YOUR DUES DOLLARS AT WORK 2023 LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES BEGIN TO TAKE SHAPE by CCA Vice President of Government Affairs Kirk Wilbur The first year of California’s 2023-24 Legislative Session is in full swing. By mid-February, state senators and assemblymembers had introduced 2,634 bills, and last month legislators began the process of vetting those bills in policy committees. During the month of April, CCA will remain busy lobbying bills in Assembly and Senate policy committees ahead of an April 28 deadline for those committees to consider all fiscal bills and a May 5 deadline to dispense with their non-fiscal workload. The March edition of CCA’s Hot Irons newsletter provided a deep-dive into three high-priority bills likely to impact California’s cattle producers: AB 460 (Bauer-Kahan), relating to water rights enforcements, AB 554 (Gabriel), which would create a private right of action in civil courts for alleged violations of animal cruelty laws, and AB 1237 (Petrie-Norris), which seeks to incentivize veterinarians to practice in “veterinary underserved areas.” This column seeks to provide insights into an array of other bills CCA will be lobbying throughout 2023, but readers are encouraged to reference last month’s Hot Irons for details on those three priority bills. CCA’s legislative priorities will undoubtedly evolve throughout the next five months of the Legislative Session, but below are details of several of the measures currently being tracked and lobbied by your CCA government affairs team. WATER RIGHTS AND ENFORCEMENT Given California’s historic drought and the recent series of atmospheric rivers that battered the state from late December through mid-January and again in mid-March, it is perhaps no surprise that water is top-of-mind for policymakers in Sacramento. This Session’s focus on water rights, in particular, was highlighted by a Feb. 28 hearing of the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee focused on “Adapting Water Rights to our 21st Century Climate,” during which witnesses discussed a number of ‘reforms’ to the state’s water rights system which have been proposed in several bills introduced this year. Most significant among those bills is AB 460, which in short would allow any “interested party” to petition the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) for an “interim relief order” regarding any alleged violation 10 California Cattleman April 2023
of a water right, water right curtailment order or water quality objective, and which would allow the SWRCB to impose a $10,000 per day fine for violation of the order and an additional $5,000 fine for each acre-foot of water diverted in violation of the order. While AB 460 is perhaps the most sweeping water rights bill this year, it is by no means the only. One particularly concerning bill is SB 389, introduced by Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica). SB 389 would allow the SWRCB to investigate the basis of claim for any water right and to rescind that water right if the Board determines that “diversion and use is not authorized under any basis of right.” This is particularly concerning because the bill places the burden of proof on the water right claimant to prove the existence and continuous exercise of their right, rather than upon the SWRCB to prove that no such right exists. For a pre-1914 water right, for instance, records may not be available both due to the age of the right and because, other than an Initial Statement of Diversion and Use, detailed records of such diversions have not historically been required. Additionally, because any water right ...CONTINUED ON PAGE 12