Legislative Updates & Advocacy Opportunities

Thursday, March 17, 3:30 - 5:00 pm, Zoom Recording & Slides

MEETING RECAP

On March 17th, Thrive brought together leaders and organizations involved in environmental legislation space to speak about what they and their organizations have been working on and how the audience can get involved in the legislative space and participate in their programs. Our panelists for this event were Josh Becker, California State Senator along with Helen Wolter, District Representative, Josh Becker's office, Allison Chan, Policy Director, Save the Bay, Linda Hutchins-Knowles, Karl Knapp GoEV Senior Manager, Acterra, and Josh Hugg, Governmental Affairs Specialist, Midpeninsula Open Space District (Midpen).

To start off our panelists, we had each of our speakers talk about their priority issue areas and any priority legislation they were focused on. Senator Becker began by talking about his eight key focus areas: climate, public safety, elections, education, economic opportunity, housing, transit, and health. He also talked about his priority legislation including the following:

SB 887: Transmission Acceleration - accelerating construction and permitting on needed transmission lines
SB1032: Infrastructure Authority - building new clean energy generation and storage to send it to cities
SB 1158: 24/7 Clean Energy Reporting - making improvements to rules that govern how utilities report their energy sources
SB 1112: Tariff On-bill Financing for Building Decarbonation - allowing ratepayers to make upgrades in their homes through utility investment to clean choices
SB 778: Buy Clean California Concrete - adding concreate to the Buy Clean program to deploy low carbon technology and best practices across the cement-concrete supply chain
SB 1203: State of California Net Zero - setting a target for all state agencies to achieve zero net greenhouse gas by requiring published inventories of current emissions, establishing interim targets, and creating a plan to achieve these targets
SB 1301: Surcharge on Fossil Fuel Financers - imposing an additional tax on financial institutions that provide more than $1B annually to finance fossil fuel companies

Next Allison presented about Save the Bay's priority areas; namely around nature-based solutions on wetland restoration, urban green infrastructure, and keeping trash out of the Bay. On wetland restoration, Save the Bay is currently leading a regional funding coalition composed of Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Together Bay Area, Bay Area Council, Resources Legacy Fund, and Valley Water to advocate for an increase in available funding for critical wetland restoration projects. Some of their recent achievements includes working with Representative Speier on a bill to increase the SF Bay EPA program to $25M per year, receiving $24M as one-time appropriation for restoration work in the Bay, and urging for an increase in resources and dedicated funding for the Bay. Save the Bay has also been working on urban green infrastructure as it is an excellent, multi-beneficial approach to ensure climate resilience across urbanized areas while also providing other community benefits such as access to green space, physical health, and public safety. They have been urging a citywide commitment to urban greening in San Jose as well as becoming more involved in cities' general plan updates and climate action plans. In addition, they would love to see the San Mateo County Sustainable Streets Master Plan be implemented and are looking at ways to move it forward. Finally, keeping trash out of the Bay has been one of Save the Bay's main priorities for a while and they look primarily at strategies on the flow of trash through stormwater systems and into the water of the Bay. Two processes to improve strong enforcement and improvement on policies on this issue are urging enforcement of regional requirements to eliminate trash from city storm drains and enforcement of Caltrans' trash cease and desist order.

Next Linda discussed Acterra's policy priorities around Beneficial Electrification and their Healthy Plate, Healthy Planet Program. For their Healthy Plate, Healthy Planet Program, Acterra has partnered with other organizations to form a coalition called HomeGrown Bay Area. Their vision by 2030 is for all local governments in the Bay Area to have committed to policy, purchasing, and programming that ensure good food for all (plant based, low waste), local and urban framing practices, fair trade, and zero waste. These center equity for all residents to gain access to healthy, affordable food as well as workers to have jobs in sustainable agriculture and urban farming. For their Beneficial Electrification (BE) program, Acterra advocates for city and county reach codes to electrify new buildings and ensure EV charging access in apartments/condos, pushes cities to adopts plans to electrify existing buildings in a way that is ambitious and equitable, and supports Senator Becker's bill, SB 1112 so that the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) will allow tariffed on-bill financing to increase the adoption of energy and water efficiency measures. As one of the leaders of the EV Charging for All Coalition, Acterra is partnering with 1400+ organizations, elected officials, and individuals to push for equitable building codes with the belief that all residents deserve access to at-home EV charging. Through this coalition, they have introduced SB 1482, authored by Senator Allen, to ensure that the CALGreen code update in the next cycle will be equitable and have 100% access to EV charging for every unit with parking.

