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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And we have a very special guest this week, Assemblymember Chris Rogers. Hey, Chris. Welcome to the show.

ASSM. CHRIS ROGERS:

Hey, Tom. Thanks for having me.

WHEELER:

All right. So Chris, I'm excited to have you on the show. We have a lot to catch up on. You have a number of bills that we're terribly excited about at EPIC. But first, in case folks don't know their good Assemblymember, let's get to know Chris a little bit. Chris, do you want to give us your kind of bio? And maybe this is not the bio that you would put on your campaign website, but how you would describe yourself to a friend. Or you're meeting somebody at a dinner party for the first time. Who is Chris Rogers?

ROGERS:

Yeah, first of all, I'm going to back up and say what an assembly member is, for folks.

WHEELER:

Oh, yeah. Good idea.

ROGERS:

We are blessed to have the most incredible district in the state of California. There are 80 assembly members, and I am so proud to be able to represent the second assembly district. We run from downtown Santa Rosa all the way to the Oregon border. So Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, Del Norte and Trinity counties represent about 500,000 people. It is the third largest district in the state of California. It is the most ecologically diverse and economically diverse district, politically diverse district. And one of the things that's pretty unique about it is it has the highest concentration of tribal governments as well.

So I got into politics when I was really young. I actually started as a journalist and wanted to move over into making a difference in the world. I started working for a congresswoman when I was 18. I just really fell in love with public policy. Sonoma County, born and raised by mom, ran a nonprofit working with developmentally delayed kids. And I just really wanted to try to make the world a better place for our most marginalized, the folks who needed the help and kind of found myself into politics. I ran for the city council in 2016, was outspent 10 to 1 by a billionaire, but we outlawed it. I was on the city council through four wildfires, a pandemic, a drought flood and an earthquake. I like to joke with people that the only thing we were missing were the locusts. And then, of course, you had those murder hornets that were a thing for a little while that I was like, that's just our luck.

And so two years ago, our assembly member retired, saw an opportunity to run for this seat. I thought that I could take that experience at the local level and really take it to the state. Again, I was outspent 7 to 1 in that election, but really people powered campaign. And so now I'm here. We get to think every day about how can I make life better for folks on the North Coast? How can I try to help deconstruct some of the power structures that prevent good policy from happening? And I get to work with great people like you, Tom. So it's the best job in the world.

WHEELER:

So, let's see here, I feel like Chris, no offense, that was kind of the standard biography that you'd put on your website. So let's get to know you a little bit better. Chris, if you were to have to make a meal for somebody to try to impress them, you know, a potential new romantic partner or a new friend or a boss or something like that, you're cooking at home, what are you going to make?

ROGERS:

I think the most exotic thing that I wouldn't completely screw up is a Cornish pasty. Take a pasty, you make the dough, roll it out, fill it with whatever the person wants, whether it's a vegetarian or a meat one. It's really hard to mess those up when it's like potatoes and carrots, but it looks more exotic than just your typical like shepherd's pie.

WHEELER:

All right. Well, that's a, that's a great answer. All right. So you've just completed your, your first year of your first term. Congratulations coming into your second year. Let's talk about that first year and lessons learned. So talk to me about coming into the legislature for the first time and having to introduce bills and getting up to speed with how all of this works. What was that first year like?

ROGERS:

Yeah, absolutely. So I actually worked for the legislature for about a decade before I ran for city council. So I knew the legislative process inside and out. And still coming in, what happens is, you win the election in November, you get sworn in in December, and then the bill introduction deadline is in February. So it doesn't really leave you a whole lot of time to actually get moving on things that you have been campaigning on for over a year.

And so for us, we picked some of the big bills that we really wanted to work on, worked on AB 263 last year, which helps protect the tributaries to the Klamath and recognize indigenous voices in that process. And that was really our big fight, we wanted to make sure that we had little called the packing peanuts, little things that mattered to people that in small areas in our district, but then pick some big fights like that one. It was really good learning experience for me for my team, you know, assembly members, it's the first time I've ever had legislative staff that I get to work with. And so this year really coming in, we had a chance to do much more planning around it. We did 20 town halls up and down the coast, talking to people about what mattered in there.

And you see that in some of the bills that we've introduced this year, where literally we have a bill for the county of Sonoma retirees that will impact maybe 200 people. But for those 200 people, it'll be in the world, right? As we were able to put more thought into it more prep, do more outreach. And so I think we'll get into a little bit, but the biggest lesson learned last year was stay connected to your district, make sure that you are delivering for those folks. I tell everybody, we really look at it as there's no district issue too small or no state issue too big. And that's what you see, I think this year coming into year number two.

