2026 Legislative interviews

Friday January 16, 2026

LWVSF: What do you consider your bigger legislative accomplishments last year?

Senator Wiener: We had a big year last year on housing with SB 79, in healthcare with our insulin copay cap bill, and our bill to crack down on the pharmacy benefit manager, PBM, abusive business practices, and a number of other issues, including prohibiting law enforcement from concealing their faces [the No Secret Police Act (SB 627)]. It was a very good year. 

LWVSF: How about legislation coming up in 2026?

Senator Wiener: This year, we're already off to a good start. We have legislation to streamline permitting on heat pumps, legislation to allow people to plug-in small solar, especially renters, so they can do these small solar installations on a balcony or another space to benefit from clean energy.

We just rolled out our science bond that we're working on with a big coalition to try to step in as Trump tries to destroy federal science capacity and slash science funding at universities. Then we have legislation allowing people to sue federal agents for violating their civil rights, which right now you can't do [see below for more]. We're working on some housing issues and other issues as well. We haven't completely finalized our bill package, but those are the kinds of things that we're working on.

LWVSF: How does suing federal agents work?

Senator Wiener: Well, if a police officer, say, shoots you in the face, or falsely arrests you or violates your constitutional rights, you can sue them in federal court under federal civil rights statutes and get damages. However, federal law does not allow you, in effect, to sue a federal agent, no matter what they do. There’s no accountability. In fact, it's really hard to sue the federal government itself for damages. So, for Renee Good, the woman who was shot in the face in Minneapolis, it's highly unlikely that her family will be able to get any recovery for that.

And so we have a bill to create a parallel law, basically identical to the federal civil rights law, that allows you to sue state and local police officers, but we make it applicable to everyone, including federal, and we think we have the power to do that.

LWVSF: Related to that, are there other alternatives to keeping ICE and the National Guard out of San Francisco, LA and other parts of California in the first place?

Senator Wiener: There was all sorts of litigation around that, and we've won some of those, but I think the key thing is they need to uncover their faces and be accountable when they violate people's rights. Right now, they hide themselves, and they operate with impunity, and that's a recipe for disaster. So, wherever they are, you can't stop ICE from going into a  community. But for the military, it’s harder. If they're going into communities, they should show their faces and be accountable if they violate someone's rights. It's not a global solution, but that's a pretty big one if they know that you can see who they are, and you can sue them if they violate your rights. Then we need to do a series of reforms, for example, to make sure they're actually trained, which they currently are not.

LWVSF: A couple of neighborhoods in your district had increased crime rates last year, primarily larceny and theft. I'm wondering what are some of the solutions and legislative proposals that you support, both on a district and a state level?

Senator Wiener: We passed some major reforms to retail theft laws in 2024, so we took care of that. I authored the law to close loopholes in the auto break-in statute. Auto break-ins and retail theft are down in San Francisco in almost all neighborhoods, although I believe in SOMA, it's still not. But retail theft and auto break-ins are still an issue, though not as bad as a few years ago. I think that's in part due to good policing, and because the voters authorized more technology via Proposition E. They've been able to solve more crimes, but also because we have fixed some of our laws around retail theft and auto break-ins.

LWVSF: Last time we spoke, we were in the throes of the Southern California fires, and my understanding is that we still haven't received any federal support for that. What are the trends in terms of the insurance industry for California homeowners being able to purchase fire insurance?

Senator Wiener: There's going to be a lot of work this year around insurance and there was some work the last couple years, but it's so contentious that it sort of fell apart. I don't work in that space as much, but I have colleagues who do. I know there's a lot going on. Also, the Department of Insurance issued in late 2024, early 2025, several new regulations, and those are starting to have an impact. Some of the insurance carriers are starting to come back and write more policies, so it's trending in the right direction.

LWVSF: Governor Newsom mentioned in his State of the State Address that private equity firms are becoming some of the biggest landlords in California's cities. Have there been any bills in the legislature that might address this?

Senator Wiener:  There have been various bills that have died. So now that the governor is behind it, I suspect we're gonna see various bills this year, and something will happen because the governor just gave them a new lease on life.

LWVSF: From your perspective, why do you think the problem of homelessness has been so intractable in California, and what do you think remains to be done going forward?