Finally, Josh shared Midpen's policy and issue area priorities. For their issue priorities, Midpen focuses on the following:

Wildlife corridors and habitat connectivity: maintaining genetic diversity of wildlife and climate resilience
Climate adaptation strategies: maximizing the use of nature-based solutions to climate change
Ecologically sensitive vegetation management: minimizing impacts to rare and endangered species and non-native invasive weeds
Equitable access to open space: improving/increasing transit to trails and open space
Cutting the Green Tape Initiative: supporting efforts to streamline permitting processes for environmental restoration and natural resource projects

In addition, Midpen's funding priorities include wildlife crossings, getting funds to under-resourced communities and increasing accessibility, their wildland fire resiliency program, and coastal conservancy funding. For their local and state key legislation, Josh discussed several bills and priorities including the following:

AB 2789 (Mullin) - Focusing on how Midpen constructs the process on executing projects
AB 2610 (Friedman) - Managing ecologically sensitive vegetation and
AB 1789 (Bennett) - Prioritizing funding for recreational trails
SB 2344 (Friedman) - Getting California's fish and wildlife department to work collaboratively with Caltrans to accelerate the pace of wildlife connectivity projects
AB 1445 (Levine) - Incorporating climate impacts into the regional housing needs allocation project
AB 2362 (Mullin) - Streamlining permits in ecosystem restoration and climate adaptation projects
AB 2889 (Wicks) - Accelerate the undergrounding process of powerlines and wildfire mitigation
Plan Bay Area 2050 Implementation - Maximizing the utility of the Priority Conservation Areas (PCA) and their benefits to natural, working lands
Regional Housing Needs Allocation - Mentioned in AB 1445
Regional Collaboration - Getting everyone to work towards the same direction
Active Transportation Program - Adding/improving bike/walk infrastructure
Public Transit to Increase Open Space Access - Also called "Transit to Trails" and a part of the active transportation program

The next topic covered was how each of these speakers and their organization choose their priorities each year. Helen stated that at Senator Becker's office, everything is very data-driven. Their team looks carefully at the biggest, concerning areas to address and how best to tackle them. In addition, their team keeps track of Senator Becker's bills that also includes fact sheets on all the bills and sample comment letters. Next, Allison mentioned that Save the Bay's priorities are based on their commitment to nature-based climate adaptation in the most equitable way. They ensure equity drives their priority areas and focus their energy on directing resources to communities that may need them the most. In addition, they recognize that nature based solutions are one of the best ways to ensure resiliency into the future. Linda added on that Acterra is also dedicated to centering equity in their policy work, basing their decisions on their strategic plan, what their priority areas are, and where to break down barriers and increase access. As their mission is creating a healthy planet, they always look at how to support the climate and also their communities. Josh wrapped up this topic by adding that as Midpen is a land manager, they rely on their content experts, people actually carrying-out the planning, natural resource specialists, or property people and what they are hearing from their respective communities and what their needs are to determine their priorities.

Next, we discussed partnerships between the speakers and organizations and with other groups to move forward each of their mentioned agenda. Helen mentioned that through ease of Zoom meetings, their office have been meeting more with local and state level legislators and organizations working with local groups. This includes all the organizations involved in this meeting and from the Sacramento office, groups such as EnviroVoters, Environmental Defense Fund, Clean Air Task Force, and the Decarb Coalition. In addition, they also work with labor groups to understand their perspective, innovators involved in emerging technology, and with Community Choice Aggregations (CCA) such as Peninsula Clean Energy. Acterra has been partnering with several organizations for their multiple coalitions. For their HomeGrown Bay Area program they have partnered with Better Food Foundation, Factory Farming Awareness Coalition, and Fresh Approach. For their EV Charging Access for All coalition, they have worked dwith environmental justice organizations, faith communities, renters, EV advocates, and elected officials. As part of their Acterra Student Ambassador Program (ASAP), they have trained youth to raise their voices and advocate for change, partnering with different youth groups and community colleges. Save the Bay has partnered with several entities on their funding coalition, including business groups, funders, and utility companies. They also place a high importance on developing relationships with community-based organizations and neighborhood groups that have local perspectives and represent the needs and desires of residents. Other partners includes Green Foothills, Greenbelt Alliance in developing their Resilience Playbook, and champions in elected officials.

We ended the event asking the speakers what the audience can do to get more involved in legislation and advocacy. For the HomeGrown Bay Area Program, email Jared to get involved with their local government outreach team that connects with mayors, city council representatives, county supervisors, and city/town/county staff. For Acterra's BE program, give a positive comment on San Jose's plan to electrify existing buildings and support SB 1112. For EV Equity, send this email to your State Senator urging their support for SB 1482, volunteer with the EV Charging for All Coalition, and learn more on their website. Also, if any youth would like to get involved, sign up for Acterra's ASAP program. Finally, for small, everyday climate actions, Acterra is involved with the Climate Action Now (CAN) app which will gives you small actions to take everyday. For Save the Bay, Allison discussed always going back to partnerships and developing stronger relationships with organizations with a local and equity focus. If you represent, are a member of, or work with any organizations that resonates with Save the Bay's goals around climate resiliency and nature based adaptation, reach out to Allison! For Senator Becker's office, reach out to Helen, comment on California bills through the California Legislature Position Letter Portal, or comment specifically on Senator Becker's bills through his website. In addition, Helen urged for spreading support of legislation by telling friends and neighbors as well as getting involved in the legislative space through neighborhood associations and local commissions and boards. Josh also encouraged the audience to look at Together Bay Area and even become a member as they are leading the conservation community and directing energy towards Sacramento. He expressed the need for more organizations that are involved in both policy and planning as both are dependent on each other to become successful as well as an huge, final encouragement to take part in politics and not remain a spectator.