Recommendation to respectfully request City Council approval of the 2015 State Legislative Agenda as recommended by the State Legislation Committee.
Item 11 is a communication from Councilman Al Austin, Chair, State Legislation Committee recommendation to request City Council approval of the 2015 State Legislative Agenda as recommended by the State Legislation Committee. Thank you. I'm going to turn this over to Councilmember Austin, who then will, I think, bring staff in for some report. Councilmember? Yes. And I'm going to turn it over to staff for a staff report. And then there can be council comment. Mayor, members of the city council before you tonight, we have our 2015 proposed state legislative agenda similar to the federal legislative agenda staff this year proposed to unpack our 2014 agenda and organize it into five categories of legislative interest. So I would say that the large majority of the items that we are used to seeing in our our legislative agendas are still in our new agenda. We just have a slightly new format that I hope will make the agenda a little bit more accessible and easy to discuss when we're meeting with our elected officials and state agencies. So with that, I'll I'll go into some of the five different categories and then we can talk about the proposed changes that staff has made. Next slide, please. Oh. All right. So the next slide, we have five categories of legislative interest. The first one is economic development. And in each category, you'll see there is a blue box on the first page with the highlights or the objectives for each category. So in economic development, we have cultivated a healthy environment to support sustainable economic growth, support community oriented businesses, support arts, tourism and culture, promote diversity and inclusiveness and support workforce development activities that align with industry needs. And in 2005, our focus in economic development will be to support and sponsor actually legislation to maximize the economic potential of our new language civic center project. We're also still working with the State Department of Finance to obtain approval on the city's long range property management plan, as was submitted to the DLF back in October of 2013. And this is the plan that the city's successor agency put together for all the former RDA properties that we're hoping to get back. And last but not least, with the end of the Enterprise Zone program and with the dissolution of redevelopment, the Governor's Office of Governors has a couple of tax credits that they're offering to small businesses. And it's my hope that we can make this more accessible and at least inform our community more about those tax credits. The next category. Thanks is public safety. And again, we have our objective statements in the blue box that you'll see in front of you and then in 2015. Our focus in this area will be to obtain funding for realignment related public safety operations. As you know, with AB 109 and with the passage of Proposition 47, we have a number of new public safety responsibilities that we are responsible for. And that, of course, comes with costs. We're also interested in supporting the County of Los Angeles with their programs to encourage mental health treatment programs instead of simply incarceration. We're also monitoring very closely medical marijuana legislation at the state level and per the agenda that the council had adopted previously. We'll support legislation that clarifies medical marijuana laws and in order to enable clear enforcement of state law while protecting the city's authority to establish municipal codes to regulate medical marijuana activities. And we will also be monitoring body cameras, as I know that that is an interest of this council. Next slide, please. Education is something that I've heard this council discuss quite often. And so for that reason, it is added as one of the five categories of legislative interest, and in 2015 will be focusing on supporting legislation and initiatives that provide funding for early childhood education or pre-K. We're also interested in supporting the limited unified school decision which city college? The California State University of Long Beach, where education and our interests as a city align. And then, of course, we want to support and expand upon the Long Beach College promise. Next slide. Sustainable, livable cities is the bleakest section of our legislative agenda. This covers affordable housing, sustainable practices, sustainable transportation. And so you'll see that the focused elements here reflect that. One of the things that the state is working on is implementation of the cap and trade program. These are revenues that are being collected from greenhouse gas emitters, and they're being provided to local governments and other entities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And it's our hope that we receive some of those fundings to improve our air quality and reduce greenhouse gases in Long Beach. And so that's an effort that's been taken on by caliper the Strategic Growth Council and SKOG as the Metropolitan Planning Agency for our region. A lot of those efforts are consistent with the cities mobility element, which promotes sustainable transportation. And so those two go together quite nicely. In Long Beach, we also have a waste to energy facility. Cerf, as you know, is the Southeast Resource Recovery Facility. And at surf we are able to turn municipal solid waste into electricity, which is quite unique. We only have three of these in the state of California. And so any way that we can maximize the economic benefit of surf and do it in an environmentally sustainable and reasonable manner, is is good. And so we're looking to continue that. And we also want to maximize partnerships with Long Beach Transit. Next slide, please. And last but not least, is local control. I think in the last several years we have lost a little bit of local control with with the demise of redevelopment and enterprise zones and some of the limitations that have been placed on affordable housing. And so this section of the legislative agenda is mainly to support the support implementation of plans that have been adopted by Long Beach City Council Violence Prevention Plan, Long Beach Housing Element, the limits, mobility elements, plans such as that. So in short, that those are the highlights for our 2015 proposed state legislative agenda. I did want to highlight that we have several amendments that we staff is proposing to to the agenda. And I'll just call your attention to four of those very quickly. One includes an addition of language to support covering petroleum Coke products during transport, similar to the language that was added to the federal legislative agenda. Another is to amend the language that was already in the agenda for surf to sort of updated to reflect the city's ongoing discussions with the governor's office and current cycle on perhaps developing an incentive program to foster innovative partnerships that promote sustainability, recycling and beneficial reuse of municipal solid waste. And last but not least, the city is proposing to add language in here that would allow us to support responsive legislation to clearly define that the historical life rate is the rate that we use to calculate interest on agency in city loans that we expect and hope to receive back from the dissolution. So with that, I turn it back to Chairman Austin. And thank you, Mr. Herring, for that very comprehensive report. And as you can see, we have presented a digest version here for the council. There is a lot more detail in your your staff report here before this body. I also wanted to just just add that Councilmember