Good afternoon. I'd like to call the order of the Board of Supervisors. Policy Administration, Legislative Committee meeting for today. September the 16th, first item that we have on the agenda today is the Federal Legislative Update. Thank you. So I'll just go over the schedule and then a couple of notes that are going on in Washington, D.C. and then answer any questions that you all might have. On the schedule, both chambers of Congress are returning to session this week. The House is scheduled to be in session from Tuesday through Friday. The Senate is scheduled to be in session from Monday until Friday. Both chambers are scheduled to be in session next week as well. And then they will adjourn in October and are scheduled to return to Washington, D.C. after the elections for a lame duck session. The prime topic in D.C. for Congress this week and likely in the next week is of course the continuing resolution. House leadership last week proposed a six month continuing resolution to fund the government through March 28th, but chose not to proceed largely in an acknowledgement to opposition from members of both parties. Nearly 12 Republicans signaled their opposition to the bill right before, it was scheduled for final passage. This is particularly from the defense-minded Republicans who had concerns about a continuing resolution for DOD for six months, which negatively affect the ability for the Department to procure weapons and address issues in the Middle East and also in Ukraine. Attached to the stock gap was also a measure that had previously passed the House entitled the Save Act. This is a legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and also prohibit undocumented immigrants from participating in federal elections, which is already illegal. Both parties continued deliberations on the CR through the weekend and will continue to build a consensus this week, as Congress moves to pass legislation to keep the government funded beyond this temporary deadline. Broadly, we don't believe that a continuing resolution or a government shutdown route there is going to happen. At this point, the threat is significantly lower than it has been in the past. Members do want to go back to the district and start to campaign in October. So we do believe a deal will come together either late this week or early next week. Just as a refresher the Senate Appropriations Committee approved 11 of the 12 funding bills before the start of the August recess and the House Appropriations Committee have approved all 12. The House has also past five of the appropriate operations bills on the floor. However, none of the bicameral bills have passed. So there is no final passage on any of the 12 appropriations bills so far. They still need to come together and figure out FY25. So far the House has completed consideration of the defense bill, Homeland Security Bill, Interior Environment, Milcon VA, and S. Fox, or State Forward Operations. The Senate Appropriations Committee has yet to approve the Homeland Security Bill and has still not scheduled a markup. In addition to consideration of the CR, the House is considering a number of messaging bills that will be considered under a structured rule later this week. The topics include ESG investment, the existing vehicle tailpipe admissions standard and cutting funding for sanctuary cities in addition to a bill related to free speech on college campuses. I'll just quickly go through the bills and what they address. I'll also note that none of these bills will be brought up by the senator at any shot becoming law, but they are part of the broader messaging strategy that the House of Republicans have adopted for this week and next week and we'll largely dictate kind of what we'll see on the campaign trade as well. The first bill is HR 35339 which would require fiduciaries to prioritize returns over environmental, social and governance factors with making investment decisions. That's the ESG bill that I mentioned earlier. HR 3724 will prohibit recognized accrediting agencies and associations from requiring encouraging or co-orcing institutions of higher education to meet any political litmus tests or violate any right protected by the Constitution as a condition of accreditation. It would also mandate schools to adopt policies of student groups and also on free speech on campus rules. This is the free speech on campus legislation that's largely seen in reaction to the number of campus protestor play story this spring semester of this year. In addition to those two bills, HR 5717 would block federal funding for migrant care to states and cities that have in place policies that hinder the federal government from enforcing federal immigration laws. congressional review act, a Biden administration rule to more strictly regulate passenger vehicle tailpipe emissions and accelerate the transition of electric vehicles. This is the tailpipe mission rule that EPA issued several months ago and this is through a congressional review act. But again, just to reiterate, we do not believe that any of these bills or any of the bills that will be brought up under a rule by the House who then stand. I have a chance to send it. The only bill that the Senate will be bringing up during this work period is one related to IVF similar to a bill that's designed by Senate Democrats to put Republicans again on record related to the use of IVF practices from folks around the country. So I'll just stop there and answer any questions that you all might have. Are there any questions or comments regarding the federal legislative update to John, just gay? Thank you, Chair Carson, and thank you for that report. I don't have any questions on what you had just presented, but I did want to find out what your perspective was on the item that we have under the request for legislation positions regarding the proposed labor HHS appropriations draft bill that would result in potential cuts to social services? In terms of my perspective as to whether you should adopt it or I'm just I want to make sure that I'm being precise. How the likelihood of the cuts where that's at and our efforts to try to change that course? Sure. So the Labor HVL has not yet been adopted by the house. We don't expect that the house will really take up the bill. So any negotiated package that comes together specifically on labor H is going to of course have to be, if bipartisan, by camera agreement. The numbers that we see in the Senate are much closer to what our the number of the federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal and federal numbers that were released and agreed to by the House representatives' appropriations committee. But I do believe that the numbers are not going to be close to what the House wants to see simply because they do not have the leverage to pass that without the acclamation of both the Senate and the White House. I'll also just caveat all of this to say that the future of FY 25 is not, is going to be determined by the results of the November election. It's possible, you know, we are likely to see a CR that will bring us into December, but we made that, we might see that CR extended next year if Republicans take a clean sweep of the White House and, and both chambers of Congress. That