2023 Legislative Interviews

Friday, February 24, 2023 

LWVSF: In California, people from historically marginalized groups are a majority of the population. Even though California has recently passed laws designed to promote access to voting, there are significant disparities in participation among youth and voters of color compared to our older, white population. This means that decisions about critical issues are being made by a predominantly older, white, and profoundly unrepresentative electorate.

There is also evidence that public awareness of new opportunities to participate in democracy is lacking. For example, many people do not know how to access basic information, such as where to vote in person. In addition, a reduction of in-person voting locations (a feature of Voter’s Choice Act counties) has discouraged turnout of Black and Latino Californians.

• Do you believe that targeted voter outreach and education would help to shrink California’s participation gap?
• Would you support funding the Secretary of State, county elections offices, and/or community-based organizations to address the problem?

Matt Haney: Absolutely, I support these ideas. I've been very supportive of efforts to try to change the processes to make it as easy as possible for people to register to vote, including automatic registration and same day voting. But there are still a lot of people who are struggling to participate. 

I do believe that targeted voter outreach makes a difference. And even as we change some of the processes to make it easier to vote, that doesn't mean we don't need to continue to do the targeted voter outreach. 

The process is confusing — I was on the ballot four times last year, and I found that I still had to explain to many people how to register to vote, what to do if they're not registered, when they can vote — all of these things. It's a challenge for everyone, but especially for folks who may not have received as much outreach as others. We have to address that with consistent targeted outreach. 

And yes, we absolutely need to fund it. We need to meet people where they are, we need to make sure there's voter information when they go into the grocery store, into schools, and into the DMV — basically everywhere we can reach people, especially folks who may have lower rates of voter participation. We also have to reach out through non-English-language media. All of that does take resources. It certainly improves our democracy and increases participation. 

I'm also a part of efforts to continue making structural process changes to encourage more participation, such as the effort in San Francisco that will put many of our city offices, including the mayor's race, into the presidential election year. Having so many elections can create some level of confusion and drive down participation. 

I have always supported efforts to expand local voting to 16- and 17-year-olds, and to non-citizens voting for Board of Education races in San Francisco. I'm a co-author of an effort in Sacramento to expand voting opportunities to people who are currently incarcerated. There's a constitutional amendment that I helped to launch. There are California residents who should have a voice in our democracy who are currently excluded.

LWVSF: Construction or modernization of school facilities is normally financed by general obligation bonds at the state and local levels. Repayment of state bonds is financed from General Fund revenue. Local bond measures are financed by property tax increases during the lifetime of the bonds issued. California’s School Facility Program provides grants to local school districts to help fund new construction and modernization.

Dependence on property taxes means that to fund school construction/modernization, taxpayers in districts with low property value must pay a far higher property tax rate than those in wealthier districts to raise the same amount of money per student.

Would you advocate for changes to the School Facility Program to reduce this inequity? One way to do this would be to have the School Facility Program structured so that the required match percentage from a school district is reduced for low-wealth districts.

Matt Haney: I was a San Francisco school board member for six years, and I chaired our school facilities committee, so I am familiar with this particular area and with the inequities that are built into the current system of school facilities funding. We passed a local school facilities bond in 2016, when I was president of the school board. That was the biggest school bond that we've ever had here in San Francisco. 

But at the state level, we have to both continue to invest in and to advocate for growing school facilities dollars while fixing the inequities that are built into the system. I definitely would advocate for addressing the inequity that arises in school facilities funding because of lower property values in some areas. It's a lot easier for areas of the state that have higher property values or higher tax rates to be able to match the funds in a way that allows them to access more state facilities dollars. That's not fair. 

It's also completely misaligned with the other ways that we deal with school funding in terms of the Local Control Funding Formula, where we really are clear about the role that equity plays in school funding [LWVSF note: the Local Control Funding Formula, enacted in 2013, is how California determines how school funding is distributed across the state]. For years in California, there were a huge number of problems with that formula. So we adjusted it so that it has added weight when you have a higher percentage of students who are English language learners, who are low income, foster youth, and homeless kids. And so those things add a greater weight and actually lead to more support and more funding. But that type of equity is not adequately built in, as you say, to how we fund school facilities. So I definitely would advocate for that. 

