2021 legislative interviews

What do you see as the most important considerations and priorities in the effort to reach net drawdown from natural and working lands? How do we balance the many considerations? What are the funding priorities?
 

I think that is a great question. It is a question that many people who work on climate change and look at our greenhouse gas reduction fund budget really don’t focus on. I am sure you are aware of what happened last year, where the governor appropriated $355 million for natural and working lands, including resilient forests and healthy soils. We've been talking about healthy soils and this issue for quite a while. And it also included another $438 million for water restoration and coastal protection projects. And really, what we found is there are so many natural ways to protect our environment. Our environment is built to protect itself and to protect us.

One great example that I had is I used to be on the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority. And one of the goals was to put a parcel tax and that parcel tax was to save and restore the bay. One of the best fighters of sea level rise for the bay was just restoring marshlands. It wasn't building concrete walls, like we think about and making sure that we built structures that were higher and higher as the water level came up. It was just natural marshland and extending that and restoring it and that really helped with the ebb and flow of the tide. And so, I think there are many strategic ways to continue to invest in healthy soils in resilient forests.

We have seen the devastating effects of what happens when we don't do proper vegetation management, or proper forest management and it has huge greenhouse gas effects in terms of forest fires. And again, forest fires are completely natural. That is nature's way of purging the forest, having the forest renew and grow. And so you know, we can't stop forest fires because that's nature's way of restoring forests. What we need to do is better manage the forest. I'll get into this and many other questions around housing. Another part of the challenge is more and more people have started living in the forest. And that itself has become a danger. We do have to be careful as we allow people to move into the natural forest, realizing how that impacts our ability to manage the forest, because what happens is then we don't have prescribed burns, we don't do proper vegetation management, and then it becomes a very large tinderbox. This is what we've seen over the last couple years where we have these huge catastrophic wildfires.

What can be done to reform exclusionary single-family zoning in California? What reforms do you support to legalize and incentivize more affordable housing (both naturally occurring, and deed restricted) in high opportunity neighborhoods?

I was a proud author of AB68, which really helps streamline the construction of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). That is really helping many single-family home communities start to grapple with adding additional homes on their lots. It's a way that again, the property owner gets to improve their property, they can improve their garage, they can add a separate ADU in the back or in San Francisco, what we do is we built an ADU for use on the ground floor, which was usually for a garage and storage. That was really one of the most effective ways to expand housing in a way that communities were fine with, that most communities see as additive, while still not having as big an impact in terms of the environment as well as also in terms of congestion. 

Having said that, I think we need to do so much more with AB68 passing. It's estimated that we could build upwards of 50,000 ADUs a year, which is phenomenal. You know, Senator Atkins had a bill SB1120, to streamline the construction of duplexes. I fully supported that and I've supported many other streamlining bills to make it easier to build housing. We're in a housing crisis, we're in a situation where the life that we have come to expect to lead in the Bay Area is completely under threat. With the lack of housing, we can't create more jobs, and if we can't create more jobs, our economy is going to grind to a halt. I've told my constituents in San Francisco that if you don't support any housing, or if you can't describe to me what types of housing developments you support, then we might as well hang out a “No Jobs” sign on our cities. Because that's what it means. It means that we're telling companies not to create any more jobs. 

We have this amazing job creation, innovation economy primarily through the tech sector and many of them are now looking elsewhere to grow outside of Silicon Valley. It's not because they don't want to grow in Silicon Valley. They love to grow in Silicon Valley. They are so worried about the lack of housing for their employees, they are looking elsewhere. Housing has become so expensive for their employees. Employees paid $150,000 can't afford to live in Silicon Valley without living like college students. I also was proud to author AB1486, which strengthened our surplus land to make sure that affordable housing developers got the first right of refusal for surplus public land. We have so much surplus public land, whether it's cities, counties, special districts - like a water district or a hospital district sitting on so much land where we could build more housing giving them the first right of refusal to build more housing, I'm hoping to have an impact.

I think it must be having an impact because around the New Year my phone started blowing up around all these projects that were wondering how they were impacted by the Surplus Land Act, which has again been in effect for decades. It's not a new act. We must really do more to incentivize the construction of housing. But a lot of it is really changing the minds of our communities to have a hard look at whether we're going to allow more housing to be built in our communities. Frankly, it comes back to do people want to be living in a community where their children and their grandchildren can live? Because right now, so many families are being torn apart because they can't afford to stay close together by choice.

In San Francisco more people can walk and bike. And now with electric bikes, people can use electric bikes to get up hills. We have a few more options in San Francisco. But again, you're totally right. That is the other side of the coin. Housing and transportation are the same issue - different sides of the coin. They must go hand in hand. I really have to applaud South City [South San Francisco]. They've done such a great job. I mean, they have added so many great biotech jobs, but they have done so thoughtfully. I mean, you know, Kevin Mullin fought for that ferry. They've also really pushed to have more housing so people can live closer to work.

What can be done to ensure that California’s COVID-19 economic recovery is equitable and focuses on the needs of those most impacted?

