednesday with the subcommittee marking up on Thursday, and then full committee would take up the bill after the Memorial Day recess.

Um, so again, we will, you know, report on highlights from from that markup.

Um the committee also has hearings this week with acting attorney general Todd Blanche, acting labor secretary uh Keith Sonderling, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and then NIH director um I'm gonna butcher the last name.

Uh Jay Batcharaya, I believe.

But Jay Banachary, yeah.

There you go.

Um, and again, we've been waiting for the Senate to release its committee markup schedule.

Um, they have not.

Uh, I will say this.

We did learn, or the um health care services learned last week that Senator Padilla did move forward with our mobile health units appropriations request uh for labor H on the Senate side.

So um the next step for that we'll to see will be to see once the appropriations committee marks up.

Again, we have quite a bit of time.

Um if it happens this summer, it would likely be late this summer, but at least we are in the mix, which is um which is exciting.

So we'll keep you posted on that.

And then Emily, I just have one thing to add on appropriations.

Sorry to interrupt, but we know that the Senate uh subcommittees or appropriation subcommittees on TIH or um CJS, AG, and Ledge Branch all have their allocations.

So those three subcommittees are drafting the bills um and could uh release them sometime in the near future.

Now that does not mean that the other uh subcommittees, including Labor H and Defense have their allocations yet, those ones um, of course, are the much bigger ticket items, as is THUD on the Senate side.

That's all being caught up with the defense, non-defense discretionary split um that's being perpetuated by the 1.15 trillion dollar defense appropriations request made by the president, and then the 1.5 trillion dollar request that includes um the spending that is not related to the annual appropriations process.

So those bigger ticket items are uh causing significant concern in the appropriations committee of what their allocation is going to be, but those less um controversial pieces could be moving rather quickly.

And again, I mean, I know we've talked about this quite a bit, but you know, we are expecting a continuing resolution to get us um, you know, past September 30th.

And, you know, expectation again, depending on kind of the outcome of the elections.

Um, you know, we could see um final bills being negotiated in a lame duck session um at best, and I think at worst, kind of dragging into next year.

Um and then lastly, we just wanted to mention surface transportation authorization again.

That's a five-year bill that authorizes uh surface transportation spending.

And uh the current service transportation bill is the IIJA, which of course um passed during the Biden administration and included a significant amount of additional spending on top of the normal surface transportation authorization bill.

The House released its text um yeah last evening, and uh the TNI committee plans to mark up uh on Thursday of this week.

Um the Senate uh we've John and I've been in touch with Senate EPW, which has jurisdiction as well as Senate banking um and Senate Commerce, and they are in no hurry to mark up.

So um the chair of the House T and I committee, Sam Graves has announced that he's retiring at the end of this Congress.

And so I think for his legacy, he wanted to get this bipartisan bill out, and it is bipartisan.

Um, and so um again, they will mark up on Thursday, but it's unclear whether or not it will even go to the House floor.

Um, and then if it does go to the House floor, whether or not the Senate will be able to um take up its own bill uh prior to um prior to the expiration date of IIJA, which is September 30th.

So usually with surface transportation authorization bills, you see just a short-term extension um of the current programming, and so we're expecting that um beyond September 30th as well.

John, I don't know if you have anything to add on surface transpot.

No, the one the one detail that I would add is Mr.

Gray's was very interested in in keeping this a bipartisan bill, which in this current environment is very unique.

There's a hope uh from the Republican side from the Graves team, anyway, that if the House were to flip next year, that Mr.

Larson would use this as the base bill moving forward to retain many of the legacy items that the Graves team was able to include and negotiate on.

So the other committees on the House side that still need to act and introduce their versions is of course the Ways and Means Committee, uh, which has jurisdiction over the highway trust fund funding because it is uh tax related.

So this is the gas tax element, and then the energy and commerce committee, which has some of those safety programs in NHSA and some of the other smaller uh DOT-related programs.

They have to release their versions or their sections of the bill, and then they often get combined by the rules committee and then put on the floor.

So this is just one segment of the surface transportation reauthorization process.

It is of course the largest part of it, um, but it's certainly not uh the beginning or the end of the story.

And I think that's all we have to report on this week.

Thank you very much for that report.

Um Supervisor Portion of asked questions or comments.

Uh no, thank you for the report.

Uh it was pretty comprehensive.

I don't think I have any questions.

Yeah.

Uh very promising on um Senator Padilla's bill and moving forward with the mobile health.

Uh can you refresh my memory in terms of reforms that the Dems wanted on ICE and border patrol?

Would that have to go through judiciary or is that in a separate process?

So that's separate.

Um, if you remember they are using the reconciliation process, Republicans are using the reconciliation process to basically be able to pass this additional funding for ICE and CBP without needing Democrats uh on those bills.

And so therefore they're not having to negotiate on any sort of policy changes.

Okay.

So where does that policy change have any hope of seeing some um some incorporation into some of these changes?

I mean, they they may try through the FY27 appropriations process.

Um, but again, I mean, you saw what happened with FY26 because they were trying to put these policy changes in.

And so Republicans ended up going the reconciliation route.

So right now, Democrats don't have a lot of of options there.

