Each fall, the County Administrator’s Office initiates the development of the coming year’s State and Federal Legislative platforms by inviting members of the Board of Supervisors, Department Heads and key staff, as well as the Board's advisory bodies, to provide recommended changes or additions to the current adopted Platforms. In late August, all were invited to provide suggested edits to the State Platform by submitting input in writing.
The Legislation Committee typically reviews the draft Platform in November and/or December of each year, with the Proposed Platform recommended to the Board of Supervisors for adoption the following January. The Draft 2019 State Platform in redline version (showing changes from the adopted 2018 Platform) is Attachment A . A clean-copy version is Attachment B.
(Note: The Draft 2019 Federal Legislative Platform will be presented to the Committee at its December meeting.)
With respect to the timeline for the 2019-20 legislative session, our state advocate, Ben Palmer, from Nielsen Merksamer provides the following estimate. The official rules will be adopted either in December or January.
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December 3, 2018 – Legislature reconvenes and bill introduction can commence.
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Mid-January (18th or 25th) – Deadline to submit bill request to Legislative counsel. (Counsel’s role is to translate the legislative idea into actual bill language.)
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Mid-February (15th or 22nd) – Deadline to introduce bills.
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March through May – Committee hearings. Note that bills can be introduced in “spot” form, meaning that they are essentially placeholders until language is worked out. “Spot” bill should be amended with their substantive contents by early March in order to ensure that they can be heard by policy committees in a timely manner.
It is always preferable to find an author by early-mid January as members are limited in the number of bills they can introduce. Therefore, should the Board of Supervisors wish to pursue the proposed sponsored legislation, expediency will be important. The Board is expected to receive the Proposed Legislative Platforms at their January 22, 2019 meeting.
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The significant proposed amendments to the 2018 State Platform that are recommended by staff for the 2019 Draft State Legislative Platform include the following:
COUNTY-SPONSORED LEGISLATION
For 2019, the following bills are recommended to be sponsored by the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors.
Seniors/Persons with Disabilities Transportation Program
The “Seniors/Persons with Disabilities (SPD) Transportation Program” creates a mechanism to strategically increase funding for transportation programs serving the senior/disabled population. It is acknowledged at the local, regional, state and federal levels that transportation programs for this population are underfunded and underdeveloped. These deficiencies will increase as demographic ad public health shifts amplify these issues.
This proposal was approved by the Transportation, Water and Infrastructure Committee (TWIC) on September 10, 2018 and subsequently approved by the Board of Supervisors on September 25, 2018.
Sales Tax Exemption Proposal for On-Call Volunteer Fire Departments
This proposal would remove a logistical barrier to the purchase of equipment used exclusively by volunteer, on call fire departments by exempting those purchases from applicable sales and use taxes. Such a change would be consistent with exemptions in other states and remove an artificial barrier that can delay the purchase of necessary firefighting equipment. Volunteer on-call fire departments provide the same service as full-time departments in areas that simply do not generate the tax revenue needed for 24-hour shift crews. For these departments, such as the Crockett-Carquinez Fire Department, the cost to replace an aging fire engine can represent between 80 and 110 percent of their total yearly budget. As a result, small districts like Crockett must continue to keep older engines in service well past their recommended replacement timeframe in order to amass sufficient funds to purchase a replacement. This results in higher maintenance costs, more down time, and most importantly greater risk for our firefighters who are already making great sacrifice to serve our communities and state.
LEGISLATIVE/REGULATORY ADVOCACY PRIORITIES
Staff is not recommending any changes to the nature or order of legislative priorities for 2019. However, the Committee may wish to consider the inclusion of a priority focus on the issue of Homelessness.
"The Urban Counties of California are including this in their draft 2019 priorities for consideration by their Board: "With the growing number of homeless in urban counties, UCC will work on the implementation of the No Place Like Home program, the Homeless Emergency Aid Program, and the SB 2 funding program, to ensure that urban counties receive their fair share of funding and that the guidelines will work for all counties. In addition, UCC will advocate for additional funding that reduces and prevents homelessness; expand the availability of permanent supportive housing; and provide urban counties with the ability to maximize and leverage available Federal, State, and local funds to provide services for at-risk and homeless families and individuals."
STATE PLATFORM POLICY POSITIONS
Child Support Services
Numerous text changes have been proposed by staff, reorganizing and updating policies as needed. In addition, three new policies are proposed for inclusion in the Platform:
17. SUPPORT efforts to increase funding for the child support program. OPPOSE efforts to reduce funding for the child support program.
18. OPPOSE efforts that restrict the child support agency from having access to customer data.
19. OPPOSE efforts that eliminate or restrict existing child support enforcement methods.
Climate Change
Staff proposes text changes to policy #22, which include: The County also has several creek and wetland restoration projects with carbon sequestration capacity that would likely be eligible for such allocations. Similarly, the County supports land conservation projects that may occur as fee title or easement acquisitions, these also will likely be eligible.
Economic Development
Department of Conservation and Development staff proposes the inclusion of a new policy area for Economic Development and the addition of the following positions:
28. SUPPORT an amendment to the California Competes (State incentive program) guidelines to consider qualifying low-income census tracts within unincorporated areas of a county (that as a whole does not qualify as low-income) in the enhanced scoring category. (This is a similar situation to that highlighted in AB 1804, where unincorporated areas were left out of an incentive program.)
29.SUPPORT legislation to dedicate net proceeds from State Lands Commission lease revenues for public benefit in the County in which they are generated with a focus on increasing public access to and enjoyment of the waterfront.
30. SUPPORT the State layering existing State economic development programs and incentives with Federal Opportunity Zone tax credit incentives.
