Good afternoon. I'd like to call the order. The Board is supervising first now administration and legislative committee meeting for September the 30th Monday September the 30th. The first item that we have on the agenda is federal legislative update. Good afternoon. You got Emily here and it looks like John's just joining from CJ Lake. So first of all a little bit about the schedule when we talked to you guys last Monday, you know, we said that the number one priority was passing a continuing resolution. Congress did just that last Wednesday, honestly a few days ahead of time, usually they wait until closer to the deadline of midnight tonight, but they went ahead and passed it. Overwhelming bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. The CR is a clean continuing resolution and it runs through December 20th. It did include additional 231 million in funding for the Secret Service, which I know we talked a little bit about last week. So now they are gone and they are not expected to return until November 12 following the elections. So John and I thought we may spend some time today just talking about what we expect to occur in the lame duck session. And so we've kind of divided it up into kind of must pass legislation and then kind of other may pass legislation. So I'll start with the must pass. Of course appropriations is number one and you know, as I stated, the before, the outcome of the November elections will impact whether Congress decides to pass a full year legislation or simply pat or I should say, if they can wrap up in an omnibus bill, the FY25 bills or simply pass another CR that extends into 2025 and the next administration. The debt limit will also need to be raised for suspended again early next year. That will likely get punnied to 2025. Just today, people are starting to talk about needing a disaster supplemental due to the hurricane from last week. There was already some concern that the CR lacked any disaster-related funding for FEMA's disaster relief fund, and that fund is already running low. So members are already saying they will need to pass some sort of supplemental appropriations related to FEMA. And then of course, in DAA, that's the National Defense Authorization Bill. This is something that Congress passes in a bipartisan fashion every year. And so we expect them to do so again in December. The Senate Armed Services Committee passed its in DAA bill in a bipartisan vote, but it never got to the full Senate. The House passed a partisan bill out of committee and off the floor. So right now, staffers are actually pre-conferencing and they're negotiating. And the idea is they could work out differences between the two bills before the Senate brings its bill to the Senate floor during the lame duck session. Also, I know we've talked about healthcare. There are a number of healthcare items that are set to expire, including telehealth extensions, an authorization and funding for community health centers, National Health Service Corps, teaching health centers with graduate medical education, and then they'll need to pass some legislation to avoid certain Medicare payment cuts for doctors. So again, we see these extenders being included in some sort of kind of end of year package. And then the National Flood Insurance Reauthorization, that program also runs through December 20th because it's tied to the CR. So that's something else they'll need to address. I can turn it over to John now and he can talk about some of the other may pass legislation. Thanks Emily. So one of the items that I think we talked about in the past but has been getting significantly more attention as we draw close to the end of the year is the Farm Bill. Lawmakers from both parties have pushed their leadership reaction on the Farm Bill before the end of the year. Senior members of your Democrat coalition or action, I started to build before the year a letter that was set last Wednesday and then half of Republicans asked their leadership to place the Republican-led Farm Bill on the floor during the lame duck in a separate letter the previous week. There was also some discussion between the four corners of the Ag committees and both the House Senate potentially putting a Farm Bill on the floor before the end of the year. And there have been some subsequent conversations on the top line levels, not necessarily getting into the nitty-gritty details of the bill, but if they're able to come up with some top line agreements, they may be able to move a bill by the end of the year. Of course, there are some contours that continue to exacerbate issues, namely on the overall baseline that was provided by the IRA conservation programs, the climate related bills, our climate related programs, rather, and also on the nutrition title, which has become more controversial over the last couple of years. In addition to the farm build, there may be some action that we see on kids online safety. Before the start of the recess, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a slightly weak conversion of the kids online safety act. This bill passed with nearly or over 90 votes in the Senate in July. This slightly-weaked version in the House caused some concern amongst Democrat attacked by voice vote, but during the markup many Democrat pushed for the full more robust version to be included in any sort of package that makes it to the floor. So what stakeholders have decided to do instead is to leave our push rather leader Schumer to include the Gids Online Safety Act or COSA, as is commonly known in any sort of your end package and then J.M. Fouls. And then finally, we'll likely see action on a worda. Both chambers have tasked their respective versions of the Water Resources Development Act this summer with both bipartisan votes, and they are working to resolve differences to enact the Comprehensive Bill before the end of the year. The legislation authorizes civil works projects for reports, carbers and waterways, but storm protection, this version of worded does not contain many policy changes, so they're just straight reauthorizations or authorizations for existing new worded projects. So the controversy level of these is rather low. So we do anticipate that worded being sort of been distributed together. The one thing that I will just kind of note, Speaker Johnson has expressed his opposition to omnibus packages. This is something that Republicans that they were going to stop. I'm sure that we'll all remember the big omnibus bills that passed in, that have passed in years past. And instead they want to move bills in a more regular order fashion, but with the short calendar, that becomes increasingly unlikely. So we're likely to use some sort of bust package mini mega or omnie towards the end of the year as they try to everything up before the end of the calendar year and the beginning of a new Congress. Thank you