Special Notice / Hearing: None__
Vote Required: Majority
To: Honorable Board of Supervisors
From: Michael P. Callagy, County Executive
Connie Juarez-Diroll, Chief Legislative Officer
Subject: State and Federal Legislative Update # 2
RECOMMENDATION:
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Accept the March 2025 informational report on the 2025 State and Federal Legislative sessions.
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BACKGROUND:
The 2025-2026 state and federal legislative sessions resumed on January 6, 2025, and January 3, 2025, respectively.
The deadline for members of the California State Legislature to introduce new bills was February 21, 2025. This year, legislative leadership imposed a 35-bill limit per member for the two-year session. While many newly introduced bills include substantive language, many are “spot bills” or placeholders. Introducing “spot bills” gives bill authors more time to work on bill details and amend them before or during policy committee hearings, as committees cannot vote on legislation for at least 30 days after a bill’s introduction. The Assembly and Senate spot bill deadlines are March 17, 2025, and March 26, 2025. Policy committees will convene until May 2, 2025, the deadline for a bill’s referral to fiscal committees.
On Tuesday, February 25, 2025, House Republican leaders advanced a fiscal year 2025 budget resolution (H Con Res 14) in the House, a key step in advancing President Trump’s domestic policy agenda. Federal lawmakers face a March 14 deadline to pass a spending bill to fund federal agencies through the remainder of the fiscal year.
DISCUSSION:
State Update
As of February 21, 2025, a total of 2,355 bills were introduced in both houses combined (850 in the Senate and 1,505 in the Assembly). Notable bills of interest to San Mateo County include:
Elections
• AB 502 (Pellerin-D) would require delivery of specified notices, affidavits, and communications regarding elections by certified mail or, for certain communications between local officials and the Secretary of State, by electronic delivery.
Emergency Management
• AB 719 (Calderon-D) would require each county to review and update its emergency plan at least every 2 years.
Health & Behavioral Health
• AB 416 (Krell-D) would authorize a person to be taken into custody, pursuant to provisions under the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, by an emergency physician and would also exempt an emergency physician who is responsible for the detainment of a person under those provisions from criminal and civil liability.
• SB 823 (Stern-D) would include bipolar I disorder in the criteria for a person to receive services under the Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Act.
Housing & Homelessness
• AB 654 (Caloza-D) would authorize a local public agency to establish a homelessness resource telephone system to receive telephone calls regarding individuals who are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, homelessness in order to provide those individuals with resources.
• AB 750 (Quirk-Silva-D) would require a city or county to perform an annual inspection of every homeless shelter located in its jurisdiction and would authorize inspection or annual inspection to be announced or unannounced.
Immigration
• SB 48 (Gonzalez-D) would prohibit school districts, county offices of education, or charter schools and their personnel from granting a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, or other federal official engaging in immigration related investigation or enforcement, permission to access a school campus without a judicial warrant.
• SB 554 (Jones-R) a follow-up to the California Values Act, would provide that responses relating to a person’s release date are permitted, and would prohibit a local agency from enacting an ordinance that would impose any additional prohibitions other than those described in the Act.
Local Government
• SB 239 (Arreguin-D) would authorize a subsidiary body to use alternative teleconferencing provisions and would impose requirements for notice, agenda, and public participation, as prescribed.
Public Safety & Probation
• SB 357 (Menjivar-D) would authorize the board of supervisors of any county to delegate to another county department all or part of the duties and authorities concerning minors or concerning the oversight or operation of juvenile detention facilities that are granted to the probation department or a probation officer.
Telecommunications
• AB 470 (McKinnor-D) would state the intent of the Legislature to enact subsequent legislation relating to telecommunications, specifically on matters of Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) requirements.
Members of the San Mateo County delegation, including new member Catherine Stefani, who replaces Phil Ting, have introduced the following notable bills:
• AB 827 (Berman-D) would require an elections official who receives a completed unsigned identification statement that is not timely submitted to compare the signatures and, if the signatures compare, add the signature to the voter’s registration record for use in future elections.
• AB 1030 (Papan-D) would require the treasurer, upon the request of an auditor, to provide a settlement of cash receipts and disbursements of the prior calendar month to the auditor on or before 12 business days after the treasurer receives the auditor’s request.
• AB 699 (Stefani-D) would permit local governments to send the tax rate statement to voters electronically, using the same procedures for receiving other voting materials electronically.