Senator Wiener:  It's intractable because housing is through the roof, and most homeless people are not the visibly homeless people you see on the streets who have mental health and addiction problems. That's a chunk of them, but most are not. Most are the people who either have unstable housing, may be couch surfing, living in cars, living in shelters, etc. That's because we have a broken housing system. We've been fixing that in recent years, and it's always contentious. People don't want their neighborhoods to change. They don't want apartment buildings in their neighborhoods, and so we have a dramatic housing shortage. It's also too expensive to build housing in California, and so that's a real challenge. Fundamentally, the cost of housing has really ramped up homelessness.

Obviously, mental health and addiction are a part of it. We have not had enough capacity to really serve these people, and our conservatorship laws were broken, which we've started to fix. So it's complicated. The reality is that California has a disproportionate percentage of the nation's homeless population, and that is because of the cost of housing. We are not more mentally ill or more addicted than [people in] other states. In fact, there are other states with higher rates of addiction than California, and they have lower rates of homelessness. So it is about the cost and availability of housing.

LWVSF: What would be your top three things you would want to change right now, if you could,  to address it going forward?

Senator Wiener:  There's a bunch of stuff. We have to fix the cost structure of building a home. It's way too expensive, and there are a variety of reasons for that. We need to modernize the construction industry, and deal with all the ridiculous fees that too many cities put on new housing that jack up the cost, and make sure that we're enforcing the laws we passed about getting quick permitting and all that. The lending markets for multi-unit properties are broken. That's probably going to require more of a federal response, and something that I've been giving a lot of thought to. But yeah, there are a number of things that have to happen.

LWVSF: Are there things the state can do or should do to assist cities in dealing with environmental damage, either from major storms, sea level rise and other violent climatic changes that we're experiencing?

Senator Wiener: Absolutely, and voters passed the bond in 2024 and a big chunk of that money is for climate resilience. There's a lot of infrastructure work that's needed, too. A lot of that is funding for cities to be able to make the physical changes necessary to adapt to sea level rise, extreme weather, et cetera. There's more work to be done.

LWVSF: What do you see as some of the major dangers of AI, and what kind of regulations are needed to mitigate these dangers?

Senator Wiener: A lot of things. I passed a law last year after two years of work to try to require the labs to disclose their safety protocols around catastrophic risk. That law is now in effect. We've done a lot of work in the legislature around deepfakes, which is a really significant issue. There's been work around chatbots and kids, work around algorithmic discrimination, around employment and not having algorithms make employment decisions about people. So there's a lot of work that's happened, for sure.

LWVSF: What and where do you see the greatest potential dangers of AI safety? Water usage? Regulation? Transparency?

Senator Wiener:
 All of it. I think the biggest one that we haven't grappled with is the future of work and the rapid elimination of jobs in a wide array of industries that we've never dealt with this quickly before. I don't think anyone is prepared for it, and I think it's going to be really challenging.

LWVSF: There’s congestion between Waymos and other private transit options. Meanwhile, public transit is struggling to survive. What do you see as the state legislature's role in ensuring transportation?

Senator Wiener: 
I've done a lot of work in this area. I passed a bill last year to authorize the regional measure. The mayor is seeking a companion revenue measure for San Francisco revenue measure. It's essential that both pass. If either one falters, our community's in trouble. That's my focus, and it should be everyone's focus.

LWVSF: What about California’s high-speed rail, now that Trump has canceled $4 billion worth of funding. How do you foresee the state handling high-speed rail, and do you have any personal stake in that? 

Senator Wiener: 
I've been one of the most vocal legislators to support it. It's really an essential part of our future transportation system, and so we have to get it done, and it's just unfortunate that Trump keeps doing this. I think we need to do a public-private partnership to get it done. 

LWVSF: What will we do, if anything, in this upcoming year to support affordable and accessible childcare for California families?

Senator Wiener: 
We've significantly upped our investment in childcare slots over the last few years in the budget, so, we've protected that funding and actually increased it. That's been a big priority in our budget for the last few years when I served as chair.

LWVSF: How do we mitigate the loss of federal support in so many areas? So far we’ve discussed fire, high-speed rail and others.

Senator Wiener:
 We can't backfill everything. We’ve backfilled some things, and we're doing what we can, but we have to balance our budget, and for the third year in a row, we have a significant budget deficit. So, I think people need to understand that we're not going to be able to backfill everything as much as we would like to, and it's going to be very painful, because people are going to come to us wanting us to backfill everything.