I'll just put a final point on that um to Emily's point.

The reason why that we are going through this reconciliation process right now is precisely because Republicans and Democrats were unable to come up with an agreement on reforms to ICE and CPP, even minor reforms.

When negotiations broke down, Republicans decided to go it alone and use the reconciliation process, thus removing the ability for Democrats to negotiate any reforms to those two agencies.

Because of the funding amounts that were included in these reconciliation bills, it extends funding for the remainder of Trump's term, which will eliminate the ability for Democrats to negotiate on these two items, kind of moving forward.

If they were to negotiate those reforms, it would have to be done on the authorization side, which would likely get vetoed by the president or potentially endanger future appropriations bills by including reforms which would go down the same path that the FY26 bill did, which was prolonged uh shutdown.

Now, I don't think Democrats, if they are going to be in charge of one or both chambers next Congress, would be particularly interested in shutting down an agency over these reforms that ultimately will not get agreed to by Republicans.

Okay, thank you for that refresher.

Though not very optimistic from our perspective, but understood.

Are there any public comments on our federal legislative update?

There are no public comments on the federal legislative update.

Thank you, John and Emily.

Appreciate that update.

Let's move to the state legislative update from Fullman strategies.

Good afternoon, Supervisors Jayel Dentis here with Fullman and Strategist to provide an update on your state legislature.

Last week in Sacramento, we centered on two major developments, the assembly and the Senate suspense files, and the release of the governor's May revision.

The suspense file decisions determine which high cost bills will continue moving through the legislative process this year, and the May revision now becomes the foundation for the final state budget negotiations heading into June.

As we shared last week, Governor Gavin Newsom released his final May revision under his administration for 26-26-27 state budget.

During the presentation of his plan, the governor emphasized California economic resilience and the leadership in sectors as manufacturing, agriculture, and a job jobs creation.

The administration also highlighted concerns about federal and global pressures that could impact California, including reductions in research funding and immigration policies affecting students and skilled workers and a global economy instability.

Overall, the main revised proposes 350 billion total state budget, roughly 27 and 47 billion from the general fund.

On this proposal, the administration projects no deficit for 2627.

And the general fund revenues are projected to be 16.5 billion dollars above the January projections.

Looking at longer term, the administration proposes depositing 9.7 billion dollars into a new surplus holding account.

This would have helped to stabilize the 27-28 budget to preserve and uh propose a long-term fiscal flexibility heading to the next administration.

Despite a longer uh stronger revenues, the Department of Finance continue to project structural deficits in the future to the uh major spending growth outpacing the revenues in the state.

Uh how the governor balanced uh the the proposal was pretty much in 3.6 billion dollars in new revenues, approximately 411 million dollars in spend spending reductions and the 391 million in fund shifts.

The May revision avoids major new ongoing spending commitments.

Uh the they will focus on remain on preserving uh reserves, maintaining budget and stability, and the limiting uh long-term fiscal exposure.

Some of the key policy spending adjustments uh that would have worth what I wanted to share, would it be some changes on MADICAL asset task limits and uh shifting the behavioral health expenditures from the general fund to the behavioral health services fund.

Uh, some of the uh top topics for the county and the county supported in previous years uh related to HIV AIDS and LGBT community investments.

They may revision proposes one times 60 million dollars investments for AIDS, drugs assistant program repay fund for 26-27.

That would be breakdown uh for 50 million for the Department of Public Health to support individuals leaving with the with HIV, particular uh programs impacted by reductions in the federal uh in the federal funding and the 10 million uh dollars for LGBT community centers that were also uh impacted by some uh federal funding.

Uh the main revision includes propos uh funds significant funds for proposition one, the behavioral health investments uh that would uh uh fund some initiatives uh that the county also expressed support in previous years, such as BH Connect workforce initiative.

Uh sadly, uh we informed that the Newsom administration proposed very lean investments to assist counties in mitigating impacts of HR1, focusing primarily in eligibility investments for CalFresh and Medical, and also largely pretty much ignoring impacts to public hospitals and the indigenous care.

What is coming next for us on the state budget process?

The main uh revision now serves as a framework for the negotiations between the administration and the legislature uh head of the June constitutional budget deadline.

Traditionally, uh the legislature passes the budget by the by the deadline, which would be June 15th, uh while the negotiations for uh final negotiations will continue until they start off the net the new fiscal year, July 1st.

Additional materials uh will be available on our POW report.

And uh I also wanted to highlight that Amy Costa will be providing a deeper uh budget presentation later today, specifically you know, and some issues that impacts the county on the budget workforce meeting uh work group meeting later today.

And uh swifting to some of the policy priorities for the county.

We actually just received uh a notification from Senator Adeguin's office that SB 1400, the sponsored bill by Alameda County is probably going to be heard today on the Senate floor.

We will make sure to include uh the outcomes of that hearing and our bill on our report and uh SB 1193 by Senator Wahab, where the uh Board of Supervisors decided to oppose that measure is also likely coming up on the floors uh on the floor for floor vote during this week.

So we will make sure to share uh these outcomes as well.

Uh lastly on the Power report, we also included the outcomes of the bills uh supported by Alameda County last week.

