Wrapping Up a Successful Legislative Year

Next year is my last year in the California State Assembly. And while I have always fought to pass meaningful, largely environmentally focused, laws I was determined that this year would be one of my biggest and most impactful since 2016 when I took office in Sacramento. We all know that our climate and the environment stand on the brink of irreparable harm. I went into this legislative year determined to make real strides for the environment, public safety and consumer protections so that every Californian could live in a cleaner and safer world. Eight of those bills are now law.

As California is increasingly electrifying and moving away from gasoline-powered cars and adding solar to their homes, in part to help charge those cars and to reduce electricity bills and carbon footprints, I was determined that price increases under the guise of skyrocketing permit fees would not hit households making the switch to solar. Solar is a high upfront cost. Weighty fees added to that cost would unfairly bar consumer choice. Back in 2017, I authored a bill to cap those fees and protect consumers. This year, AB 1132, my bill to extend the 2017 cap on fees, was the first of my bills signed into law.

Addressing the environment isn’t just about things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint. Some of our focus needs to be precautionary. We all watched, horror struck, as our state’s reservoirs and aquifers were drained dry during the epic drought. We clearly can’t approach water use as we always have, like it’s an inexhaustible resource. It’s not. Water is precious and it is finite. I knew going into this year that AB 1572, a bill that bars treated drinking water from being used to water non-functional turf, was going to be one of my biggest and hardest bills to pass. You may be asking yourself: “What’s nonfunctional turf?” It’s a term that covers turf that we do not walk on, or the turf that our children do not play on. In other words, the purely decorative grass that lines traffic medians or office buildings and, under AB 1572, the ban only applies to commercial and civic properties.

We’ve already taken similar steps to limit water waste. We’re currently living under an emergency order put in place last year to limit the usage of drinking water for irrigating certain landscapes. All we needed to do was ensure that emergency order became permanent. AB 1572 passed both houses with bipartisan support and was signed into law by Gov. Newsom.

Water and solar are visible pieces of the environmental discussion. We can see our lakes getting drained dry. We can see solar on top of homes. What we don’t see are chemicals: permanent, harmful, forever chemicals. And they’re nearly inescapable. They’re in everything – makeup, textiles, bedding, cleansers, body washes and much more. No one bill is going to fix all of that but I had two bills: AB 1059, which bans textile fiberglass and flame retardants (which are mostly PFAS-ridden forever chemicals) from consumer products and AB 496, which bars dozens of chemicals from being used in cosmetics. The European Union bans more than 1,100 chemicals from their consumer products and cosmetics. Before AB 496, California banned only 11.

Chemicals affecting humans don’t come just from consumer products. They come from chemicals targeted at rodent control, i.e. rat poisons. Farmers, home owners and renters have battled pesky four-legged furry intruders for generations, but mice and rats poisoned with certain rodenticides are eaten by foxes, coyotes, deer, mountain lions, wolves, bears and more. The poison moves up the food chain not only impacting our iconic wildlife, but our pets and even humans with dire results. We are, in essence, poisoning ourselves and our pets with forever chemicals in the name of rodenticides. Anyone who followed the life story of P-22, the mountain lion famous for calling Griffith Park home, knows that when he was injured by motor vehicles and came into veterinary care, he was suffering from rodenticide poisoning. And according to the American Association for Poison Control Centers, more than 3,000 human cases of rodenticide poisoning have been reported in the last six years. AB 1322 bars the worst of those rodenticides from continued usage.

Protecting our pets from unintentional poisoning was one of two pet-centered bills I passed this year. The other was AB 1399, a veterinary telehealth bill. The entire country is in the midst of an extreme veterinary shortage. By one estimate, we need 30,000 more vets to meet current demand. AB 1399 won’t fix the shortage but it will allow vets to offer telehealth, enabling pet owners to more easily get access to a vet when one is needed and options are limited.    

The last of my bills to be signed into law this year, however, will be the one that will be the most visible in the greater Los Angeles area. AB 645 will bring automated speed enforcement to Glendale, Los Angeles and Long Beach. More than 4,000 pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers and passengers lose their lives to traffic violence every year in California. Those deaths are preventable. By reengineering roads, by slowing traffic down, we can save lives. AB 645 targets high injury corridors, areas known for street racing, and school zones. Tickets will only be issued if a driver is going 11 miles per hour or more over the speed limit and the first ticket is a warning. I think we can all agree there is no excuse for speeding through school zones.

These bills were my successes. But there are a few things that were left unfinished. There was AB 8, a bill to address issues with ticket sellers (remember trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets this year and the debacle that followed?), which was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee, a bill to address sustainability in transportation making sure our transportation planning and spending actually align with the state’s environmental goals, and a bill to provide a safety net for workers impacted by prolonged labor disputes and prevent homelessness. Continuing the fight to address those issues starts again in January, along with brand new legislative challenges. It’s going to be an exciting last year in the Assembly.

All that said, I could not be more grateful to call our region home and to represent the 44^th district. These years in public service have been the most fulfilling and rewarding years of my life.

In the months ahead, I’d like to hear from you about the issues you care about. What are your priorities for legislation or budget investments? As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any comments, questions, or concerns through my District Office at (818) 558-3043 or Assemblymember.Friedman@Assembly.ca.gov.