Author: Savannah Jorgensen

These two bills are continuing to move forward following committee hearings this week as we approach the deadline for bills to make it out of their second house policy committees. The next step is the Appropriations Committee before a floor vote. These bills can use our continued advocacy!

• SB 4 (Wiener): Affordable Housing on Faith-Based Lands Act. This bill would provide a streamlined process for religious institutions and nonprofit colleges to develop affordable housing on their properties, regardless of local zoning restrictions. This bill also would guarantee by-right approval of projects as long as they are consistent with all objective standards of the jurisdiction and comply with listed environmental protections.
• AB 249 (Holden): Clean Drinking Water in Schools, Lead Testing. This bill increases the testing and disclosure requirements of school drinking water lead levels. It would additionally allocate funding for testing filters and infrastructure improvements to reduce and ultimately, eliminate, lead in water at schools. Furthermore, the bill establishes the limit on lead levels that the drinking water cannot exceed.

The following bill did not move forward from the Senate Agriculture Committee, however, Asm. Irwin has made it a two-year bill. This means that it will be worked on and considered in the next legislative session. Additionally, there is a federal level bill addressing food date labeling that is moving and can use our advocacy.

• AB 660 (Irwin): Food Date Labeling Reform, Food Waste. This bill requires the use of uniform terms for food product date labels, i.e., removing ‘sell by’ dates visible to consumers and making ‘best by’ or ‘use by’ dates clearer for consumers. The streamlined phrasing will help consumers understand peak quality and freshness of their food, which will play a role in addressing hunger as well as methane emissions and climate change.

The following bill did not pass through the Assembly Appropriations Committee in May and is effectively a dead bill for this session. This policy idea may be pursued in the future by legislators if there is enough community support.

• AB 1534 (Irwin): Methane Emissions Monitoring. AB 1534 would have required the utilization of remote sensing technologies to better identify methane emissions with the goal of improved regulations on those emissions from landfills.

Thank you all for your continued advocacy! Our work is not done this year and we need your support to get SB 4 and AB 249 across the finish line.