Wednesday January 14, 2026

LWVSF: What do you consider the legislature’s biggest priorities this year? 

Assemblymember Stefani: I think cost of living remains an issue that is on the minds of everybody. Affordability: it's a word we're still using up here, and one that I think rings true for so many families in California, especially in my district. I hear about it all the time. We know that there are many different reasons for the cost of living crisis and the lack of affordability in California, some stemming from our own making, some stemming from federal government policies.

One thing that I've been very focused on, and I know we continue to be focused on up here is the cost of housing and the lack of housing. We're still about 3 million homes short in the state of California. We absolutely need to find more ways to build more housing to address our housing crisis. We've been looking at ways to do that. I think that we can come to that issue in many ways. We need to encourage new housing near public transportation for environmental reasons, which is something I'm very supportive of, and also look at ways to get housing built. We looked at CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) last year, and that was a big Buffy Wicks bill [AB 609].

I was just recently at a Bay Area caucus meeting where we talked about the increase in construction costs that have gone up 42 percent in the last few years, which makes it hard for developers to build even if zoning changes in San Francisco, for example. There are many different ways to look at this crisis, but the lack of housing in California remains a crisis, and I think it drives the affordability that so many people are having to pay so much for rent and mortgages and drives a lot of issues.

Also, I think pushing back against harmful federal policies, the president's crazy-making around tariffs, has continued to make the cost of goods very high. Obviously, that big ugly bill really puts a lot of people in peril with regard to their social safety net in healthcare. That's something that we're going to have to be very reactive about. We need to figure out how we make sure certain people don't fall through the cracks because of what they're doing in D.C. 

And, of course, we all know that protecting immigrant communities [is critical]. What's happening in Minneapolis right now is just horrific, and that could come here anytime soon. Obviously, we saw what happened last year in Los Angeles. We had our mayor in San Francisco able to thwart them coming, but it's something that we have to be very aware of.

So, those are issues that are top of mind of all the legislators that I've been talking to since we've been back in Sacramento.

LWVSF: What do you consider your biggest legislative priorities this year? 

Assemblymember Stefani: My legislative priorities line up with what I continue to hear from my constituents when I'm out talking to them, when we're taking surveys. Public safety continues to be something that I care deeply about.

I announced legislation that I'm going to be working on with the mayor of San Francisco and the Office for Victims’ Rights, which is the office that I created when I was a [San Francisco] supervisor. That legislation comes from hearing from victims and survivors of domestic violence, and that our restraining order system is not working in a way that's protecting survivors. In those high-stakes cases where people are really in danger, we have to make sure that our restraining orders are working, and that we have the ability to charge felonies for severe violations of restraining orders in these high-stakes cases, not just misdemeanors. So that's one piece of legislation that I've announced. It doesn't have a bill number yet, but we are working on getting that language perfect.

Also, the mayor of San Francisco and I announced another piece of legislation that does not yet have a bill number, that deals with those who are suffering from severe mental illness and not getting the care that they need. It would be short of a conservatorship and would deal with our assistant outpatient treatment programs that are ordered through our civil courts. It would allow, as a part of that treatment plan, for involuntary medication, under, of course, a due process hearing along with all the protections that are in place. That is something we are working on to address the crisis in San Francisco and other cities up and down this state.

The environment, again, is important to me. My daughter's actually going to be up here tomorrow lobbying on the fast fashion bill from my colleague, Assemblymember Dawn Addis. My daughter’s very passionate. She's 16, a junior in high school, so we will be looking for ways we could work on our environmental challenges.

I will continue to work on some of the things that I was working on last year. I passed Wyland's Law and we have to do some cleanup around that to make it better. It was amended in appropriations, but the law makes certain that the courts send over protective orders to the Department of Justice database, so when people go in to buy guns, they are in the database when a background check is performed, so they're not able to walk out with a weapon.This happened to someone who had a protective order; her ex-husband was able to buy a gun and use it to shoot their 10-year-old son in the head. He then turned around and used the gun on himself. So we're going to continue to focus on gun violence prevention, domestic violence, the environment and healthcare. 

LWVSF: How would you assess your freshman year as a legislator?