being said, you know, I think it's always appropriate for stakeholders such as us to weigh in on concerns that federal funding cuts have on social services. And I think it's effective to let our senators, and of course our House members know that we are advocating to increase that funding or at least have a level funded based on FY 24 levels. Supervisor Chan, this is Emily, I apologize, I'm not on camera, I'm in my car in route, but I completely agree with John, we certainly want to be on record, you know, with our to let our members know of our concerns and what those cuts would mean to Alameda County. So, you know, we think it's a really good idea to have those down on paper. Thank you. Okay. With that any one line Respect to the federal legislative update only at this point Okay, thank you now we have several requests for legislative positions um and The California Proposition 35 provides permanent funding for Medi-Cal, health care, service, initiative, statue asking for a recommendation of support on that. And unless there is some opposition, we would advance that. that there has been a request to take California Proposition 36 off of today's agenda item and bring it before the full board. And we will honor that request to bring that position before the full board, thus suspending the recommendation that proposed in terms of posing it. And then we also have the Labor Bill appropriations proposed cuts for social service funding. And there is a recommendation from the Social Service Agency the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the county of Alameda Administration Building as the Susan Bernichi, Susan S. Bernichi County Alameda Administration Building and hoping to bring that to the full board for hopefully adoption and support for that. And we can have the discussion at that point, but hopefully that go forward. Then I want to go back up to direct the Alameda County Register of Voters to adopt a policy of releasing the text, cash vote, rapid reports concurrent with the election results. And no, we're having some technical difficulty at this point. We're not able to bring up the presentation. Uh, uh, uh, uh, Okay, we will take a comment on it. Uh, and there is a recommendation to support it, uh, that we're advancing. So speakers. Karen? Yeah, my name is Karen Butter and I'm a member of the newly appointed Alameda County Elections Commission and I'm bringing forward a recommendation to implement a policy of early release of cash vote records. You have a report and then I have a few slides that I sent along just to explain it a little bit and I'm a little bit simpler than the full report. President Carson, do you want me to go ahead and give you a brief introduction or do you want to ask questions? First, let me see if there's any questions because I know the issue has been circulating around and if there are questions then we'll take a brief report Okay, there doesn't appear to be any questions Anyone online questions is otherwise the recommendation will be to support it. Okay. We do have a speaker go right ahead. Helen Hutchison. Good afternoon. I'm Helen Hutchison and I'm here representing the League of Women Voters of Alameda County. I want to thank you for your recommendation on this matter. To go into the full board. We believe that government's responsibility is to protect our right to vote and to encourage and inform an active electorate. Releasing the cast vote record is one step in increasing the confidence in our election administration here in Alameda County. the last one. We're going to be able to see the first one. We're going to be able to see the first one. We're going to be able to see the first one. We're going to be able to see the first one. We're going to be able to see the first one. We're going to be able to see the first one. We're going to? Yes. Yes, we can. Thank you. Thank you supervisors for hearing this issue and for taking it to the full board. We appreciate your support. I just want to briefly recap how we got here. The, you know, as we recall in the November 2022 election, the registrar voters actually announced the wrong winner in an Oakland school board race and the policy that has been proposed by the elections commission would have prevented that. You know, that when that event happened, you might recall, it led to two lawsuits, it led to a judge having to overturn, open up the ballots and have them recounted, it led to a couple of months of headlines and scandal, and it all could have been avoided by simply having a common sense policy like this. This is a policy that San Francisco already uses. The thing that I would ask you to consider is that we know that the registrar, of course, is in the middle now of already planning for the November 2024 election. Of course, that is a big job that they have to do. However, there is a very simple and easy way for the registrar to implement this policy. And in fact, registrar simply has to do what the registrar has done in previous elections, which is to email the cast vote record file to those who have requested it beforehand. This is something that, you know, in talking with the vendor for Alameda County, which is the same vendor in San Francisco, Dominion voting systems. Their system automatically generates the cast vote record report. So this is as simple as sending an email with an attachment, a file attachment to a list of people. So we hope that the full board will direct the registrar to implement this policy for this November. Thank you very much. Collar you're on the line you have two minutes. Risa. Yes this is Risa Jeffy. I've been an Alameda County voter for 45 years. I want to support this and hope the full board will approve it. It was really sad to me to see what happened in the last election, where the wrong person was deemed the winner. And that could have been avoided with simple transparency that this will bring. So unfortunately right now there's a lot of distrust about the voting process. And whatever we can do to ease that distrust. And this is one of those tools that we'll do that. So thank you for your recommendation. And I hope the full board will say yes. Thank you. Thank you. Collar, you're on the line. You have two minutes, Pedro. Yes, hello. My name is Beth Aranandas and I'll leave on policy director with California Common Cause. We want to thank you for your recommendation. We believe that the public deserves transparency and that this policy is a simple but significant step towards restoring trust in Alameda County elections. We want to thank you for your time and consideration here. Thank you. Thank you. I have no more speakers on this item. Okay. Thank you. I have no more speakers on this item. Thank you. So with the exception of the Proposition 36 will advance the support for Prop 35. And then the oppose for the appropriation proposed cuts for social service, agency funding, and also advance to the full board adoption of a policy releasing the text cast vote record report. With that, any comment on anything that's not on today's agenda. I Have no speakers for public comment. Okay You have no speaker no speaker. Oh no speakers. I'm sorry. I thought he said one With that no other work a business before the panel committee. We're adjourned. Thank you.