YOUR DUES DOLLARS AT WORK THE BUSIEST WEEK IN APRIL

by CCA Vice President of Government Affairs Kirk Wilbur

The month of April is perhaps the busiest in California’s full-time legislature.

This early in the year, the Legislature has yet to weed out many of the more-than-2,600 bills introduced by the mid-February bill introduction deadline. And with an end-of-April cutoff for policy committees to consider and act upon any bill that might have a fiscal impact upon the state, there’s real urgency by the end of the month to hear each of those bills in increasingly-lengthy committee hearings. (The deadline for policy committees to act on non-fiscal bills is just one week later.)

To put it simply, the last two weeks of April are a marathon for legislative advocates, including your CCA government affairs team.

Fortunately for California’s cattlemen, the long hours and tireless efforts invested by CCA in late April have shown some promise for the Association’s legislative priorities. Below is a snapshot of CCA’s lobbying achievements in just one week in April, from Tuesday, April 18 through Monday, April 24.

AB 1197 (Hart)

Assembly Bill 1197, authored by Assemblyman Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara), would amend the Agricultural Protection Planning Grant Program, which provides planning grants to “Conserve California’s most productive farmlands and ecologically important rangelands.”

Assemblyman Hart has described the bill as a “measure to identify and map local food producers that are doing the important work of supporting and feeding local communities” and to “support efforts to connect small family farms to…necessary resources” and bolster local economies.

Unfortunately, AB 1197 defined a “local food producer” in part as an agricultural producer who “Farms on 500 acres or less across all properties,” effectively eliminating all commercial livestock producers from the grant assistance available under the bill.

Heading into the April 19 hearing of the

Assembly Agriculture Committee, CCA was the only organization to raise concerns about this limiting definition. Fortunately, in response to CCA’s advocacy Assemblyman Hart committed to the Committee that he would work with CCA to craft amendments which would address our concerns.

In light of this commitment, AB 1197 passed out of the Agriculture Committee; CCA is in the process of working with the Assemblymember’s office to craft the amendment conceptually agreed to in committee.

SB 485 (Becker)

CCA was lobbying SB 485 weeks before Senator Josh Becker (D-San Mateo) even introduced the bill. As initially introduced, the bill sought to establish a program within the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to incentivize enteric fermentation emissions reductions from all livestock through the use of feed additives and directed CARB to set a regulatory target for adoption of such feed additives.

Ahead of an April 24 hearing in the Senate Agriculture Committee, CCA and the Western United Dairies had secured several favorable amendments to the bill, including eliminating CARB’s ability to set a target for feed additive adoption because these initially non-binding targets are often used to justify subsequent legal mandates. The bill had also been shaped to establish a truly voluntary, incentives-based approach favored by dairy producers.

CCA remained opposed to the bill, however, due to its inclusion of beef cattle on feed. Most research and development on methaneemissions-reducing feed additives has been focused squarely on dairy cattle, and emissions reductions achieved for dairy cattle do not directly translate to beef cattle due to differences in breed and diet. Additionally, there are market disincentives to enrolling in a CARB program, as many out-of-state beef processors will not accept cattle fed emissions-reducing additives due to concerns about their impact upon quality grade.

CCA’s government affairs team lobbied the Senate Agriculture Committee throughout the weekend leading up to the Committee’s 10am hearing on Monday, April 24 and secured proposed committee amendments that limited the bill to dairy cattle. Senator Becker accepted those amendments in Committee, allowing the bill to pass out and move on to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Moving forward, CCA will closely track the bill to ensure that the amendments we secured remain in the bill.

AB 554 (Gabriel)

Sponsored by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, AB 554 would allow a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) to file lawsuits in civil court “to enforce any law relating to or affecting animals.” While the sponsors have framed this as a mere ‘clarification’ of existing law, it is not clear that SPCA’s currently have standing to sue in civil courts. Instead, SPCA’s may typically provide an animal abuse complaint to a prosecutor, who will then evaluate whether the law has been broken and whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute before filing a case in criminal court.

AB 554 is particularly concerning for two reasons. First, it removes an unbiased prosecutor from the equation, allowing an SPCA to directly file suits in civil court based on their interpretation of what constitutes animal abuse or neglect. Secondly, California law allows any group of 20 citizens to incorporate as an SPCA – meaning that any radical animal rights group or anti-animalagriculture activists could directly sue ranchers in civil court.

Because AB 554 would amend the Corporations Code, it was set for hearing April 24 in the Assembly Banking & Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over corporations. In the week leading up to the hearing, CCA met with the committee chair, staffers representing every member of the Committee, the Committee consultant and the Republican consultant (among others!) in a full-court press of opposition to the bill.

On April 24, CCA provided lead opposition testimony in the Banking & Finance Committee. And clearly CCA’s advocacy had made an impact. Several committee members expressed their genuine desire that the bill not negatively impact animal agriculture, and Assemblymember Gabriel (D-Woodland Hills) clarified during his presentation of the bill that “this bill is in no way meant to impact production agriculture in the State of California.”

Ultimately AB 554 passed out of the Banking & Finance Committee, but the concerns expressed by committee members and the author’s suggestion that he would work with CCA to address those concerns position the Association well to secure favorable amendments moving forward.

Looking Ahead

CCA has taken positions on dozens of bills so far this Legislative Session, so the three favorable developments reflected above merely skim the surface of the Association’s lobbying efforts. Throughout the week of April 18-24, CCA also lobbied on several other bills (for instance offering opposition testimony to a trio of bills that would significantly disrupt California’s water rights framework).

But these substantial developments on three priority bills within just a matter of days underscore the respect that legislators have for California’s cattle producers and the power you wield in Sacramento.

The legislative session is still young. Many fiscal bills must still face appropriations committees which will be looking to tighten purse-strings amidst projections of a significant budget shortfall. Nearly all bills must also be vetted anew in a second chamber of the legislature before the fates of remaining bills are ultimately determined by Gov. Gavin Newsom at the end of the legislative year.

The developments above are a promising sign of CCA’s success this year. Your government affairs team will work tirelessly in the months ahead to achieve CCA’s legislative goals.

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