[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 17 (Tuesday, January 30, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H309-H312]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PLACER COUNTY RETAIL THEFT INITIATIVE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California
(Mr. Kiley) for 30 minutes.
Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to commend a new initiative by the
business community and law enforcement in Placer County spearheaded by
the district attorney's office called the Placer County Retail Theft
Initiative.
You can see here a printout of window signs that businesses in Placer
County can now display. It says: ``This business is protected by Placer
County's Retail Theft Initiative. Warning, Placer County is invested in
holding those who steal from our residents and businesses accountable
to the greatest extent the State law allows.''
Now, the reason this is necessary is that there has been an epidemic
of retail theft in California, owing to very misguided changes to the
State's criminal laws, as well as very misguided choices by certain
jurisdictions to defund police and to have prosecutors who refuse to
enforce the law.
What Placer County, a county in my district, is doing is saying that
we are not one of those jurisdictions. We are a pro-public safety
county and, what's more, even though the State's criminal laws around
retail theft are very weak, the county is using the full authority that
exists in those laws, maximizing the accountability that can be brought
to bear on those who choose to steal.
Therefore, these signs have been distributed. You can actually get
them from the district attorney's office. My office has some, as well,
if you are a business and would like to display one in your window. It
serves as a real deterrent.
What is making this possible is: the Placer County Board of
Supervisors has voted to accept a $2 million grant for the Placer
County District Attorney's Office new retail theft vertical prosecution
team. With these grant funds, the DA's office will add a full-time
deputy district attorney, a district attorney investigator, and a crime
analyst to work on the investigation and prosecution of retail theft
crimes.
The vertical prosecution structure provided by the grant allows for
cases to be handled by the same investigator and prosecutor from case
filing through adjudication.
You can see here the broad coalition that is behind this initiative.
It is not just the DA's office. It is the sheriff's office; it is the
Roseville Police Department; it is the Rocklin Police Department; the
Auburn Police Department; the Lincoln Police Department; Colfax, as
well as the business community of the Roseville area chamber.
You have the Lincoln chamber, you have the Rocklin area chamber, you
have the Auburn chamber, the Foresthill chamber, Colfax chamber, Loomis
Basin chamber, an entire coalition that has come together in order to
make this a very clear deterrent.
Again, this is an actual sign that businesses can have in their
window so that thieves who are walking by will see that, if they choose
to prey upon this business, if they choose to steal, then that crime is
going to be reported, and they are going to be held accountable to the
full extent that the law allows.
In this way, I believe Placer County is setting a model for
jurisdictions across California. In fact, this isn't the first time
that Placer has done this. Placer County was also the first county in
the State of California to obtain a murder conviction for fentanyl.
[[Page H310]]
Again, the State's laws, similar to retail theft, on fentanyl are not
as strong as they should be. The legislature and Governor have refused
to act to pass stronger laws, but the district attorney's office has
managed to use the authority within existing law to bring the full
measure of accountability on those who prey on the public.
As Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire said: ``Placer County
is known as a problem solver on key issues affecting our State. Our
county's collaborative and innovative approach to statewide problems,
coupled with our ability to address those problems proactively, makes
Placer County a leader in addressing challenges affecting our quality
of life. This retail theft initiative shows that we are united and
dedicated to fighting retail theft in our region.''
It is one reason, by the way, why folks want to come to our county.
While the population of California has been steadily declining, it has
actually been increasing in our county, and a major reason is the
dedication of those who are in public safety roles and support that
exists in our community for supporting law enforcement as a key facet
of maintaining our quality of life.
Now, of course, you can look at other parts of the State, like San
Francisco, where you are seeing precisely the opposite, where there is
this downward spiral of retailers continuing to close. It is like a new
business every day seems to shut down. The city itself is
losing population faster than any major city in U.S. history.
Ultimately, the State of California needs to reform its broken
criminal justice system. Initiatives like Prop 47 have dramatically
reduced the consequences that are available for retail theft, and for
open drug use. Other policies like Prop 57, Realignment, and many more
have weakened our ability to hold offenders accountable.