WHEELER:

So how do you choose the legislation that you introduce? I imagine, and I know for a fact that groups like EPIC will come to you and say, hey, Chris, we have this idea. Wouldn't it be cool if X, Y, Z? Do you also have some legislation that you had been thinking about for years that you came into office and then you said, all right, now it's time to get this done?

ROGERS:

Yeah, absolutely. And we will talk about one of them later today, maybe 1984. For me, there were four issues that really got me into politics. Climate, poverty, kids, health. Those are the big four issues. And so I talked to my team when I first got here that every single year, I want to feel like we're moving the needle in each of those categories. And whether that means that we have talked with folks in our district about what is achievable and try to introduce something or working with groups that we have a good relationship with that we know are trying to achieve the same thing to say, how can we help and how can we be a vehicle for good things happening? For me, also, I look at it through that lens of, you know, I truly don't never believe that somebody like me was going to end up in this role.

I mentioned being outspent 10 to 1 in my city council race and 7 to 1 in the assembly race. And so I've always kind of felt like I was on borrowed time and might as well make the most of it and do the things that other people didn't want to do. Take on the fights that other people thought were never going to be resolved. And let's see if we can make a difference for people that usually don't get hurt. And that's been our approach that will continue to be the approach.

WHEELER:

So Trump is in the White House. This has been pretty devastating for all three of the areas that you care most about. How are you approaching your job as, as a state legislator with a Trump administration? Does that kind of affect the way that you are thinking about bills, introducing bills?

ROGERS:

It does, absolutely, and kind of in two different lanes. So one, it makes it much more important for California to recognize its power to impact policy across the nation. So I'll give you a really great example. Gavin Newsom deciding to produce his own insulin to drive down the cost of insulin. There are very few states that could actually pull that off and would have enough people to actually disrupt the entire market for the United States. And that makes you really think about what your role as a legislator is in trying to drive not just your local policies and address local issues, but impact how things happen globally at that point.

The second one is, I start to think of California as it almost sounds the opposite, but it's true. I almost start to think of California even more as a nation state. How do we make sure that we're not so reliant on the federal government that it harms our communities? HR1, when it passed the big, beautiful bill that kicked tens of millions of people off of their healthcare, and at the local level, especially in rural communities that are already struggling to keep hospitals open, that means that more people are going to get sicker and that the cost of providing care to them is going to go up, not just for them, but for our entire community as they use emergency rooms. So how do we think of California and be able to solve that problem at the local level? How do we push forward solutions that'll be responsive to what Trump is doing, but really ultimately is about taking care of our own people?

WHEELER:

So let's get to the bill that you've been noodling on that you introduced this year, AB 1984. Do you want to give us what you're trying to accomplish here, what the bill is, and the why?

ROGERS:

Yeah, absolutely. I'm just gonna start here with something that I think most people do agree on, and that's that corporations aren't people. The Citizens United ruling that came out 16 years ago really distorted how our democratic processes work and allowed unlimited spending by corporations, by billionaires. You have to go a little bit further back with Buckley versus Vallejo, where they defined speech and said that spending money in politics is speech. And then Citizens United just opened the floodgates to corporations by saying that they're people. That's not real, and there is no world wherein which corporations are actually people. So there is a movement coming out of Montana, a bipartisan effort to do a ballot measure this November that uses 200 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence to say, actually, we have always had a history of being able to define what powers we grant to corporations, and that is distinct from being an individual. Even if you think of something as simple as limited liability or perpetual existence, I wish I had perpetual existence. I'm sure you do, too, but we don't, but corporations do, and that's a power that we have granted them.

So what Montana is saying is that we rely on that court precedent, which, by the way, was upheld in Citizens United. Alito said we are not adjusting the ability to define powers for corporations, said that in the ruling, and removing that power, just basically rewriting the corporate code, not the election code, to say that businesses, to be able to operate in the state of California, cannot spend money in elections, period, and it's something that 80% of Americans agree on is that unlimited spending corrupts the democratic process, only works for the elites, and doesn't actually help the average voter, and in fact, you have academic research that we are relying on that has found that since Citizens United, policy makers have been much more likely to actually do the bidding of big donors at the behest of them, and at the detriment of the rest of us. So it is something that is foundational to making democracy work, to protecting our environment, to make sure that these corporations don't have an outsized influence.

