Note: The agenda and transcript indicate the meeting was originally scheduled for Monday, July 6, 2026, but the provided date for this summary is August 7, 2026. The committee convened with Supervisors Lena Tam (Chair) and Nikki Fortunato Bas present, constituting a quorum.
Good afternoon and welcome to the Alpha County Board of Supervisors, personnel administration and legislation committee meeting for Monday, July the 6th, 2026. May I have a roll call, please? Supervisor Fortunatabas. Supervisor Cam. Present. We have a quorum. Thank you. Would you like to 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 Supervisor Cam calls for public input on non-agendized items. Only matters within 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 that you wish to comment on. For a dialed 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. Thank you. Thank you. We will start with our federal legislative update. Good afternoon. You've got Emily Baket DeSilva here. And then Curtis Erdman is also here. There's Curtis. And he actually worked with Alameda County from about 2019 to 2022 through the heart of COVID. And we'll be assisting and back in moving forward. So I just wanted to make a quick introduction for Curtis. Thanks, Emily. Excited to be back working with the Alameda County team. I'll go ahead and I know it's been a couple weeks since we've talked. It is quiet right now because both the House and Senate are in recess this week. And the Senate was in recess all of last week. So we'll give an update of kind of where things stand. As I mentioned earlier, the House did recess earlier, did recess earlier than anticipated last week. They were supposed to be in session through cert through Thursday. And the speaker sent everyone home on Tuesday night because there were a few conservative members who were blocking the chamber from opening the floor to legislative business for the second week in a row. And this was all because of the Save America Act, which I know we've talked about previously. And of course, the Senate does not have the votes for passage of the SAVE Act. You know, that's the one that would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. And President Trump, you know, keeps saying he's not going to uh sign legislation until this is passed. Um, but again, because of the filibuster, there just aren't the votes in the Senate. The House did uh vote to approve the bill back in February. Um, and that's the third year in a row that the House has passed similar legislation, but of course, as I mentioned, it's stalled in the Senate. Um, so now the speaker, his new plan is to fold the Save America Act into a third budget reconciliation package alongside um $67 billion for the Pentagon and other supplemental spending priorities. Um this is not a slam dunk by any stretch. Uh leadership intends to include a four billion pool of incentives for states that adopt voter identification and citizenship verification requirements, um, a provision that may not survive review by the Senate parliamentarian.