What Placer County has shown is that, even with being dealt a bad
hand by the State, it is still possible for the community to come
together to insist on accountability, and I think that what they are
doing is a great model. I would certainly encourage any businesses
within Placer who are seeing this to pick up one of these signs in
order to protect your establishment.
Independent Contractor Rule
Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, the Biden administration's Department of
Labor has announced a new independent contractor rule that amounts to
one of the most potentially harmful economic policies that has come out
of this administration or any administration in recent history. It is
estimated that this new rule, which restricts significantly the ability
to be an independent contractor, to work as a freelancer, to be your
own boss, could cost upwards of 3.2 to 3.6 million full and part-time
jobs.
Also, here is the thing. This is not a matter of speculation.
Sometimes, when you have a proposed policy, you can do an economic
analysis and try to forecast what the effects might be. However, in
this case, we know exactly what the effects are going to be, because we
have already seen them play out in California.
This new independent contractor rule is based upon California's
infamous AB5 law, which was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019.
The effects of that law have been absolutely devastating. In fact, a
study out of George Mason University just a few weeks ago found that
the law, in and of itself, has reduced self-employment in California by
over 10 percent and has reduced overall employment by over 4 percent.
That is potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been lost
in California because of this one law. That is what really makes this
law uniquely devastating.
California has a lot of very harmful labor and economic policies, and
we are seeing a lot from this administration, as well. Oftentimes, as a
worker, as an entrepreneur, as a small business owner, there is a
death-by-a-million-cuts effect where the costs imposed on your
enterprise just add up to the point that things don't pencil out and
you have to close down shop, lay people off, or move out of the State.
Well, AB5 was different in that it was one particular law that, by
itself, cost many, many people their livelihoods, completely upended
their whole career with a stroke of a pen. We saw this effect
immediately after AB5 passed in 2019.
Before it had even taken effect, we heard countless stories of people
who all of a sudden had no ability to earn a living. The careers that
they had built over years, over decades, were snatched from them, were
taken away with the effect of this one single law.
Therefore, after the law went into effect, in a matter of weeks, we
compiled a whole book full of stories, AB5 stories, and many, many more
have been added since. As this new rule is about to take effect, I am
planning to share some of those stories with the American public so
that folks who are outside California know what is in store if and when
this new Biden administration labor rule takes effect.
For today's story, this is from John, who is a guest orchestral
conductor. Very shortly after AB5 took effect, he said: I depend on my
contractor status to maintain sustainable fees while not fleecing
orchestras. He says: Because of this bill, AB5, I just lost my first
scheduled job with an orchestra. That is $9,000 that would have put a
dent in my student loans or helped pay my insurance, or paid for food
and shelter is now gone, all because of AB5.
There are countless other stories that I will be sharing from this
floor.
If you are an independent contractor in California who lost your
livelihood because of AB5, please feel free to reach out and share your
story with my office so that I can share it with folks across the
country and certainly folks here in this House of Representatives as a
warning about what the effects of this legislation are going to be.
Now, we are fighting against this policy, this new independent
contractor rule, which will destroy millions of livelihoods. We are
fighting against it in every way that we can, using every tool
available.
First, I am introducing legislation under the Congressional Review
Act to nullify the new rule. This is a fast-track procedure where
Congress can override an executive agency.
Second, I have secured language in the Labor Appropriations bill
providing that no funds may be spent to enforce the rule. This would
effectively render it a dead letter.
Third, I have joined with Representative Elise Stefanik to author the
Modern Worker Empowerment Act, which creates a clear legal standard to
protect independent workers.
Fourth, I have endorsed the Department of Labor Succession Act, which
has already passed through committee, which is going to stop Acting
Secretary Julie Su from remaining in that position indefinitely.
Julie Su is Biden's nominee to be Secretary of Labor. She was
rejected by the Senate. Her nomination was returned after almost a year
last year in the face of bipartisan opposition, yet President Biden has
insisted on keeping her at the helm of the Labor Department as an
unconfirmed Secretary.
