Tag: Public Resources Code

AB 125 Amended Upwards

$180 million added to bill

Yesterday AB 125, a multi-billion dollar bond proposal creating an entirely new agriculture-related division in California’s Public Resources Code, was amended in the Assembly’s Agriculture Committee, increasing it by $180 million to a new total of $3,302,000,000.

What next?

Making it out of the Agriculture Committee where it was introduced by committee chair Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) is the first step in a long slog through both the Assembly and the Senate, which, if successful, will culminate in a vote of the California citizenry in the general election of November, 2022.

What’s the new money for?

Thirty million dollars of the new money is earmarked for prescribed grazing (a method of grazing animals that promotes soil health and the sequestration of carbon), $100 million to upgrade food processing plants, and $50 million for fire-related improvements.

AB 125 Grows Up

AB 125, a major agriculture bill, was introduced on December 18, 2020, as a placeholder, saying pretty much “more to follow.” Recently it’s got a lot of buzz, and there seemed to be a slew special interests plumping for their little bit of what would be a notable bond measure. Well, more is here. Yesterday, March 18, 2021, the placeholder was amended, and the bill has grown into a bond measure that adds a whole new division to the Public Resources Code.

Codes are bodies of state law on broad topics — Criminal Code, Civil Code, Business Code, Education Code, etc. I’d never heard of the Public Resources Code before, and I wonder why this bill is there rather than in the Food and Agriculture Code.

Each Code is subdivided into Divisions, they’re broken down into Parts and then Chapters and then Articles and so on. The point is, a Division is big. Way too big for me to be trying to read in the wee hours of the morning. Suffice it to say, we now have a $750 million $3.1 billion* bond act to parse. Are we having fun yet?

*I shouldn’t try to do this stuff in the middle of the night. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/climate-agriculture-targeted-in-3-billion-california-bond-bill