And you know, if the bill was held or will still go through the legislative process.

With that, I'm happy to answer any questions or you know, uh, supervisors if you have any specific items that you would like us to include into our uh presentation later today on the work group.

Thank you very much for that presentation.

Yes, we are looking forward to Amy's report um later on this afternoon at four o'clock.

Um Supervisor Portugal asked questions, comments.

Um, thank you for the update as well as the report that we got last week over email.

Um, I am curious to hear whether you have a sense of whether it's possible to get a little bit more out of the final budget to support the HR1 impacts.

Like what level of negotiation might happen over the next couple weeks.

Yes, uh good question, and supervisor.

That actually started right now with some county associations, such as urban counties and the CSAC.

Uh, throughout this week, and then the next week we will be having uh budget hearings where all the counties are going to show up on those hearings and express the need of more funding to support the counties with the HR one impacts.

Uh now is the stage where uh we got to have a conversations with leadership and making sure that leadership on the Senate and the assembly side, you know, that will be a topic priority for them to negotiate with the administration, and I'm making sure that that would reflect on the June version of our okay.

And I know that um we didn't get um the funding, the additional funding we were hoping for around housing and homelessness, despite some lobbying efforts, you know, same question.

Could there potentially be some movement there?

Uh would happen in particular.

Yeah, it's the same.

Uh we let me see.

I think we do have a hearing uh related to that topic this week as well.

Uh, and that this is one of the high priorities for the county associations as well.

So uh I do anticipate that at this point we got to start having higher-level conversations with leadership to making sure that these are going to be top priorities for them and the inclusion on the June budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just to refresh, you said that the um revenues came in at 16 billion dollars above projections, and a good portion of that basically went into a reserve fund.

Yes.

Uh, so what a May revise proposal actually assumes is that the the revenues on general fund is 16.5 billion dollars above what was projected in January.

And yes, uh the governor approach for you know this year is uh to making sure that he's going to support the next fiscal year, uh, and the portion of that uh those revenues are going to be allocated in a special fund for supporting 27-28 budget years.

Uh I can um perhaps understand uh because of the phasing in which the impacts of HR1 on Medicail would happen that he he could use some of those funds for next year, but I didn't understand how come uh there was no um allocations to address homelessness with some of the surplus.

Uh I I under I know that Senator Argin mentioned when we had the um groundbreaking last Friday that um there's a lot of hope placed on the upcoming November housing bond measure and and that's maybe one of the reasons that the allocations didn't happen this time around.

Is that consistent with your understanding?

Yes, now it's pretty much when they all got to put it their uh their place in place, right?

Uh the only specific funding for uh homelessness was the HAP, where they allocated half a billion dollars for the seventh round of homeless housing.

Uh and the projections uh yes, that was the only the only uh item that actually came on main revise, referring to to homelessness.

And the yes, now uh, you know, the the administration with the legislature leadership will have this conversations on their assumptions if the bond is going ahead and what is going to be their strategy.

Okay.

Thank you.

Are there any uh public comments on our state legislative update?

There are no comments on our state legislative update.

Okay.

So we have a number of requests, uh, primarily from Alameda County Health to support AB 1924 on the statewide homeless prevention strategy.

This would provide a results-based type of accounting when it comes to accountability for the developing a strategic plan, um, support for SB 1052, the state council and development Disabilities appointing authorized representatives.

This changes the um the way that we can determine appropriate um representation for our clients and to support AB 2081, the Medical Home and Community Based Alternative Waiver.

This would also help increase potential Medical coverage for home and county bound and with support for AB 1575, the Latterman Development Disability Service Act, which does some cleanup on the legislation but also expands the definition of in-home respite services.

Do we have concurrence on moving this to the full board with support positions?

Yes, and I'm happy to make that motion.

I do see that we have a hand up raised from Jessica Blakemore.

Jessica.

Hi, good afternoon, supervisors.

Jessica Blakemore with Alameda County Health.

I just wanted to note that um SB 1052, I think was held in appropriations and we'll be moving forward, so we don't need to move that bill to the full board, but the other three um are moving forward.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, I will amend my motion then to move um the three items AB 1924, AB 2081, and AB 1575, and those recommended support positions to the full board.

I'll second roll call, please.

Uh supervisor, it looks like we may have a public comment.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Alexis.

Yeah, hi, this is Dr.

Chetir.

I'm the CEO of Cardea Health.

I just wanted to thank the board for their support of AB 2081, anticipatorily.

Um it was the board kindly issued support last year.

Um it was AB 315.

It was held on suspense last year.

This year, thankfully, it did move forward.

So we're really excited to see more of our um unsheltered uh clients in the county be able to receive more intensive home-based services.

So really really appreciate your support on that.

Thank you for your comments.

That's the last comment, Chair.

Thank you.

So hearing no other public comments, uh may I have a roll call.

Supervisor Fortunato Boss.

Aye.

Supervisor Tam.

Aye.

Motion passed.

Thank you.

Do we have any uh public comment on items that are not on today's agenda within the purview of PAL?

There are no public comments on non-agendized items.

Thank you.

This meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.