Why is that? Because Julie Su was the architect of AB5 itself. She
was Gavin Newsom's Secretary of Labor in California and was the chief
enforcer of AB5. That is why, for anyone who questions that the new
national policy is based on AB5, why in the world would they promote,
of all people, the architect and lead enforcer of AB5 into this new
role, if not to do the exact same thing for the whole country?
Fifth, as chair of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, I
will continue to conduct rigorous oversight of the Department of Labor,
and we will do everything possible to protect American workers against
this independent contractor rule and other administration overreaching
policies.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that there are now two different
lawsuits, as we anticipated, challenging the independent contractor
rule.
One is reviving a previous challenge to a previous version of this
rule on procedural grounds.
The second, which was recently filed by a group called Fight for
Freelancers that has partnered with Pacific Legal Foundation, is
challenging the rule itself on a few grounds--on the ground that it
doesn't comply with the statutory authority that has been granted to
the agency, that it violates a statute that prohibits arbitrary
rulemaking by an agency, and, finally, it is a constitutional challenge
saying that the vagueness of the law essentially amounts to a violation
of due process.
That is all to say that we have hope of stopping this destructive
policy from
[[Page H311]]
taking effect, and I will continue to share the stories of those who
have already been affected in California in hopes that we can save
millions of American workers the same fate.
Homelessness Crisis in California
Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, we recently received some good news, as the
United States Supreme Court has decided to hear a case called City of
Grants Pass v. Johnson, which could mark a turning point for the
homelessness crisis in California.
Just to provide some context, let's consider the full breadth of that
crisis.
{time} 1900
It has been 20 years since Governor Newsom rolled out his plan--he
was then the mayor of San Francisco at the time--to end homelessness in
San Francisco within a decade. It has now been 20 years since he
announced that, and this anniversary happened to coincide with the
Department of Housing and Urban Development's annual homelessness
report to Congress.
Among the findings of the HUD report are that California has the
highest homelessness rate of any State. California has had a 30.5
percent increase in homelessness from 2007 to 2023. That is the highest
increase of any State.
California accounts for 28 percent of America's homeless and about 50
percent--that is half--of the Nation's unsheltered homeless. San
Francisco, for its part, has the second highest percent of unsheltered
homeless youth and unsheltered veterans of any city in the country.
So there are a lot of reasons for these appalling statistics and the
tragic realities that they represent. It is political failure where we
have had policies dealing with crime, for example, that have released
many people from prisons too early and don't have appropriate
consequences for criminal activity. There is our State's soaring cost
of living that is a result of many different political failures. There
is the inadequacy of our State's approach to mental health and
substance abuse. Then there is the complete wastefulness and lack of
accountability when it comes to the billions and billions and billions
of dollars that are being spent at the State and local level to address
the homelessness crisis.
In fact, as the State has continued to spend more and more--many,
many times more--than it has ever spent, the homelessness problem has
only continued to get worse, and, there is, in fact, an audit coming in
California that is finally going to look at homelessness spending.
Nonetheless, on top of all of these political and policy failures,
there have been significant judicial impediments to dealing with the
homelessness crisis; that is, a series of decisions by the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals beginning with the Boise case and its progeny
that have made it difficult, if not impossible, to enforce anti-camping
ordinances and to otherwise clear out homelessness encampments from
public spaces.
Mr. Speaker, if you talk to city leaders, county leaders, and leaders
of municipalities across California, they will tell you that this line
of cases is the bane of their existence and that it is a significant
obstacle in the way of commonsense policies for dealing with
homelessness.
So the Supreme Court has now taken up this case, and I am very
hopeful that the Court is going to do the right thing and that it is
going to restore the proper authority to local officials to deal with
homelessness in public spaces.
The initial line of cases that the Court will be examining is based
on a very distorted view of the Eighth Amendment, and so I believe that
the legal argument here is one that will coincide with what is best
from a policy perspective. So I will be urging the Court to make the
right decision here, but at the same time, if and when the Court does
that, when it provides these new tools to folks at the local level, we
will finally have the political accountability for our State leaders to
address homelessness in the right way so that we don't another 20 years
from now continue to set the standard for having the most homelessness
of any State in the entire country.