One, we had incredible income inequality before COVID, but COVID has really shone a light and highlighted all the various issues that were already there and made them significantly worse. So we had income inequality, we had learning loss, we had healthcare disparities, and COVID has really highlighted and expanded it.

I was proud to lead the legislature's effort to expand and have an economic recovery proposal. One area that the governor's been interested in working with us on is the expansion of the earned income tax credit. It's a great way for working families to get money instantly, especially low-income working families who make under $30,000 in California, and also families who aren't able to get unemployment insurance. So, families if you file without a social security number, which means that you're showing not documented, you can get the earned income tax credit, but you can't get unemployment. We wanted to expand that for the hard working families that are here but not documented to be able to get the assistance they need to pay rent, buy food, pay their bills, and help their family out.

We also know that getting kids back to schools is extraordinarily critical. In general, in the districts that we've seen that have been opened, we haven't seen a huge spike or a huge propensity of transmission. I think there is a safe way to reopen schools, hand in hand working with our state public health department and working with our county public health departments. We want to be moving toward bringing back small cohorts who are the ones most at risk of the greatest learning loss and are facing the toughest time. That’s the first step to moving towards reopening our schools.

We also need to make sure we're helping out all the small businesses that are struggling. There are so many small businesses who've been forced to close or have really seen a huge hit to their net revenue, net income. We worked with the Governor to do $500 million of grants before Thanksgiving, and they've started to go out in the last week or two. The governor is proposing more action that we are looking at this year. We're very supportive of making sure that we get more money to millions of Californians who are struggling. The bottom line is we have millions of people who are unemployed or underemployed or had their small businesses shut down and we need to get them the resources they need for help. It's so important that we get that money out the door as soon as possible.

It's unconscionable, the federal government hasn't done anything since March, and then they finally passed their stimulus package, and we went so many months without having that money and having those resources. Meanwhile, bills were piling up, people weren't able to buy food. We saw food banks with lines around the block. We need to do our part. We're lucky to actually have a slight surplus this year and next year. I think we can use some of that money to get those funds into the pockets of hardworking Californians, millions who are unemployed, can’t pay bills, can’t pay rent, and are struggling. We want to make sure that we are helping them as soon as possible. 

What other major issues do you think the legislature must deal with in 2021? What are your personal priorities?

I have the honor of being the chair of the Senate Budget Committee. Because of that, I spend a lot of time working on the actual state's budget. In terms of our state's budget, I just want to reiterate the priorities for the state's budgets are to really protect and to preserve all the gains that we've made in the last 10 years preserving our social safety net. During the last great recession, we made the mistake of just cutting so many critical services, whether it's CalFresh, or CalWORKS. These food programs provide support to millions of Californians who are struggling to feed themselves and survive. We decreased expenditures on healthcare. We really want to preserve the investments we've made to healthcare, to programs around food and to programs serving the poorest and the most vulnerable Californians. 

With COVID, there is such a hard situation where millions of Californians are struggling and worried about getting sick. We need to maintain and protect their health. 

Then I think we have an opportunity to expand in some areas, we can expand the education levels. For four-year-olds we only offer transitional kindergarten for about 25% of four-year-olds in California. We can offer that down the road over the next few years to every Californian that is four years old. I think that really is the right thing to do. 

I have some additional budget focused items in terms of my legislative priorities. I have a bill right now to work on reopening schools. I think there is a way to reopen schools safely and thoughtfully working with our public health officials. Housing and homelessness are major issues so we're looking at ways to streamline and to do greater construction and housing, to expand the opportunities.

I have also focused on criminal justice reform — ensuring that people who can get their records expunged have that opportunity to expunge those records. It's so difficult now, even after you legally can expunge your record, there are thousands of steps that you have to go through to actually get your record cleared. It's sort of like for many of us, we wonder how we get something negative on our credit report off. It's kind of a very similar thing, you have to jump through hundreds of hoops just to get the clean credit report. For a criminal record it’s even worse because it can impact your employment or housing, and it could affect your ability to do something like be a soccer coach. These are serious barriers that people have to deal with just because they cannot get their records expunged. I also work in the environmental area, so I’m very much looking at ways that we can expand clean transportation and move to a cleaner, greener California.

What are your views on independent versus hybrid redistricting commissions? Do you want local governments to have their own independence? Do you have a viewpoint on whether boards for redistricting should be fully independent, or should they be hybrids?

I think the commissions should be independent. We saw how great it worked redistricting California.

I think there should be proper representation on the commissions. I will say, I have noticed in San Mateo County, it's a contrast, just between the two neighboring counties, how many diverse communities don't feel they are represented in San Mateo County.

And to me, I think that was the reason why there was a lawsuit to go to a district election and not have at-large elections. It is shocking to me that a county that is 25% Asian American has never had an Asian American supervisor elected in that county. When you have that percent of the population and not have a representation, you see how having goals around diversity, and not just racial diversity, but gender and understanding of communities. Every county has different communities, but really making sure that the county's communities are reflected in the commission so that they can fully participate in the democratic process.