August 26, 2026 · Emergency Management · 2,584 words · 10 speakers · 38 segments
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you Thank you. Thank you.
He's on his way. They wanted to go to dinner. And I'm like, I don't remember. I see a video of the Senate floor. He's still there. There's a delay. That's a delay. Tell him we're stalking him. There's a delay. She said he's on his way. He's got like 30 seconds. I'll be here in a second. You tell him I'm looking at him right now.
Thank you.
Hello. Oh, I keep muting myself. I did that. Clearly, I'm out of practice. All right.
Good afternoon, Senator. Thank you all for being here. This is Assembly Emergency Management. It's okay. Go ahead. Get settled. I know you just ran from the floor. All right. Sorry. Go ahead, please. All right. So before we get started, just because there's been a lot of movement,
Senator, you had communicated and agreed that you were okay going back to the original version of your bill. So before we open, I just want to ensure that we're all on the same page. Uh, yeah, I would be my, my precaution for you would just be that if you were to strike the floor amendments, that it would add, um, no bid contract authority back to the fire innovation unit. So if that's the will of the chair, I'm willing to do that. But the floor amendment, um, it had two pieces. One was to add, um, something to OES, which we're fine striking. We're fine striking both. You're the chair. But just I want to sort of precaution that if you were to strike the other cleanup language we had added on the floor, it would explicitly then allow the fire innovation unit to have no bid contract authority.
So I'll defer to you. Okay. Thank you for that clarification, Senator. We're going to go ahead and open up the meeting and then we'll go ahead and do clarifying. So we're going to this meeting is officially open. Assembly Emergency Management 7.7.2 hearing regarding SB 1079. And so, again, I want to thank you for bringing up the importance of developing innovative engineering technologies to improve the state's approach to ever increasing scale and frequency of natural natural disasters and emergencies. I know your staff, you know, worked really hard. And so I want to thank you and your staff, you know, for accepting and agreeing to amendments, which would take the bill back to its last version, which retains the proposal of the bill that places CAL FIRE's Fire Innovation Unit programmatic structure into statute. and definitely we will help you to correct those technical floor amendments and figure out what needs to happen to ensure that your intent and your cleanup does continue to follow the rest of the bill. And in regards to all of the other things that you've talked about, we definitely look forward to working with you on the FIU and make a commitment to reviewing the important ideas next section on how you can successfully and thoughtfully introduce some of the other concerns that you had. For the record, it's important to note for those who are not aware of why we're having a hearing is whenever substantive changes are made in a bill, we need to ensure that the policy is clear, that we had a chance to analyze it, and that all of the things were addressed. And so we were definitely concerned about some of the things that had not been vetted, including, as Senator Stern mentioned, what would be coming out, the additional unit in Cal OES and the proposal for no-bid contracting for that department. So with that, again, we've opened the meeting. Senator, would you like to make any statement regarding the remainder of the Let's establish a quorum. Secretary, please call the roll.
Quorum call. Ransom?
Ransom present. Hadwick? Hadwick present. Arambula?
Arambula here. Baines?
Baines here. Bennett? Bennett here. Calderon?
Calderon here. DeMaio? DeMaio here.
All right. So this is the only bill we have eligible. The bill is entitled to a primary witness. Senator, you're welcome to make an opening statement. Your primary witness will be allowed at two minutes if you have testimony.
Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. Appreciate the scrutiny and the rigor of the review here. The goal of this legislation is to get technologies tested in the field before we go to major procurements. You all have had major fires in your areas, many of you, also many other disasters, whether factory fires in Tracy or in Ventura County. You've had floods in the Central Valley and even down in southeast Los Angeles, as well as the far north. We think it's really important to equip both Cal Fire. and as we had been proposing, both CAL FIRE and OES respond to these emergencies. So in the version that's going to be amended, we had tried to empower them both to be able to test innovative technologies for which they were not going to be scaled or deployed at sort of any kind of large scale, but instead to try to figure out whether it made sense to procure these technologies and to do small pilot tests. So this is really about sort of field testing and giving more nimbleness to trying things out before going through the sort of traditional procurement process. I will defer to my witness on some of the technical amendments. We want to offer the committee just to consider, to respect, and try to adhere to the chair's concerns about contracting authority. I did want to just clarify that if it is the will of the committee to strip the bill back to the April 28th version, you will be then, then CAL FIRE will have no bid contract authority. So just to be super clear, the amendments on the floor would have taken that no bid contract authority away from CAL FIRE. We were trying to constrain that authority and put more DGS oversight on it after feedback from the administration. So just to, yeah, I just want everyone eyes wide open. If you do end up stripping that out, there's a critical provision, a set of provisions in the fire innovation unit that, that ensure that DGS would have oversight and that they would not have. I believe it's on page 15. If you all are following along under C1, section 789 C1. We had proposed in the floor amendments to strike the provision saying that the fire innovation unit may award a technology vendor that completes a pilot a follow-on contract without a separate competitive solicitation process. So we had proposed to strike that. But if you would like to have that back in, we will absolutely defer. And then we want to just offer, if it is the will of the chair, that there are further refinements that we think will further constrain that contracting authority so that it not open that it not no bid or that it is you know expressly competitive So that that it I just don think we have time to wait on these issues. There's amazing technology out there that can save people from catastrophic fires. And we really don't have a good way to test new things right now. So this bill is a way to test innovation without getting into the procurement process yet. And then once we figure out whether it makes sense for California taxpayers to be paying big bucks on this stuff, then we'd go for a more fully fleshed out process. That's why fire chiefs around the state, many of your districts and county cities, a lot of the departments that do this stuff are in support. And I respectfully ask for your support. I'm for to my witness.