Assemblymember Stefani: I was very happy in my freshman class. In my first year I had seven bills passed. I was the third most productive legislator in terms of getting bills over the threshold and signed by the governor. So I'm very excited to expand on the work we were able to do last year.

LWVSF: Say more about the seven bills that passed.

Assemblymember Stefani: Well they just became effective January 1st, but a lot of people pass their bills and don't keep track on how they're implemented. So we are starting a whiteboard of the bills that we pass, and we're making sure that we follow up with whatever departments are in charge of rolling them out to make sure they are effective. I think sometimes people are excited about their bills passing, but if they're not effective, they're not working properly, that's something that needs to be looked into.

I'm very proud of Wyland's Law. It was the most heart-wrenching one. I was working with Christy Camara, the mother who lost her only son, and so it was a hard bill to get through in terms of the emotion and the toll that it took on her. But she turned her pain into advocacy, and we were able to get that passed, and I think it's going to save many people a lot of heartache. The best thing about that bill is not only is it going to make sure that those protective orders are transferred to the Department of Justice, it's going to make certain that those who get that order can follow up and check. There was no database, there was no way for people to understand whether or not the order had been transferred, and this way we're going to have the ability to do that. That's a huge thing for law enforcement and for victims.

Another bill was the license plate obstruction ban. Merchants are selling license plate obstructors that either hide people's license plates from law enforcement or through tolls so they don't have to pay tolls. So we made sure to make that explicitly illegal, and we fined those merchants who continue to sell that hardware. In South San Francisco, for instance, they have been using license plate readers to get crime down. Law enforcement has said this is a tool that really helps them. We've lost so many millions in tolls not being paid because of these license plate obstructors, so we were very excited to get that passed and signed by the governor.

Another thing I worked on in partnership with San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins was the Restitution First Act. I love this bill because it came from talking to inmates at San Quentin. They said that as they were getting their lives back together, one of the things they would like to do is to pay the victims back first, because victims usually get paid back last. They have to pay all their court fees and everything else, and whatever’s left over, the victims get. So we turned that on its head and made sure that victims are the first to get paid when restitution is in order, and then all other things follow. I thought that was a victim-centered bill while at the same time also coming from those who want to make amends that are in our criminal justice system. That was another feel-good bill that I felt particularly good about.

I was also excited about passing the Midwifery Workforce Training Act, which was one of the priority bills of the Women's Legislative Caucus. My bill was chosen because it looks at our midwifery workforce to understand how we can get more midwives into our healthcare systems. We know that when midwives are present during birth, mothers’ healthcare outcomes improve. And right now in California, there are not a lot of ways for midwives to be licensed, so we are doing everything we can to bolster this workforce and help our maternal health rates, which are worse than they should be in California. 

I also worked on a healthcare facility financing bill with Fiona Ma, our state treasurer. It's technical, but it gives nonprofit hospitals more time to repay their loans, and it protects clients from losing coverage.

The last bill, my seventh bill, was the offshore wind bill for my daughter. We worked closely with the American Clean Power Association and the communities in the Central Coast and Northern California to make certain that when they start developing offshore wind, they do so by involving the communities and the tribes up there, and they keep track of the money they are giving to those groups so they're building capacity and a community around this new technology, rather than leaving them behind. It was another one of those feel-good bills, which the industry at first did not like. We got them involved, and asked what would work because we know you want the communities to be on board. So we created a reporting requirement, for them to show how they're investing in those communities. Everyone felt good about where we landed on that. Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, who runs the committee where this bill was heard, said: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” That really summed up for me how I like to work with everyone, especially when there are competing interests.

I have other bills that are pending right now, including one that requires our banks to do more around elder abuse and financial fraud. 

LWVSF: You mentioned California trying to dig out from the big ugly bill and affordability, among others. How much of this will be legislative? How much of it is through the AG office and how much through the legislature?

Assemblymember Stefani: It's a really good question. Last year we gave Attorney General Rob Bonta more money to go after the Trump administration. I think a lot of this, unfortunately, has to be solved through the courts. It takes a lot of time and energy. Even our city attorney in San Francisco, David Chiu, has, I think, 12 cases now pending against Donald Trump. So it's really a combination of both. You need the legislation to create the funding to do the court cases. We'll see what's coming. Obviously, we're looking at a deficit. Some people say it's $3 billion; some people say it's $16 billion. Anywhere on that spectrum, we're going to have to see what we can do in our budget to fill these gaps and to fill these holes that are coming. I have to be honest about the budget. I'm still a bit mystified about how the budget gets done up here. It's kind of an exercise in keeping track of what the budget chairs are telling us in caucus, but I'll be paying attention to those discussions, and hoping that we're all on the same page about how we fill those gaps.