Important Tax Relief
Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, we have some good news in the bill that has
just been released that is a major tax bill here in the House of
Representatives that will be moving through the House and likely coming
up for a vote very soon. The good news is that several measures that I
have cosponsored that provide important tax relief have made it into
this tax bill.
I wanted to provide a few examples because these are significant ways
in which we are now using the tax code in order to stimulate the right
kinds of economic activity.
One of the measures that made it into the bill is H.R. 2673, the
American Innovation and R&D Competitiveness Act. What this does is it
eliminates the 5-year amortization requirement for research and
experimental expenditures thereby allowing continued expensing of such
expenditures in the taxable years in which they are incurred.
What this does is it enhances the competitiveness of U.S. companies
particularly when it comes to competition with China and otherwise
across the board.
Another provision that is very important that has found its way into
this bill is H.R. 2406, the ALIGN Act. What it does is it makes
permanent the expensing of certain new business equipment. This
expensing allows the deduction of the full amount of an expensable item
in the same taxable year instead of being depreciated under the current
IRS rules. Once again, this is a very important provision for
stimulating manufacturing and enhancing our competitiveness here in the
United States.
A third measure which has made its way into this tax bill is H.R.
4970; that is the Protect Innocent Victims of Taxation After Fire Act.
This measure which I have cosponsored excludes from gross income for
income tax purposes any amount received after 2019 and before 2026 by
an individual taxpayer as a qualified wildfire relief payment.
It defines such payment as compensation for expenses or losses
incurred as a result of a federally declared forest or range fire
disaster.
So this is just common sense and much-needed. It corrects an
injustice for Californians who had suffered greatly because of our
State's catastrophic wildfires and then found they were going to be
taxed on the settlements and compensation that they received.
Finally, within this broader tax bill is another measure that I have
cosponsored, H.R. 3238, the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act.
Now, this does a number of things to stimulate housing production that
we so direly need in the State of California.
It increases the per capita dollar amount of the affordable housing
credit and its minimum ceiling amount beginning in 2023, and it extends
the inflation adjustments for such amounts.
The low-income housing tax credit subsidizes the acquisition,
construction, and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing for low-
and moderate-income tenants. That is what we are talking about here.
This measure that has now been included in the broader tax bill extends
and updates it to create new housing opportunities in California and
across the country.
It also increases the number of credits allocated to each State; that
is, the legislation would increase the number of credits available to
States by 50 percent for the next 2 years and make the temporary 12.5
percent increase secured in 2018 permanent which has already helped
build more than 59,000 affordable housing units nationwide.
It also increases the number of affordable housing projects that can
be built using private activity bonds. This provision would stabilize
financing for workforce housing projects built using private activity
bonds by decreasing the amount of private activity bonds needed to
secure housing credit funding. As a result, projects will have to carry
less debt and more projects will be eligible to receive funding.
Finally, this improves the housing credit program to better serve at-
risk and underserved communities. This legislation would also make
improvements to the program to better serve veterans, victims of
domestic violence, formerly homeless students, Native-American
communities, and rural Americans.
I look forward to the opportunity to support this bill and enact
these provisions into law that will stimulate our economy, will
stimulate housing, and
[[Page H312]]
will provide the full measure of compensation for wildfire victims in
our State.
Tax Relief for Fire Hardening Homes
Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, last week I introduced the SAFE HOME Act
which provides a tax credit for folks to harden their homes against
wildfires.
Right now in California we have not only experienced devastating
catastrophic wildfires in recent years, but, as a result, we are now in
the thick of an insurance crisis where folks' rates for fire insurance
have absolutely skyrocketed. People are losing their plans left and
right, insurance companies are pulling out of California, and more and
more people are being kicked on to what is called the FAIR Plan, which
is not a good option for a lot of folks and imposes enormous costs.
This is having ramifications for homeowners, for businesses, for
folks looking to buy a home, and for folks looking to sell a home. In
one of my counties it has even impeded an affordable housing project
from even getting off the ground, and the situation continues to get
worse and worse and worse.
We have seen State Farm and Allstate say they are now no longer
issuing plans in California. Other insurance companies such as
Merastar, Unitirn, and Kemper Independence have said they are not going
to renew policies in 2024 for homeowners.
