Placer County Retail Theft Initiative

Floor Speech

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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.

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

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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 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

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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.

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

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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 will provide the full measure of compensation for wildfire victims in our State. Tax Relief for Fire Hardening Homes

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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.

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.

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