LWVSF: What do you see as the biggest obstacles to achieving affordable housing in the Bay Area and how would you address them? If there were three things you could do to make housing more affordable, what would be your top three?

Assemblymember Stefani: Yeah, I love that question. We just had a Bay Area Caucus meeting where we talked about all these issues. And one of the topics, of course, was housing and affordable housing. How do we build more? One of the developers there basically said that San Francisco has spent five years on a zoning discussion. You've heard of the San Francisco Family Zoning Plan, and he said, that's great, but changing the zoning in some areas is absolutely necessary, but it's not going to get us to build. He said construction costs have gone up by 42 percent. That's because in places like San Francisco we've tacked on a lot of different fees for this or that, for the certain type of pipes that need to be installed, or different fees that aren't always part of where you might build in San Mateo County. So he said, what we really need to look at as a legislature and the Board of Supervisors is construction costs, those add-ons. How necessary are they? Because he [the developer] talked about the financing they have to go through, and the rent per door that they have to charge. To pencil anything out is astronomical. So we're gonna need to build in a way that gives these developers a better way of financing, and a better way to market their rents. Once everything is built, we're gonna have to look at how much costs are involved for them to build in the first place.

And that's an exercise that's not going to be fun, but it's an exercise that I think is absolutely necessary. Every different cost probably has a different contingency. It could be environmental; it could be labor-related. I'm not sure, but we have to look at the costs that they keep telling us about that are forcing them to either charge higher rates or not build at all. He also talked about trying to build childcare next to transit in walkable neighborhoods. But we place so many restrictions and permitting hurdles on them that we make it hard to build.

So I think we need to continue to look at streamlining measures and examine the costs involved that we're putting on our developers, because we're expecting the developers to build affordable housing. This is not just social housing. We're expecting them to build a large percentage of our affordable housing supply. And if we're not going to listen to the developers, we're gonna continue to stay in this situation of not having enough homes for people.

I asked my staff to get me a follow-up meeting with two of these developers because I want to better understand what exactly the costs are. I want a breakdown of what they are and where they can maybe chip away, and what industries or what interest groups we can talk to that want that cost put on the developers. We need to do more research. We have to figure out how we can work with our developers. If we're expecting them to build affordable housing, we have to work with them to figure out how we build it.

LWVSF: This time last year, we were devastated by the fires in Southern California, and as a result there have been some troubling trends in the insurance industry with California homeowners being hit especially hard with regard to fire insurance.

Assemblymember Stefani: I think our Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has made good progress, while at the same time, there's so much more to be done. Premiums are not affordable for many people. Insurance is not being offered in some areas. Obviously, the [California] FAIR Plan is overextended. There's so much work yet to be done. We need to figure out how to harden our homes, and we need people to get necessary credit for that. We will continue to press on. I don't know of any pending bill right now. We just got back, and no one's really introducing their bills, or we haven't had any hearings on bills that have been introduced this year, but again, we need to do everything we can to make certain that we have an insurance market where the companies stay here, and which our consumers can afford. And we're not there yet. There are a lot of different tweaks that need to be done, and although we did make some progress last year, it’s an issue that remains top of mind for all of us lawmakers up here.

LWVSF: Governor Newsom mentioned in his State of the State Address that private equity firms are becoming some of the biggest landlords in California's cities. Have there been any bills in the legislature that might address this?

Assemblymember Stefani: Yes. I am against big private equity firms buying up homes and I have been for a long time. I don't know if you've read the book Homewreckers by Aaron Glantz, but it basically talked about the 2008 financial crisis and all the homes that were built up. But, having private equity firms buy up our homes is a non-starter for me. We have to do everything we can to prevent that. There was a bill last year that I voted for to make sure we're not developing homes just for that, or letting people develop so many homes for that reason, so that they could just hold on to them. We want people to be able to own their own homes. We need to do everything we can to protect people's right to be housed and to realize their dream to own a home. So, I think Democrats will be on the same page on that. I hope so. And the insurance market as well.