So we looked into it, was following it in Montana, because it is an issue that I've been thinking about for years, how do we get at Citizens United? Obviously, a constitutional amendment would be the easiest way, but not every state is compliant with that, and Congress certainly is not compliant with that, and we found that we can actually do it as a simple majority bill in California. So we introduced the bill a couple of weeks ago. My legislative director thought it was very clever, grabbing AB 1984, but I think it sends a good message, and we are gonna fight this in our committees coming up. You have 2 1⁄3 of the legislature is Democrats. They'll have to vote for this, or they'll have to vote against this.

WHEELER:

All right, so this idea came from another state. Are there like dialogues that you have with other state legislatures or legislators that help you kind of advance your thought? Or do you compare notes between our sister states on the West Coast, Oregon and Washington? Is there kind of cross-dialogue there?

ROGERS:

Yeah, absolutely. So there's a number of groups that actually helped facilitate it, like the National Council of State Legislatures and CSL. This one actually just happened to be reading news articles about it and following it. It was something of interest of mine. So we have introduced the bill. We've also been in conversation with the Center for American Progress, who was kind of quarterbacking this effort in Montana. They actually have now convinced six other states to introduce similar legislation so that we can have kind of a concerted push towards this. And again, as I said, it's not a partisan issue in most states. So we figured if Montana can have a bipartisan effort for a ballot measure, why the hell couldn't California do it?

WHEELER:

That's right. All right. So if folks want to learn more about AB 1984, where should they go?

ROGERS:

Yeah, I'd say you can look at our website. We'll have fact sheets up, but also Center for American Progress has a really good deep dive on the legal theory behind it and also the impact that Citizens United has had. They even have a chat bot that you can choose to either get more information or to argue with about what they're proposing, which is kind of a cool tool for folks as well.

WHEELER:

All right, and I will link the article in the show notes, which you can find at the lostcoastoutpost.com. All right, so Chris, let's move on to another piece of legislation that I'm excited about. Your Good Fire Act, which you introduced with our friend, Damon Connolly. Tell us about that.

ROGERS:

Yeah, absolutely. In the last few years, we've really had conversations in Sacramento about how to expedite prescribed burns. And it's simple. We know that fire has been used for millennia to try to maintain our lands. There's cultural aspects of it for indigenous populations. And as we see parts of the state catch on fire in the middle of winter, it's a good reminder for us that suppressing fire has never really been the go-to for California, and that we need to make it easier, not more reckless, but easier. And the governor had a couple of executive orders that he has done on this to streamline it. Those executive orders are not permanent. And so we have worked with the community, we've worked with the Karuk tribe and other indigenous tribes to really manifest what the governor was trying to do, as well as take their knowledge and codify it into state law.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report. We're talking with Assemblymember Chris Rogers about this legislative session.

ROGERS:

I'll give you a really good example of one of the areas where we're trying to reintroduce common sense fire practices. Right now, if you're a CEQA-exempt entity who gets all of your, gets your burn buffs in line, you get all of your permitting that you need to do a burn, and you go to do it and need to ask CAL FIRE for assistance for whatever reason, you're no longer CEQA-exempt and you have to do a full CEQA document to be able to do that burn. But I think we all agree, if you can do it without CAL FIRE and you can do it with CAL FIRE, we'd prefer that you do it with CAL FIRE and do it safely, right? The burn boss program has been wildly successful in training people how to do this safely. So this bill will also expand the ability for us to do those trainings and make it easier for folks to become burn bosses, which as a side note, really good job and career for folks to go into, especially on the North Coast, I think would be great for economic development.

So we're really excited about this. We're excited about the partnership with the Karuk and with the Yurok and with other tribes to be able to maintain what they've done for a long time. And I'll tell a quick story, Tom. I spent three days with the Karuk last summer, learning what they do, hearing about their culture. And one of the elders told me that they used to gather material, roll it into a ball, go to the top of a hill, light it on fire, and just push it off the hill. And anything that caught, that burned, they just assumed would need to burn. I told them, I don't think we'll get there. That's not the intention, but we certainly can recognize that this has been done by folks for centuries and can get back towards maintaining the land that way.

WHEELER:

Well, it seems that engaging with our tribes on the North Coast, it's a big priority for you. So the first bill that you introduced last year was AB 263, which as a brief reminder, in case you were tracking that dear listener was a bill that would provide water protections for the Scott and Shasta river, this came at the request of the Iraq and correct tribes. So you obviously work closely with those tribes. And I think that it's kind of a statement that the first bill that you introduced is a bill that is coming at the request of a tribal nation. In your introduction about your assembly district, you made a point to highlight that we have the most tribes or your assembly district has the most tribes of any place in California. What, what is the kind of responsibility that you feel to be the representative of so many tribal nations and tribal citizens?