I think there are other things that we need to do as well. We need to make sure that we protect the ability of local jurisdictions to pursue and pass local school bond measures. There are some potential attacks on our ability to do that. Also, we have to make sure that we have a reasonable threshold for those bonds to pass. When you have very high thresholds for bond measures to pass it can create challenges to get adequate school funding for facilities financing on a local level. 

I think that there's conversation about another statewide school bond, so hopefully this is an opportunity for us to address some of these inequities that are built into the current financing structure.

LWVSF: Climate unpredictability and drought are making it clear that the ways we are accustomed to managing water in California — for cities, for agriculture, and for the environment — are neither sustainable nor equitable.

In the case of agriculture — which is the largest user of water — increasing temperatures, uncertainties about surface water supply, groundwater overdraft, food production costs, and market fluctuations lead to cropping choices that may adversely affect food supply and food prices.

How would you propose to transform management of California’s water resources in response to changing conditions in order to minimize impact on food production and its associated jobs without adversely affecting food security and other users and uses of water?

Matt Haney: Well, needless to say, this wasn't something that came up a lot in my election. I represent probably one of the most urban districts in California. There might be one or two in Los Angeles that are similarly urban. We don't have a lot of agriculture. We have some urban agriculture, but probably the least amount in my district. So with all that said, this is an area that impacts all of us.

So clearly, if our supply of water or food is disrupted, that obviously impacts the residents I represent. It's an area where we are all interconnected. And we all have to have an important voice. 

Actually, San Francisco, as I've learned in the last few months that I have been in Sacramento, has an even more important role in this because our Public Utilities Commission is active on water issues all over the state. This is because of land that we own and control, and land rights that we have far beyond my district. So that is an area I'm learning a lot about and engaging more on. 

One area that I was able to engage on and support involved a bill on water well over-drilling and how it impacts groundwater sustainability. One of my colleagues, Steve Bennett, who authored the bill, helped me understand this issue more because there was resistance to it in the assembly. 

There's really a lack of effective and adequate regulation from groundwater sustainability agencies to be able to oversee where these wells are being drilled. There are issues with big agriculture  folks drilling wells that take too much water, depriving other areas that need it. This practice disproportionately negatively impacts communities of color, farm workers and others who also need to be able to access the water. So we need to look at ways that those drilling practices can be more effectively regulated by these agencies. 

Of course, this is an area that is very complicated and for the representatives of residents of those agricultural areas, this is a top concern. I will continue to be engaged and learn about these issues and find ways that I can contribute in a positive way.

LWVSF: The League of Women Voters is very active in promoting community safety for all Californians. When working for community safety, we include everything from housing, health care, education, and environmental justice to dismantling systemic oppression and racial bias. We also include more traditional safety topics. For example, we’ve worked on state legislation and supported litigation as a tool for criminal legal and law enforcement reform. Locally we work for transparency and accountability through  San Francisco’s Police Commission and Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board.

• What are your priorities for community safety in California?
• How can we best collaborate with you?

Matt Haney: We could talk for an hour about those things. But I'll try to highlight a few things that are important to me. 

As a San Francisco supervisor, I represented the Tenderloin, South of Market, and downtown San Francisco and was very involved in all of these community safety issues. Now as a legislator, I immediately identified as top priorities the issues of behavioral health and addiction, and our responses to these crises, which overlap with public safety. We started a select committee on fentanyl and opioid addiction that I chair, and I have about 10 bills that touch on these different issue areas.

I think that getting an appropriate response to what are really public health, or housing, or social services challenges is critical. We've asked the police to do everything and too much, which actually can often lead to more harm than solutions for people who are in need. It can lead to police encounters that are dangerous. 