LWVSF: There’s congestion between Waymos and other private transit options. Meanwhile, public transit is struggling to survive. What do you see as the state legislature's role in ensuring transportation?

Assemblymember Stefani: I actually just had a meeting this morning with our San Francisco County Transportation Authority, which I used to sit on when I was the supervisor, and we were just talking about these issues in terms of the fiscal cliff that our public transportation agencies are facing. Right now we are focused on making certain that the Department of Finance actually negotiates the loan terms that we all agreed on. In the budget we passed last year, we had $750 million as a fill for BART, Muni, and our public transportation agencies in the Bay Area, and the Department of Finance has not yet come up with those loan terms, and they're stalling. So the Bay Area Caucus wrote a letter to the governor and the Department of Finance asking them to follow through on that loan that we passed in the budget.

We also passed SB 63, a Scott Wiener bill that allowed for our cities in the five Bay Area counties that are involved to put measures on the ballot in November for a sales tax increase to fund our public transportation systems. Obviously, now we have to figure out how to get them passed. If we want to remain the fourth largest economy in the world, we have to invest up and down the state, and that includes our transit systems in the Bay Area. We can't let those falter, and we're going to continue as the Bay Area Caucus to put pressure on the governor and others to make certain that we are doing everything we can to get BART or Muni running at full capacity.

LWVSF: Trump denied the state $4 billion in funding for the high-speed rail project that's been going on for so long. Do you see any way that the state can continue to finance that on its own, or is that gonna be dead?

Assemblymember Stefani: I don't know what we do on that. It's something that I have to look into. I care deeply about high-speed rail. I think it's necessary. I lived in Japan for a year teaching English after college. I was there twice last year with the Chamber of Commerce, and then I went back with an Assembly delegation. While I was over there, I was riding the Shinkansen, their public rail, and it is an amazing transportation system, and one that California needs. So I am still committed to high-speed rail. I think it's very necessary.

I take Amtrak a lot. I was born in San Francisco but I grew up in Merced and I have family in Merced, so I would love Merced to have high-speed rail. Where it all is gonna go and start is still being talked about, but I'm not giving up on high-speed rail. There's too much that's been invested, and I think there's a real need for it environmentally. 

LWVSF: You mentioned new legislation that you and some others are working on around mental health conservatorship. Could you give us a bit more detail about what you're planning?

Assemblymember Stefani: Supervisor Mandelman, president of the board in San Francisco, and I served together for seven and a half years. We saw a lot, obviously, in San Francisco, in terms of those who are suffering from severe mental illness on our streets. You hear about the 5150s placed on holds, going in and out of our hospitals, sometimes getting stuck in the criminal justice system and in jails that are ill-equipped to deal with mental illness, and certainly not fair to the individual who's suffering from mental illness and not getting the healthcare they need.

Different senators up here have tried to strengthen our conservatorship laws. Even so, we have a lack of mental health beds in San Francisco. There are not a lot of places to put people if we were to conserve them. One thing that has proven to be successful and working is called assistant outpatient treatment (AOT treatment). It was originally called Laura's Law. When I worked for Michaela Alioto, we tried to pass it but we didn't have the votes on the Board of Supervisors. When I worked for Mark Farrell as his legislative aide, we were able to pass it. At the time, people said, “Oh, no, this isn't going to work.” Well, we passed Laura's Law Assisted Outpatient Treatment in San Francisco, and sure enough, they did a report which showed that it was helping the individuals who were involved. 

Now, these are orders that come from the civil court. When somebody is not able to be conserved, under conservatorship, but still needs some type of intervention, because they've been involved with the criminal justice system, or they've had so many 5150s, and they meet the criteria where a judge can impose a 5150 after a due process hearing, [then they can write] a treatment plan for them. Those treatment plans, which they call the black robe effect — with the judge and someone actually taking care and concern over an individual, and getting them involved with a therapist, or getting involved with a treatment plan that might involve some type of therapy, maybe some career advice — some type of plan that helps them deal with their mental illness. The one thing that it doesn't allow for is medication. Often, people are suffering from psychosis, schizophrenia, or they’re so sick they don't know that they're sick. That happens in a lot of severe mental health cases. So this would allow them to be in an assisted outpatient treatment setting — where they are short of being conserved and having to be in a bed —  to still be in the community. It would allow the judge to prescribe medication for whatever mental illness this person has.