ROGERS:

Yeah and I will also mention that this year the first bill that we introduced was actually a retread of a tribal bill that we also did last year trying to get foster youth from tribal communities into diversion programs and legal representation. And when I first came into office I reached out to every tribe in the district and I just said to them I know that you have a complicated history with the state. I'm going to allow you just you tell me what relationship you would like us to have. If you want to work together on issues I want to work with you recognizing that you are a sovereign nation and that you don't have to and you're still impacted by things that are happening in California.

And I will say that the response has been overwhelmingly positive from tribes looking for a partner who isn't trying to tell them what they have to do but rather wants to actually work hand in hand to solve shared problems that we have. And whether it's water rights, whether it's prescribed burns, whether it's the foster care system, there are areas where we feel like we can bring resources from the state of California to solve historic problems that they have had while also recognizing their own sovereignty and just building a good relationship with folks. I had a tribal chairman was in my office earlier this morning talking about issues that are happening with his community as well. There's a shared governance structure that exists there that relies on us being able to talk and relies on me in particular on learning the history that they come from that they come to the table with. And it's been a really good experience for our office to have that. You see it in other bills that play out across the state. I think folks recognize that representing this area means understanding tribal issues. We've really leaned into that in the first two years.

WHEELER:

Yeah, you definitely have. And it is noticed and appreciated up here on the North Coast. That's for sure. All right, let's get to the bill that I'm maybe most excited about. And that is AB2494. Chris, take it away. What is this bill about?

ROGERS:

I mean, do you want to introduce it?

WHEELER:

All right, all right, here we go, here we go. Rolling up my sleeves. All right, so in your district is the Jackson Demonstration State Forest, which is around 48,000 acres between Fort Bragg and Ukiah. This is a mostly redwood forest, and it is owned by the state of California. It was purchased in the late 1940s, in 1947, by the state of California to prevent it from becoming a national forest. And the state bought it because they wanted to have a sustained place for timber production that is owned by the state. Let's go back in time to 1947, post-war building boom period. The public good, the public need that was trying to be served was increased timber production, increased timber production efficiency. So this was a place that we could get timber out on state-owned land.

Fast forward to today, right? It is almost 80 years later, and timber production is still a value that we have here in the state of California, but with public land, we have a lot of other values. We have things like clean water, recreation, wildlife protection, right? Carbon sequestration, right. Climate, there we go, one of your passions. And sometimes timber production is antithetical to the management for these other purposes, right? Sometimes it is copacetic, and you can do both at the same time. And so we have this new legislation that we at EPIC approached Assemblymember Rogers about, and said, hey, what if we re-conceptualized how we manage these kinds of forests, these state demonstration forests? And now perhaps, do you want to take it from there?

ROGERS:

Yeah, sure. And I will say when I approach my colleagues and talk about this bill, the first thing that I tell them is it has been 50 years since we have changed how we manage state forests. 50, five, zero. The last person to even try was Wes Chesbro 20 years ago. And since then, our understanding of the threats to California have changed. Before 50 years ago, we didn't have climate goals. We didn't have carbon sequestration or climate adaptation goals. We do now. And in fact, we spend a lot of money trying to meet those goals.

And especially in Jackson, what we know is redwood forests are the highest sequestering forest per acre out of any type of land mass that we have. So we are cutting off our nose to spite our face if we are not following ecologically sound management practices. And you're right. What the state law says right now is that we'll do sustained maximum production. That's the driving factor is maximizing the ability to get an economic return from this asset. It's a story that the North Coast knows very well, whether it's timber or fish or cannabis is the extraction of our natural resources for economic gain and leaving behind communities.

You also couple, not just the work that EPIC and others have been doing, save Jackson, for instance, but you have the County of Mendocino who has recently changed their legislative platform to include other uses of that forest that are more sustainable, focused on recreation, focused on conservation projects. And so the time is now, the time is now to go back to my colleagues and say, actually, everything that we have come to know, even in the last 20 years since Wes last tried to do this is that these forests are much more valuable to us as an asset that is managed through the lens of climate, through the lens of recreation, not through the lens of taking more timber than otherwise would be available. And the bill does not, let's be really clear.

The bill does not say that you can't do timber harvesting. It says that it, that, that harvesting, that timber that gets sold has to be a by-product of other types, whether it's research, carbon sequestration, climate adaptation, fire management, but practices that we know that manage a forest in a way that is healthier and beneficial to that overall community.

