YOUR DUES DOLLARS AT WORK REFLECTING ON THE END OF SESSION RECAPPING CCA’S LEGISLATIVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN 2023 by CCA Vice President of Government Affairs Kirk Wilbur
The 2023 legislative year gaveled to a close on September 14, after which Governor Gavin Newsom had one month to sign or veto bills sent to him by the Legislature. The Governor concluded that work on October 13, allowing CCA to take stock of our lobbying efforts over the past year. Happily, it was another incredibly successful year for the Association. CCA’s highest priorities this year were to kill an anti-animal-agriculture bill pushed by radical animal rights extremists (AB 554) and to safeguard ranchers from a trio of fundamental threats to their essential water rights (AB 460, AB 1337 and SB 389). CCA had a perfect record among those priorities, killing three of the measures outright and securing substantial amendments to the fourth that fully resolved our initial concerns with the bill. Below are details of each bill CCA lobbied in the 2023 legislative year. AB 99 (Connolly) – State roads and highways: integrated pest management CCA-OPPOSED – WIN Held in the Senate Appropriations Committee This bill would have required the California Department of Transportation to adopt a statewide policy to use “integrated pest management” limiting roadside pesticide application in any county in which the Board of Supervisors has voted to limit or discontinue roadside application of pesticides. Such a policy would have been detrimental to pest management on farms and ranches adjacent to CalTrans-managed roadsides. AB 408 (Wilson) – The Climate-Resilient Farms, Sustainable Healthy Food Access and Farmworker Protection Bond Act of 2024 CCA-SUPPORTED Held in the Senate Appropriations Committee This $3.65 billion bond bill included several allocations that promote livestock grazing in recognition of its ecological benefits, including $35 million to CalFire for equipment and infrastructure to support prescribed grazing, $80 million to CDFA to promote carbon sequestration through methods including prescribed grazing
14 California Cattleman November 2023
and $40 million for community food production in urban and suburban areas which can include “livestock grazing in open space.” The Legislature has until June of 2024 to pass a bond bill for the November 2024 ballot, and CCA has been actively lobbying for inclusion of these pro-grazing provisions in any bond which goes before voters – whether that measure is AB 408 or a handful of competing climate bond proposals pending in the Legislature as two-year bills. AB 429 (Bennett) – Groundwater wells: permits CCA-OPPOSED – WIN Held in the Assembly Water, Parks & Wildlife Committee AB 429 would have restricted the approval of groundwater well permits in any critically overdrafted groundwater basin in which one percent of domestic wells had gone dry. CCA opposed the bill because it would have reduced the water available to ranchers, increased costs for agricultural producers and would have undermined the local control of groundwater previously guaranteed by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). AB 460 (Bauer-Kahan) – State Water Resources Control Board: interim relief CCA-OPPOSED – WIN Held in the Senate Natural Resources & Water Committee AB 460 would have enabled the State Water Resources Control Board to issue new ‘interim relief orders’ to prohibit activities alleged to violate nearly any provision of the state Water Code, including exceeding one’s water right or violating a curtailment order. The bill would have allowed the Board to issue $10,000/day fines for violations of the interim orders – 20 times greater than the maximum daily fines the Board can currently issue. Additional fines of $2,500 would have been authorized for each acre-foot of water diverted in violation of the interim orders, a provision the bill’s supporters justified in part by demonizing cattle ranchers who in 2021 made the difficult decision to violate a curtailment order to provide needed water to their livestock.