This happens in New York where it's called Kendra's Law, so it's not like it hasn't happened before. We know there's going to be pushback from the ACLU and others over civil rights, and whether or not you should even be allowed to subject someone to involuntary medication under an order like this. But again, it's subject to a due process hearing where they have legal representation just like they would in a conservatorship. In New York, the findings have shown that people get the help they need, and a lot of patients have spoken up and said that if they didn't have that type of intervention, they wouldn't be living the life they are today. A lot of people really do need medication to stay well. So this is going to allow the courts to do that. Mayor Lurie is the sponsor of that legislation with the Board of Supervisors and he is putting a resolution forward to support that legislation. To be honest, it's probably going to be an uphill battle, but I think it's a conversation that needs to be had. Like I said, it's being done in New York, and I think we're out of options in San Francisco. People are still really suffering on our streets, and I'd like to try and see if this could be a solution to help them.

LWVSF: How does it get enforced since there aren't enough inpatient beds for these people? Or if the judge says, “you must take this medication,” who ensures that they take it?

Assemblymember Stefani: That's one thing we're working out with the Department of Public Health. It's kind of the last language in the bill to figure out. We have our medical teams and our street medicine teams that could assist with that. We also have our fire department on board, who might be able to assist with that. We want it to be a medical type of intervention. We don't want it to be a police-type situation. We want it to be led by the Department of Public Health, so we are figuring that aspect out. We're looking at what New York does, but it's usually working with the case manager and the Department of Public Health and the street medicine team to figure out how we administer the medication after someone goes off their care plan.

LWVSF: What do you see as some of the major dangers of AI, and what kind of regulations are needed to mitigate these dangers?

Assemblymember Stefani: AI actually terrifies me, especially since I'm the mom of two kids. I think there have to be many more regulations around AI. I've heard Sam Altman speak, and I have not been at all encouraged by some of the things that have been said, especially around dangers to women.

Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, an Assemblymember from the Orinda area, leads our privacy committee here in the Assembly, and she and Buffy Wicks, another Assemblymember from Oakland, have done a lot in this regard. I've voted for everything they've put forward. We do have the ability to regulate and we do have the ability to tighten measures on AI. It's very powerful, and I think we have to do everything we can to keep our communities safe, especially our children, from the dangers of AI, and I think there's a lot of unknown right now.

I was reading an article the other day about how a chatbot, ChatGPT, convinced a teenager to take his life. He was asking for advice on how much Xanax he could mix with this drug Kratom that he was taking, and it's a horrible story. Although they say AI is not supposed to give out information on how to do drugs, there are no controls on their ability to stop them from giving information with the right prompts that tell someone how much Xanax can be mixed with a certain amount of drugs. When the mother found her son dead, she opened up his computer and saw that he was having a conversation with the chatbot about how much drugs he could take, and that just can't be allowed. We have to put the regulations in place to stop that. So, I'm a huge proponent of doing everything we can to rein in AI. We need to regulate in a way that's safe for everyone.

LWVSF: What can the state do, or should the state do, in the case of extreme damage caused by violent weather or climate change and so forth? Cities are not able to finance reconstruction or repairs independently. Is there a role the state can play in that?

Assemblymember Stefani: Yes, definitely. I think that with bond financing,  that is the way we're going to tackle a lot of these projects that need to be done. Obviously, Proposition 4, the climate bond, passed two election cycles ago. We still have to figure out our Prop 4 spending in a way that is going to help those issues that you just mentioned.

I have been talking to the Port of San Francisco about legislation around some of their resiliency projects and CEQA, and a lot of times these projects are challenged in such a way that it takes years before these projects could do the necessary work they need to do to prevent the seawall from collapsing, or to prevent sea level rise. We're looking at a way to streamline a lot of those CEQA procedures around climate resiliency. Not high development, not tower housing along the seawall or anything like that, but really looking at climate projects and how we can use CEQA more effectively, and not get in the way of building these necessary projects to strengthen the seawall and prevent sea level rise. I'm in constant conversations with the Port of San Francisco about just that. So there is stuff that we can do, such as bond financing, clearing the way for CEQA in these projects so they don't continue to get held up in courts, to do the necessary work to protect the climate.