California Farm Bureau Advocacy in Action

Solar

Assembly Bill 1156, authored by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, passed out of the Assembly Committee on Agriculture. The bill would repeal the requirement of a payment to cancel Williamson Act contracts for solar use easements. 

The committee’s 6-1 vote did not fall along party lines, with Assembly Member Jeff Gonzalez, R-Coachella, voting against it, and Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, abstaining. 

Assembly Member Damon Connolly, D-Marin, and Assembly Member Rhodesia Ransom, D-Stockton, voted in favor of the bill but expressed concerns that it was too broad. Ransom proposed an idea to redirect cancellation payments toward local community benefits instead of the state’s general fund.

Assembly Member Esmeralda Soria, D-Fresno, who chairs the committee, voted to move the bill out of the committee, though she raised concerns about the potential for widespread Williamson Act cancellations, including the conversion of prime farmland to solar development, and she is requiring amendments to the bill. Soria has also asked for a community benefit investment from solar developers. 

Assembly Member Juan Alanis, R-Modesto, and Assembly Member Heather Hadwick, R-Jackson, spoke in favor of the bill, citing the rights of landowners. 

Participation in the Williamson Act and its cancellation have always been voluntary. AB 1156 does not enhance landowner rights. It merely waives the contractual obligation to pay a cancellation fee. 

The Large-scale Solar Association and Almond Alliance supported the bill, while California Farm Bureau led the opposition and remains opposed unless the bill is amended. American Farmland Trust and similar organizations opposed the bill for its potential to allow cancellation of agricultural conservation easements. 

Labor 

The California Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee declined to advance Senate Bill 801, which would have exempted sheep and goat herders from California’s agricultural overtime law. 

The bill’s author, state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, agreed to withdraw her request for a vote on the bill in exchange for continued dialogue about challenges created for farmers and ranchers by Assembly Bill 1066, the 2016 law that requires farmworkers be paid time and a half when they work more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. 

Since 2019, the minimum wage for herders who work on call around the clock has more than doubled as a result of a combination of state labor laws and regulations, including AB 1066. 

California sheep and goat ranchers have cautioned that applying the overtime law to on-call herders could bankrupt them, some of whom provide targeted grazing of wildfire fuels that is a crucial part of the state’s wildfire prevention strategy. 

SB 801 failed to make it out of the labor committee just a week after the same committee similarly rejected SB 628, another bill that sought to address the consequences of AB 1066 on farms and farmworkers. 

Although both SB 628 and SB 801 failed to advance, the hearings appear to have sparked new interest in developing a more flexible approach to overtime requirements in agriculture, a unique industry in which a one-size-fits-all policy does not work. Farm Bureau sponsored SB 628 and supported SB 801. The latter bill was drafted following advocacy efforts by California ranchers and by the Kern County Farm Bureau.  

Water

Alexandra Biering, a California Farm Bureau policy advocacy director, provided lead testimony last week on three bills considerd by the California Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife committee. She encouraged support for AB 430, legislation that requires the California State Water Resources Control Board to conduct an environmental and economic study for nonfee emergency regulations in place for more than a year and for it be released to the public. She said the bill brings transparency and accountability when emergency water regulations are used consecutively for more than one year. 

“We’ve seen a trend where the state water board is using emergency regulations as a water management tool, even when there’s no longer a drought in place,” Biering said, citing the emergency regulation for the Scott River and Shasta River watersheds as an example. 

For AB 929, a bill that exempts managed wetlands and small community drinking wells from groundwater sustainability plans under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, the Farm Bureau opposes it unless it is amended because Biering said the bill sets up overdrafted groundwater basins to fail.   

Biering called AB 1146 “unnecessary,” saying the bill prohibits the release of stored water from a reservoir in the state if the release is done under false pretenses. The bill serves as a countermeasure to the release of water this past January by the Trump administration. Biering said had the bill been in place in January, it would not have stopped the federal release of water or held anyone accountable. 

All three bills passed the committee and are headed to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Clean Water Act 

As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reviews the definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, Kari Fisher, senior counsel and director of legal advocacy for the California Farm Bureau, submitted public comments on behalf of farmers and ranchers, and participated in a listening session held by EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In addition, she participated in a Voice of California Agriculture podcast on the topic that is set to air May 15. Access the podcast at www.cfbf.com/ag-news/voice-of-california-agriculture-podcast.