very much. We'll just stop there. Thank you. Supervisor Tammy, have any questions or comments? Thank you very much for that summary. I just have a quick question on the must-have legislation that needs to pass. The disaster supplemental, you said the fund got depleted and obviously with Hurricane Helena in Florida and Georgia and North Carolina, we're seeing some significant damage. How hard depleted is the fun? Yeah, so the disaster relief fund is kind of separate from the overall funding pot for FEMA. And so this often happens as you get to kind of the end of the fiscal year and depending on what disasters have already occurred, FEMA will start to say, look, we can't do like reimbursements for certain things that have happened, instead we'll focus on individuals or something like that. So they had already said the disaster relief fund was getting low. When they passed the CR, there was additional funds to get them to December 20th, but not nearly what will ultimately be needed. And so again, at this point, it's too early to even kind of start, I think putting those numbers down. But over the next few weeks, I anticipate that FEMA will start to get a better handle on what is truly needed to rebuild. And so, usually with a disaster supplemental, the administration will actually put forward a request to Congress with estimates of what they need. So we imagine that's what will happen. And honestly, Congress has still not put any, has not funded anything for the bridge collapse in Baltimore, which was a disaster in the spring. So some people feel like that could be attached as well, and other disasters could be addressed too, in addition to Haleem. John, I don't know if you have anything to add there. Yeah, yeah, I do. So I'm happy to attach the monthly report that was released earlier this month that FEMA puts out on the overall levels of the disaster relief fund, just taking a quick look at it. The balance is about $3.3 billion. Now that does not include disaster relief money. Like Emily said, for Hawaii, for the floods in Vermont, and I think there's one other that is slipping my mind right now, but at this point in time the disaster relief fund is does that critically low level? And what they end up doing in this case is that they start to triage funding. So the funding will go to the more immediate disaster issues, and then other reimbursements will simply get delayed until Congress is able to refill the coffers and then provide those reimbursements because Because it's not a direct payment, right? The local jurisdiction, we were aware of this. Local jurisdictions will take on the cost upfront and then they'll be reimbursed by FEMA to the disaster relief fund. And these reimbursements happen over the course of sometimes months, sometimes years, but they can't go into the negative on this, but they have to be funded by Congress through the supplemental. So that's the reason why that we've seen sort of this push, particularly in the Senate, to re-up funding for the disaster relief fund, even before hurricane season, which is why we've thought action from AmeriCorps senators, from Hawaii, from Vermont to try to provide additional funding so that those funds can flow to those after declarations. So at this point in time, there's about $3.3 billion in Congress is going to receive an updated request from the Office of Management budget once they're able to assess the damages in the three states that were affected by Haleen, that could take about a month for them to understand the true impact. And then once OMB stands that over to Congress, they'll have an updated figure for what the disaster relief fund ought to be at, and then they'll have to pass the supplemental. I'll also just note that Senator Scott from Florida sent a letter to a majority leader Schumer asking that the Senate reconvene, currently there are recess reconvened for a special session under past disaster relief fund to address the disaster relief fund and FEMA shortfalls, but that is largely going to be determined by how quickly FEMA and OMB can collect that report and transmit to Congress, which is, you know, it's tough to estimate what that is because the disaster has been so bad. I don't know if there are so many counties that it may take a while to truly understand the financial impact of the hurricane. Thank you. I want to ask a kind of I want to digress for a second and ask a question. In California, the insurance commission and the commissioner been looking at a number of insurance agencies here and now a lot of homeowners are getting insurance from insurance agencies outside of California, which means that sometimes their legal protection might be challenged in a different way. Has there been any discussions in Congress with respect to insurance agencies, as there have been any hearings or any rumbling about potential hearings regarding insurance agencies since many of these disasters, insurance policies, insurance are being challenged in terms of meeting their obligation, and especially the financial obligation, even 60 minutes last night on the 60 minutes national TV, they had a segment in terms of some inscroupalist activity taking place with respect to insurance agencies. I don't think that any of the committees have done anything recently. There may have been a hearing last year, like November of 2023, I say potentially in House Financial Services, but I don't think we've seen any discussions this year. I imagine that after all of a sudden done with Helene, you know, this could rise to a level that there may want to hold some hearings, but I don't think they've done anything prior. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. Do we have anyone online? Has any questions or comments? I have no speakers. Okay. Anyone online want to identify themselves? I have no speakers. Okay. Anyone online want to identify themselves? Let's know that they are zooming in on today's meeting. Good afternoon. This is Ileaning with Alameda County House. the city of New York. I'm going to have a look at the city of New York. I need a county house. Good afternoon. This is Hana Hamilton zooming in from Alameda County Social Services. I'm the interim policy director here. Good afternoon. This is Valerie Yarkin from Supervisor Miley's office. Hi. This is Leon and the supervisor Myle's office. Hi, this is Leon Fernando from Child Support Services. Thank you for participating and zooming in today's meeting. We're going to cancel Hal for the next two weeks, October the 7th, and also Monday, October the 14th. We're going to cancel those two PAL meetings. So our next PAL meeting will be held on October, Monday, October the 21st. So I hope that you penciled that out and in for the next time that we convene. We really appreciate the federal legislative update from our lobbyists and with that we are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.