Unfortunately, we have not seen much, if any, meaningful action from
the Governor or from the legislature in California.
So folks really, really need relief. People are having to pay
thousands more than they anticipated, and a lot of people simply cannot
afford it.
So I have proposed a number of policies over the last few years to
try to provide individuals with relief. What the SAFE HOME Act does is
it at least provides folks with some relief based upon the work that
they themselves have done to try to reduce the risk of wildfire.
What is so frustrating to a lot of people is they do everything they
possibly can to mitigate the risk of fire in their home, to harden
their home, and to create a firebreak. Nonetheless, they don't get
rewarded for it. The insurance companies don't take that into account,
and they still see their rates skyrocket just like anyone else.
So what we want to do with this bill is provide some relief to those
people, and at the same time, to create an incentive for more people to
harden their homes so as to reduce the risk of wildfires. So,
specifically, the SAFE HOME Act which I have introduced creates a 25
percent refundable tax credit for wildfire mitigation.
It includes a phaseout starting at $200,000, and it drops by 25
percent every $25,000 in income above $200,000. At $300,000 in income
the credit is phased out. There is also an inflation adjustment for any
year after 2024 equal to the cost-of-living adjustment.
The credit is only made available for a primary home that a Federal
natural disaster declaration has been made within the preceding 10-year
period with respect to a wildfire or is adjacent to an area that has
had a disaster declaration, and it would sunset on December 31, 2032.
So it is a modest measure. It is not going to impose enormous costs,
but it will provide real relief to folks who really need it and who are
doing the right thing by trying to reduce the risks to themselves and
their neighbors.
So I am hoping that this is a measure that will receive broad
bipartisan support, but I recognize that it is not a comprehensive
solution to this very serious problem. So I call upon my colleagues
especially in California but also other States who are seeing similar
issues to come together to provide a backstop, the needed policies to
do whatever we can at the Federal level to stop this crisis from
continuing to spiral out of control. I also call upon the State leaders
in California to do their part, as well.
Finally, we need to recognize ultimately that the way to truly get
the insurance crisis under control is to stop having catastrophic
wildfires in California on a regular basis which, of course, come with
loss of life, loss of property, and destruction of communities, as well
as not to mention a tremendous amount of environmental harm.
We have seen effective forest management practices work, and we have
seen ineffective forest mismanagement practices lead to tragedy.
Mr. Speaker, I will give you just an example from one fire in
California which leveled the town of Grizzly Flats in my district and
spread far elsewhere and almost consumed the city of South Lake Tahoe.
This is the Caldor fire in El Dorado County.
The Federal Government was supposed to have done a mitigation project
that could well have stopped the Caldor fire from ever spreading, but
years and years and years went by and the project never got done. The
fire started. It leveled Grizzly Flats. It put many, many people out of
their homes.
By the way, the Biden administration has still not delivered the
individual assistance that was promised to the residents of Grizzly
Flats. As the fire spread and it made its way toward Tahoe, Mr.
Speaker, you might remember these surreal scenes of ski slopes that are
just aflame. However, it didn't end up destroying or even making a dent
in the city of South Tahoe because of the absolutely heroism of the
firefighters there and the first responders, but also because there had
been mitigation work done in the Christmas Valley thanks to a policy
change that had fairly recently been made in this Congress which
provided a categorical exclusion from environmental reviews for
projects in the Tahoe area. If it were not for that policy, that work
likely would not have been done, and the fire could have been that much
more devastating.
So I am sponsoring legislation that would build on that success
story, and it would have a policy change where you could have the same
expedited process for doing fire mitigation work throughout the
national forest system.
Mr. Speaker, when you go and talk to folks in the Forest Service and
the other groups and stakeholders and folks in government who are
working to mitigate the risk of wildfire, they will all tell you this
would make an enormous difference.
{time} 1915
In order to get the fire insurance crisis under control, it is above
all necessary that we do everything we possibly can to stop these
tragedies from continuing to occur in California.
I am sponsoring a number of measures to do that, but we have to act
with urgency because the risks will continue until we do.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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