Madam chair, members of the committee. I'm Daniel Kim, the director of procurement for the Weidman Group. Previously, I served as the director of the Department of General Services under Governors Brown and Newsom and oversaw statewide procurement. I'm here today on behalf of Megafire Action, the sponsors of SB 1079. Senator Stern already spoke to this, but we are reverting back to the original bill that you saw and approved in April. We have some minor technical adjustments. Most of these are based on some input from Cal OES to help distinguish between the roles of Cal OES and Cal Fire. Another minor adjustment that would make it clear that the new fire innovation unit could also issue both grants and contracts. So that's what we've proposed. We have shared the language with the consultant. Should the chair and the members of that the committee want to add more restrictive language regarding the contracting process. We're happy to provide some additional language on that. That language would effectively make it clear that the initial contract that CAL FIRE would award would have to be done so in a competitive manner. Subsequent additions or amendments to that contract could be done on a sole source basis, but the initial contract has to be done competitively. We're happy again to
share that language with you all. Thank you, Senator, and thank you for your testimony. At this point, is there anyone who'd like to give Me Too testimony and support?
Good evening, Madam Chair and members. I'm Ove Franco here on behalf of the California Fire Chiefs Association and the Fire Districts Association of California in support.
Good evening, Chair and members. Kesha Kumar, registering support on behalf of Fireworks.
Thank you. Thank you. Are there any witnesses in opposition? Seeing none, I will bring it back to the committee. Okay, so thank you for that. And before we move into what that motion looks like, I just want to be clear, Senator, did you accept the amendments that would put the bill back to the original state with the amendments, the technical amendments that were made on the floor? Just to be clear, with the technical amendments?
With the, yes, with us considering the amendments, the technical amendments for the original bill, which was for the FIU. I'm going to accept whatever you say, so let's just be clear.
Well, let's not do that. We need to be clear for the record.
We definitely need, I appreciate that.
We just want to accept the amendments to return the bill to the original state and then the technical items that will be cleaned up. later. Okay. Sure. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. So there's a motion and second. Is there any discussion, Dr. Baines?
Thank you for your guys' work on this. Just a couple of things when it comes to the innovation part is as our fires get different, right, now we've got toxic fires that are happening because of battery power plants that are being caught on fire as well. So I would like to, I looked up some of the work that the group has been doing, but what I see is lacking is more work on toxic fires and protecting constituents and getting proper word out on what proper prevention is. What do we do? I think on the healthcare side, we're still trying to figure out the proper protocols for those types of fires. So that would be one. Second is federal coordination as well, because a lot of these fires are both Cal Fire and U.S. the Forest Service as well. And sometimes they have their own ideas of doing it, and then Cal Fire has their own way of doing it. So I think there needs to be some collaboration with what's happening on the federal. So I know that could be hard. However, that should be, that was some focus of this group that I saw lack. So those are two places that I would definitely love to see more work on. Great work on that. And then especially with the concerns from before, if that's all clarified, then you will have my support for this bill. Thank you.
Thank you, Assemblymember Baines. Assemblymember Bennett.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just like to make sure I understand what we're not doing and what was the, you know, what was the appropriate trying to do when they added the amendment? So just for the benefit of the big picture here, the bill came through, got to appropriate, the amendments were added in appropriate. A floor. On the floor. They were added on the Senate floor. Yeah, Assembly floor. And what was the basic, can you summarize what the basic amendments were that you were trying to accomplish? Please, the chair?
If you must. Sure. Cal OES was concerned that, to Dr. Bain's point, that some aspects of the technology, when you limit it only to a fire innovation unit, strictly within Cal Fire, and you don't include OES, as the amends would do. You're no longer able to do the notifications to local health agencies. You can't work on technology, for instance, related to evacuation per se. There's a lot of tech that's being developed at OES, say, to be able to identify quickly what people are left behind, who's in their homes. In case of, say, earthquakes, they have technology they're looking at to try to find people in rubble. So we were trying to integrate the emergency service side along with the firefighting piece or the fire mitigation piece, as well as the hardening side of things. So we were trying to sort of round it out to be a multi-hazard approach. So that's one piece. And then the other piece was the cleanup that Mr. Kim had talked about to just make sure that we had good oversight from DGS and that it was clear there wouldn't be no-bid contracting, that it would be, that we were striking that provision. And so the concern was those were policy, those things hadn't come through policy committee and needed to come through policy committee. Yes, the proper procedures were not followed, and there is some discrepancy regarding the language because the bill that was in print absolutely had no bid contract language, multi-phase no bid contract language, as well as creating an additional unit that has not gone through GEO, has not gone through natural resources, and has not gone through emergency management. So this is a procedural concern, and as stated, we're happy to help the senator. We have plenty of time. we can help the Senator in the next iteration to get the bill that he wants so that we have an opportunity to fully understand and get the bill to the place he'd like it to be.
Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Are there any other questions or comments from the committee? So we have a first, I believe, from Assemblymember Calderon. Was there a second? I missed the second. I'm sorry. The second was from Assemblymember Baines, and the motion is due pass, and to be clear, as amended, and the senator has accepted the amendments. Secretary, please call the roll.
SB 1079 Stern, the motion is due pass, as amended, and re-referred to the Assembly floor. Ransom?
Aye.
Ransom, aye. Hadwick?
Aye.
Hadwick, aye. Arambula?
Aye.
Arambula, aye. Baines, aye. Baines, aye. Bennett, aye. Calderon, aye. DeMaio, aye. DeMaio, aye.
The bill is out. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you all.
Thank you. Thank you.