• SB 326 (Becker-D) would require the Deputy Director of Community Wildfire Preparedness and Mitigation within the Office of the State Fire Marshal in the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, on or before January 1, 2027, and every 3 years thereafter, to prepare a Wildfire Risk Mitigation Planning Framework sufficient to quantitatively evaluate wildfire risk mitigation actions.
• SB 338 (Becker-D) would establish the Mobile Health for Rural Communities Pilot Program and require the State Department of Health Care Services to administer the program to expand access to health services for farmworkers in rural communities.
• SB 40 (Wiener-D) would generally prohibit a health care service plan contract or disability insurance policy issued, amended, delivered, or renewed on or after January 1, 2026, from imposing a copayment of more than $35 for a 30-day supply of an insulin prescription drug or imposing a deductible, coinsurance, or any other cost-sharing on an insulin prescription drug.
• SB 677 (Wiener-D) would require ministerial approval for proposed housing developments containing no more than 2 residential units on any lot hosting a single-family home or zoned for 4 or fewer residential units, notwithstanding any covenant, condition, or restriction imposed by a common interest development association.
Lastly, in response to the recent catastrophic wildfires in Southern California, Senate leadership and members introduced a wildfire bill package to strengthen California’s wildfire prevention, response, and recovery efforts. These bills touch on matters of price gouging, property tax relief, insurance, and much more, and include:
• SB 36 (Umberg-D): Price Gouging: State of Emergency.
• SB 326 (Becker-D): Wildfire Safety: The California Wildfire Mitigation Strategic Planning Act.
• SB 522 (Wahab-D): Housing: Tenant Protection: Rent Control.
• SB 547 (Perez-D): Commercial Property Insurance Cancellation and Nonrenewal.
• SB 571 (Archuleta-D): Crimes.
• SB 581 (McGuire-D): Department of Forestry and Fire Protection: Seasonal Firefighters.
• SB 582 (Stern-D): Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly: Skilled Nursing Facilities.
• SB 616 (Rubio-D): Community Hardening Commission: Wildfire Mitigation Program.
• SB 625 (Wahab-D): Housing: Disaster Areas.
• SB 629 (Durazo-D): Wildfire: Fire Hazard Severity Zones.
• SB 641 (Ashby-D): Department of Consumer Affairs and Department of Real Estate: States of Emergency: Waivers and Exemptions.
• SB 663 (Allen-D): Winter Fires of 2025: Real Property Tax: Exemptions and Reassessment.
• SB 676 (Limon-D): California Environmental Quality Act: Responsible Agency.
The attached 2025 Legislative Activity Report lists the bills tracked to date this session. The Intergovernmental and Public Affairs (IGPA) unit continues to review bills introduced by the February 21 bill introduction deadline so this list will grow. As bills progress through the legislative process, the IGPA unit will update your Board regularly. Future legislative updates will include additional measures of note and actions taken by the County.
Federal Update
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), with help from President Trump, managed to quell concerns from both the center and the right of his party to get the budget resolution adopted (217-215 vote) with only one Republican defection.
The House blueprint directs multiple authorizing committees to produce legislation that achieves at least $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, most of which would be realized by reducing programs such as Medicaid and SNAP. The resolution also allows for a $4.8 trillion net increase in the deficit to make room for an extension of the tax cuts enacted during President Trump’s first term in office.
Now, GOP leaders in the House and Senate must decide how to proceed as senators demand changes that could alter key parameters of the fiscal framework. Several Republican senators have indicated the House blueprint is a non-starter, with several expressing opposition to the proposed deep cuts to Medicaid. Moreover, Senate Republican leaders want the final bill to include a permanent extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the House measure would allow for a 10-year extension).
For its part, the Senate has adopted its own less-ambitious fiscal 2025 budget blueprint (S Con Res 7) that would leave tax policy for later in the year. While there is general agreement between the White House and Republican leaders that the major issues-immigration enforcement and defense spending, energy and tax policy combined with offsetting cuts-should be combined into one mammoth package, both chambers will need to adopt the same budget resolution to move forward with a reconciliation bill that can bypass a Senate filibuster.
Congress has less than two weeks to extend federal spending laws and keep the government open as Republic and Democratic appropriators remain divided over the regular fiscal year 2025. Negotiators have been unable to agree on a topline budget number for the fiscal year that began last October. Furthermore, Democrats want to include language in the spending package prohibiting President Trump from restricting the federal funds that Congress has appropriated. To date, Republicans are unwilling to agree to these terms. The standoff has appropriators considering a long-term continuing resolution, or CR, which would extend federal funding at current levels through the fiscal year rather than through individual funding bills for each major department.