Emergency Preparedness, Emergency Response
The County's Chief Environmental Health and Hazardous Materials Officer, Randy Sawyer, recommends the inclusion of a new policy:
39. SUPPORT legislation that would require cleanup of clandestine drug labs and other areas where illicit drugs are manufactured or handled and where there is a threat to the health and safety of the public and emergency responders, and would make the costs of cleanup recoverable from the responsible party and liens on property. The existing legislation is narrowly focused on the manufacturing of methamphetamine. Fentanyl use, storage, and production are growing throughout the state. Properties may be contaminated by hazardous chemicals used or produced in the manufacture of or the handling Fentanyl and Carfentanyl where those chemicals, remain and where the contamination has not been remediated.
Health Care
The Public Health Director, Dan Peddycord, proposes the addition of the following policy:
94. OPPOSE legislation and state regulation that seeks to weaken or eliminate local control over the commercial cannabis industry.
Human Services
Staff of EHSD proposes an entire revision of this section of the Platform. These revisions have not been incorporated into the Draft 2019 State Legislative Platform at this time, pending direction from the Committee. The revision of this section of the Platform is included in Attachment C.
Land Use/Community Development
The following additional language is recommended to be added to policy #134 regarding the inclusion of NCCPs for funding in allocations from Propositions 1 and 64: Proposition 68 was passed in 2018; programs that support NCCPs were subsequently allocated funding. In addition to the programs that are identified in Prop 68, NCCPs are eligible to receive other funds, and the County should continue to support these funding allocations. In 2018 the East County NCCP successfully increased CDFW’s Local Assistance Program from $600,000 to $2.6M with funds from Prop 68. Continuing that level of funding requires ongoing support from local agencies including Contra Costa County.
Transportation
Text changes that have been approved by TWIC are included in the Draft Platform and highlighted.
Waste Management
Staff proposes the addition of the following policies:
198. OPPOSE legislative and regulatory efforts that require more of counties related to diverting waste from landfills without concurrently establishing an adequate funding mechanism.
199. SUPPORT efforts that will help counties more effectively combat illegal dumping, including but not limited to establishing a more reasonable burden of proof standard, changing any remaining infractions to misdemeanors and increasing penalty amounts or options (e.g. vehicle seizure).
200. OPPOSE legislative or regulatory efforts to eliminate any existing waste diversion credits or disposal reduction credits.
201. SUPPORT legislative or regulatory efforts to reduce what counties are required to recycle or divert from landfills if and when there is not an adequate market for materials which had previously been recycled.
202. OPPOSE legislative or regulatory efforts that require counties to site, fund, approve, build and/or operate organic processing facilities, including composting operations.
203. OPPOSE regulatory efforts related to solid waste management that impose requirements on counties that directly conflict with or exceed the scope of authority of the enabling legislation.
Finally, the Women's Commission has provided the following input into the development of the 2019 State Platform:
Priorities
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The County also supports the continuation of the supplementary rate increases funded by Proposition 56 from SB 856 to continue investment in quality reproductive health care services.
Child Support Services
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SUPPORT efforts that make the Child and Dependent Care Expenses Credit refundable so that low- and moderate-income working families can benefit from the credit and receive a tax refund for their child care expenses.
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SUPPORT legislation to invest in California's child care system by increasing state rates for infant and toddler care, creating a grant program to fund implementation and start-up costs of new child care facilities, and establishing a fund to recruit a new generation of family child care providers.
Health Care
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SUPPORT Medi-Cal reimbursement rate increases through Proposition 56 funding for quality reproductive health care service.
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SUPPORT reimbursement for a maximum of 2 visits taking place on the same day at 1 location if the patient suffers illness/ injury requiring additional diagnosis/ treatment, or if the patient has a medical visit and mental health or dental visit. Requires an FQHC or RHC that currently includes the cost of encounters with more than one health professional that take place on the same day at a single location as a single visit for purposes of establishing the FQHC’s or RHC’s rate, to apply for an adjustment to its per-visit rate by 2020; after the department has approved that adjustment, requires a medical visit and another health visit that take place on the same day at a single location to be billed as separate visits.
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SUPPORT legislation to expand the existing college orientation requirements to include education and discussion about dating and domestic violence.
Human Services
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SUPPORT legislative efforts that make full-scope Medi-Cal available for income-eligible undocumented California elder’s ages 65 years or older by removing immigration status as an exclusionary barrier.
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SUPPORT efforts that would allow lactation in county jails, requiring the county sheriff or administrator of a county jail to develop and implement an infant and toddler breast milk feeding policy for lactating women inmates detained in or sentenced to county jail, regardless of if the jail is operated by a private contractor.
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SUPPORT State & local funding for the 2020 Census count.
Safety Net Programs
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SUPPORT efforts to help end childhood poverty in the CalWORKs program by setting a floor for grants at 50% of the federal poverty line.
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SUPPORT efforts to reinforce California’s commitment to the fair and equal housing by requiring public agencies to administer their programs in a manner that affirmatively furthers fair housing.
Violence Prevention
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SUPPORT efforts to allow victims of sexual harassment more time to bring claims forward by extending the current time limit (1 year) for which claims must be filed to three years
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SUPPORT efforts requiring an employer who employs 5 or more employees, including temporary or seasonal employees, to provide at least 2 hours of sexual harassment training to all supervisory employees and at least one hour of sexual harassment training to all nonsupervisory employees by January 1, 2020, and once every 2 years thereafter, as specified.
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SUPPORT legislation to end practices that have enabled sexual harassment in the workplace to be covered up by prohibiting one-sided arbitration agreements from being forced on new employees, providing protections for whistleblowers, and preventing retaliation towards workers who do not sign arbitration agreements.
Land Use/ Community Development
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SUPPORT state legislation to create a pilot to provide supportive housing to parolees who are either experiencing homelessness or were homeless when incarcerated, and have no place to go upon discharge.
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