WHEELER:

And I think that we have a great example of how this forest could be managed. When we look at some of the projects that are going on in our state and national park system here on the North Coast, Redwood National and State Parks, we have Redwoods Rising a, a program that is between save the Redwoods league and the state and national park system, where we have road obliteration, we have restoration forestry work going in and this restoration forestry work at times produces as an insult, incidental by-product merchantable timber. And so we are going in with any of these forests. We are, we're creating better conditions for the forest to thrive. We're rebalancing the species stocking in the forest to be more ecologically appropriate. And also there's a timber by-product.

And so I think that we can just take that model that Save the Redwoods League has spearheaded and bring it down to Mendocino and we will continue to have timber production, but we'll also have better management for recreation. This is a huge area for mushroomers because it's a state forest land. There's a lot of restrictions on other land where you can go mushroom hunting. So there's a lot of mushroom hunters who come here. There's birders, there's mountain bikers. It's the backyard for Fort Bragg and for Ukiah. So it gets a lot of love from those two communities and timber production has gotten in the way. Epic actually got involved in the Jackson demonstration state forest because of mountain bikers who were upset because their mountain bike trails are being closed for a timber harvest. So now we can just rebalance and reprioritize what state owned forest land can and should do.

ROGERS:

And Tom, I should mention another bill that we're working on that couples with is AB2578, which actually would take efforts in three different state departments around outdoor recreation and ecotourism and pull them all into a one-stop shop. And so when you talk about an asset like Jackson Demonstration State Forest, not just from an ecological perspective, but mountain biking, for instance, we know that that's what the future of our region looks like. When you look at go-business plans for each regional development, they have the North Coast really slated around ecotourism and recreation. So there's a huge opportunity there for an area that's felt left behind for a long time.

And as you mentioned, and as I have to explain to people, as I talk about this bill frequently, it doesn't mean that there will be no fiber being removed from the forest. We do want the forest to be managed. It just means that it will be managed differently. You can't just take the most valuable trees and call that land management. All right.

WHEELER:

All right, that's pretty simple. So last year at the end of the legislative session, we had a CEQA rollback bill, SB 131. This was a budget trailer bill, meaning the governor said, hey, this is such a priority for me doing CEQA reform that I will not pass a budget without this legislation being passed. And there was a series of closed-door negotiations with the governor's office, with the Senate Pro Tem's office, with the Assembly Majority Leader's office, and we got this bill. It was voted on relatively quickly. And at the time, there was kind of a promise from folks, from assembly members like you and Damon Connolly, that we will do a cleanup bill. We know that there were issues with this CEQA reform bill and that we are hoping to fix those in the next legislative session. What's going on with the CEQA cleanup bill?

ROGERS:

Yeah, and I'll just say so that this bill 131 popped up with about 48 hours notice before they wanted us to vote on it. And they shoved it into the budget. And as you know, Tom, once you conclude your budget negotiations, it is very rare to see significant pushback or folks voting against the budget. And yet, you had 20 of us myself, Damon Connolly included that wouldn't vote for that. I think the technical term is crap that was put in front of us. And there was a promise that they would fix it. I will note that bill popped up in two days, we had six months from the end of that bill to the end of session or to where we are now for the legislature to fix it. You can fix things really easily when people actually want to fix it. And it hasn't been done yet, even though that was the promise from leadership.

So David Connolly has introduced a bill this year. I apologize, I don't know the number of it yet. We're still learning the bill number since the bill introduction deadline was last Friday, but focus is really on the three main problems with 131. There was a very loose definition about what advanced manufacturing means. And especially for that CEQA streamlining and buy right projects, it's a critical piece. And I think the one that's gotten the most attention is what exactly does advanced manufacturing mean? And what will this apply to? The second area is it butchered the Endangered Species Act definitions, which will have some significant ramifications in some of our preservation efforts. And then the third is it eliminated tribal consultation on these projects as well. Going back to that relationship that our tribes have with the state and how murky it has been, this has been one of the bright spots is the requirement that when a project is going to impact the native lands of a tribe that they are consulted to see where are their sacred sites, where are their burial sites to make sure that they're not impacted.

So the bill will focus on those areas. It has been introduced. The Speaker of the Assembly, Rob Revis, I've been told will be on the bill. So that gives me some hope that that means that it will make it through. But it is certainly, I think, one of the most contentious things to watch this year. Because from my perspective, if the governor had wanted to fix this last year, he could have, he didn't. And so now it's going to have to take all of us pushing really hard to make sure that it does, in fact, get done.

WHEELER:

Well, Chris, I really appreciate you coming on to the Econews Report, and we'll be sure to have you back maybe partway through or at the end of the legislative session to see how things are going.

ROGERS:

I would love that and thanks for the time and thanks for everything that you're doing to protect the coast.

WHEELER:

All right, join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.