Andrews serves on the state legislation committee with me, and we thought it was very important to include the Council Directive regarding the minimum wage and in terms of economic development and under local control. You may have mentioned it, but we really and I think it's extremely important that the city of Long Beach seek to be represented on regional boards throughout the region, including the Metropolitan Transit Transit Authority, the HQ, M.D. We are a large city and we I think deserve a seat at the table at all times. And so we're going to be working with the state legislators to to achieve that. To that end. And then also there was a council directive regarding pers retirement. We we thought it was important to talk to legislators and seek support for clean up legislation regarding the CalPERS reform pension reform to support legislation that would amend the state law to clarify, former public employees who retire under the PA system are exempt from reinstating their retirement if they become employed again by PERS agency by virtue of becoming an elected official. As it stands right now, those who are elected to office, who are former city employees or former employees of the state jeopardize their their their retirement by serving the public in that regard. And I don't think that was the intent of the pension reform governor's pension reform legislation that was passed in 2013. And so with that, I would just ask for unanimous support of this body so that we can go forward to Sacramento and and advocate for Long Beach. And these are great policy initiatives that we have put before you. Thank you. And I want to thank Councilmember Austin and Councilmember Andrews for for their work on this. And just as a side note that the committee will be taking a trip to Sacramento fairly soon. So it's important that we have this wrapped up. I have Councilmember Durango. Thank you, Mayor. I want to commend the key committee for their work on this and also for the put in the law control directives that are there, especially for the project that we've been talking about that for a while. I've been I've been speaking to some of our state legislators about this. And there's a agreement that there's something wrong with the paper, with the public employment, public employees, retirement. Then I forget the name of pension reform. There you go. The Public Employee Pension Reform Act. Because I mean, we've seen it here in the city already. We had a candidate who was eligible to run in the fourth District, withdrew his nomination or his candidacy because of the fact that he is a poor retiree. Nobody should have to make that kind of decision. If a person wants to serve to continue their public service, they should be allowed to do so without fear of losing their pensions. And so I want to thank the council members for putting this on the legislation docket. I also want to commend them for dealing with the the covering of coal products on trains. It's very important that we do that. Obviously, it was a a big issue way back when we first got on. Well, when I first got into the council was a it was a very contentious and very versatile, controversial, controversial vote that had to take place. But we're addressing it. And I think that if we can get some kind of legislation passed within this year or next in regards to covering the products when they come into law, which I think we will have come a long way in addressing those issues that are important to our constituencies, and especially when it comes to West Long Beach and to our ports. And that's at both the state level and the federal level. And I want to thank all the council members involved with those two issues so they can put in this forward. I'm ready to work to support it. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember. Councilwoman. Mongo. Thank you. I'd like to thank the state legislative committee. I think you did an excellent job in really focusing on local control and incentives and set of penalties for businesses in our community. I'd also like to say that this council is made up of. For alumni or current government employees. And I think that we bring an excellent perspective, and I think that the Peprah law is a disadvantage to good government and the future of good government if it disincentivizes those of us who work day in and day out in the system. It really takes a perspective away from the counsel options. And I know that in the years that we've had many, many alumni, city and county employees serve on this council. And so I look forward to seeing a resolution. Thank you. Councilmember Andrews. Yes, and thank you, Mayor. I also would like to commend our chair, Mr. Austin, for this, because the fact that I think the sooner we get this to, you know, to Sacramento, the sooner this thing will be able to come to fruition. And I'm hoping it will come as soon as possible, because the fact that we do have some people who could be affected by this, and I'm really hoping that they will take these issues under consideration and do the right thing. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I, too, want to thank the committee. And I think it's it's very, very important that you represent the interests of our city when you're in Sacramento in terms of some of the key issues that are going to be impacting us. I want to talk for a moment about the public safety issues. You know that the voters enacted some legislation that has severely impacted public safety and specifically the city and our ability to be able to enforce the laws and to maintain some level of peace when we have the inability to be able to provide the resources to the offenders that they need in terms of probation services, police services and that kind of thing. And I think that's very important that we address those issues in terms of how they're impacting our cities with the number of probationers that we have out in the community and our inability to be able to service them properly. So that's a that's a key issue. I think it's a county issue, but I think it's also very, very much a city wide issue. And it's ripe for for discussion at that level in terms of the kind of resources that might be available to help us deal with the changes in the law. I also like the addition of the language that you have that you've included in there for minimum wage in the sense that it looks that you are it's definitely a discussion that's taking place on a national and statewide level, and that the acknowledgment that in the city of Long Beach, it's going to be very important if the state were to engage in these discussions, to think about a tiered approach so that it affects our businesses in a in a manner that is over time and not a direct hit in a very sudden period of time. So I appreciate you taking that into account as you move forward with our state legislative agenda item. So thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you. I want to thank Councilmember Austin and the rest of the folks who participated on the state legislation committee. And I just would like to note that there are a number of things in this in this agenda I see that are also in Fed language. So, you know, state and federal approach. I think that's the way to go. So thank you for doing that. And I and I really like the the new streamlined process. So I want to congratulate staff on doing a good job on putting together this prezzi and streamlining our our general agenda similar than what to what's done in the Federal Commission. Okay. Thank you. Are there any public comment on the State Ledger report? Sinan again. Thanks to the committee members for their work, please go and cast your vote. Motion carries seven zero. Thank you. Item 12.