Even though I couldn't do bills myself last year, I immediately jumped in on the effort around AB988 [LWVSF note: AB988 adds 9-8-8 as an emergency response system for Californians experiencing mental health crises]. I think that's a transformational opportunity for us. We have in San Francisco through Mental Health SF — which I was one of the co-authors of — the Street Crisis Response Team, Street Overdose Response Team, and Homelessness Outreach Team. Maybe we have too many responses, but that is the opportunity to be able to deploy public health professionals and peer support for people who are in a behavioral health crisis or have behavioral health needs. It is crucial and should be expanded across the state. AB988 gives us the opportunity to do that. 

If you or a family member or a friend are in a behavioral health crisis, or you are witnessing one, you have the opportunity to call 988 wherever you are in the state and have non-law enforcement, unarmed people respond. There is a major need for this service for the issues of homelessness, behavioral health, and public safety. That's an area that I'm hugely supportive of. 

On the police accountability issue, I have a bill this year that would, for the first time, do a full analysis and study of all of the police training that police departments are requiring across the state. We have, for good reason, increased the amount of training that police officers are required to do. 

There's a lot of training that they're required to do both before and after they become an officer. But there has not been a full analysis of the effectiveness of those trainings. We don't know if they change police behavior. We don't know if they lead to more use of de-escalation, less use of force, less racial disparities. We don't do any of that. It's not a part of what our state oversight function does. And there's very little academic research on this as well. So I have a bill that would analyze trainings that are ordered by the state and by local police agencies so that we can know if they're actually effectively working. 

I do think that the efforts we've taken on police reform are important, but we have to actually be looking closely at whether these are actually effective. 

LWVSF: What other major issues do you think the California legislature must deal with in 2023? What are your personal priorities?

Matt Haney: We've introduced 29 bills that really run the gamut from housing, homelessness, behavioral health, economic opportunity, fairness, education, and the environment. Some came to us from constituents, some from folks in Sacramento, and some are bills that I've been wanting to do based on my own experience. I’ll zero in on a couple of areas of importance for me. 

We need more housing. Building housing, making sure that people can stay in their housing, and having affordable housing are huge priorities. When I got into the legislature, I learned that I was one of six renters (now there are three), and so we started a Renters’ Caucus. 

I'm the chair of the Renters’ Caucus for the legislature and have a number of tenant and housing affordability bills that are big priorities for me. We have a bill to limit how much can be charged in security deposits so that people can actually access housing. We have a bill to limit how much Home Owners Association fees can increase in below market rate units. We have a huge issue with people getting into a below market rate unit where the level for the unit itself is controlled and pegged to affordability, but then the HOA fee can explode. And so after a few years, the HOA fees can increase so much that people foreclose and lose their home. And so to maintain affordability of those homes, we need to make sure that we limit how much HOA fees can go up for below market rate units. 

We also have bills to build more housing and to streamline the process. There’s an affordable housing building in San Francisco that has gone through the craziest process for being built. San Francisco is the only place in California where even after you've received all your approvals, people can appeal a building permit. This is ministerial everywhere else in the state. And so there's an affordable housing building that is being appealed again and again. I want to change that process so that we can get affordable housing built quicker here.

There’s a bill on office to housing conversion. We have a downtown that is more deserted than anywhere in the state and the country, so we want to make it possible for some of those office buildings to be converted into housing. 

We are working with the state attorney general on a housing bill to make sure that his office can effectively enforce housing laws across the state. There are still a lot of places where they are doing everything they can to not meet their requirements under state housing law. And so we're making sure that the attorney general can have more effective tools to do that. 

So our housing bills are a combination of affordability and tenant protections, and building more housing where it's needed. 

I also have a huge focus on behavioral health. We have about five bills that all relate to getting people into treatment or connecting them to care, or protecting them from overdose. We have a bill to have naloxone much more widely available [LWVSF note: Naloxone is a medicine that rapidly reverses an overdose from opioids. It is available under the generic name naloxone and various brand names, including Narcan.]. It can save lives, but it's not everywhere where it's needed right now. And so this bill would require naloxone to be available in some of the places where people are overdosing most frequently, like gas stations, bars, and libraries.