Happy New Year from Senator Stern

Dear Friends,
As we embark into a new 2024, the final year of my second term as your Senator, I thought it might be worth looking back for a moment, before we charge ahead. The humble, hard charging (and at times, hilarious) experts in the Capitol Office–led by my second-to-none Chief of Staff Brendan Murphy– tackled some gigantic challenges over the last year.  

Global Climate Leadership
I just returned from Dubai for the United Nations annual climate change summit, COP 28, where we helped push for a global deal to commit to a just, orderly, equitable transition from fossil fuels.  Other nations were particularly interested in two new California laws I helped author, SB 253 and 261, which, in the face of federal inaction, will give the largest American corporations a clear, consistent set of rules to disclose their climate risks and emissions.  

COP28 Panel Discussion

Homelessness and Mental Health: Breaking the Prison to Street Pipeline for the Severely Mentally Ill
While many people fall into homelessness through poverty alone, the mental health and addiction crises, and the recycling of the same untreated people through our jails and hospitals, are primary drivers of the most intransigent cases. LA County continues to be a challenging system, and while we attempted to prevent the District Attorney from being able to dismiss cases where people who commit misdemeanors and are found mentally incompetent to stand trial, without any guaranteed mental health treatment, SB 717 was watered down last minute so we will have to make another push this year.

Locking Arms with the City of Los Angeles
The good news is that Mayor Bass has been fixing up the City of Los Angeles, and we’ve worked with her to secure funding for new housing, which included “Hope at the Mission” a 100 unit/400 bed family housing program funded through our secured Homekey dollars, moving families off the street in Woodland Hills. I was also able to secure $10 million for the LA County Department of Mental Health to be used in the San Fernando Valley to expand domestic violence services with Haven Hills, and to empower LA City Council partners with street-oriented mental health crisis response (although we are still waiting for LA County to release the funding). Lastly, I helped write the upcoming ballot proposition, Prop 1, to ensure that there will be more of the behavioral health treatment facilities that SB 717 was pushing to secure.

Hope the Mission "The Woodlands" Press Conference

Local Investment in Safer, Greener Neighborhoods Safer Roads
Our region also needs more resources and stronger laws to tackle extreme speeding. After passing Ryan’s Law two years ago, to ensure that repeat offenders who kill others from extreme speeding or sideshows are prosecuted more aggressively, we also succeeded in upping penalties for everyday speeders, by authorizing a five-year speed camera pilot in five cities, including Los Angeles. Unfortunately, that didn’t save the lives of the four Pepperdine students fatally struck on Pacific Coast Highway recently, or countless others who die daily from reckless drivers.  In addition, we’ll be looking for local projects to fund up to 4.25 million for traffic and street safety in LA. 

Cooler Schools
Since becoming a dad, and moving back to the San Fernando Valley, I have become acutely aware of the danger extreme heat poses to kids. Recent research by UCLA and other academics showed that on a 93-degree day in the Valley, school asphalt temperatures can reach 145 degrees!! That’s why we wrote and passed a bill to expedite the construction of school shade structures and will be looking for promising local school projects with a $1.25 million in funding to “green” schools and create shade solutions through urban forestry, alongside a statewide plan to fund thousands of school projects over the next few years. 

More Green Spaces
As the Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Agoura Hills stays on track for a 2025 completion, we are now looking to regions with less open space and wild neighbors. We are embarking on an ambitious plan to re-envision the Sepulveda Basin and the LA River that feeds into it, to be both a major wildlife corridor, and a “Central Park” for the San Fernando Valley, acting as a hub for outdoor recreation, sports, and civic life as we ready for the 2028 Olympics and beyond. To help advance the draft Vision Plan, which Mayor Bass’ team, led by Deputy Mayor Randall Winston, recently released, I secured $2.5 million in last year’s budget, along with a carve-out for Upper LA River projects like this in the Senate climate bond I am authoring.  

Slide from the Sepulveda Basin Vision Plan

Rising Anti-Semitism 
Hamas’ unspeakable attacks on thousands of innocent people in Israel on October 7th, sparked a dangerous spike in anti-Semitism locally and around the world. While hate in general has been on the rise since 2016. The issue has become particularly acute for the Jewish community, as evidenced by over 200 bomb threats to Jewish institutions in the last three months, everyday marginalization occurring in classrooms and workplaces, and, most egregiously, the killing of Paul Kessler in Thousand Oaks at the hands of an anti-Israel protest.  

I have experienced this hate first-hand, and especially after losing my father-in-law and renowned Holocaust survivor, Joshua Kaufman, last year, the consequences of such hate, unchecked, ring louder than ever. Working with my colleagues in the Legislative Jewish Caucus, we will be responding with a focus on education and security.  

Just like Joshua would have, I waved the flags of Israel and America in Washington DC last month, where I helped lead a California delegation to our nation’s capital, meeting with Senators Padilla and Butler, and several members of Congress to thank them for supporting Israel’s right to defend itself. 
 

Trip to DC Leading CA Delegation

How Can We Help? Here to Serve You
At home in our district office, where we have solved thousands of cases over the past term for constituents in need, we continue to work tirelessly to address the needs of our community. Whether it is assisting with EDD, health care, DMV, utilities, and other headaches, our district office is dedicated to being a creative problem-solving support system for you. Most recently, we held two “Senior Seminars” in Moorpark and Northridge to help older residents avoid scams, find support for in-home wellness checks and other mental health resources, and find lost or stolen property.

Senior Seminar in Northridge

Welcoming Our New District Chief
With that creative, community-driven spirit in mind, I am proud to announce our new District Director, Evan Meyer. As a public artist and technology entrepreneur, Evan’s built companies like Beautify, which transforms dead civic spaces into vibrant cultural hubs. He is the definition of a citizen-leader, who shares many of your everyday frustrations and dogged faith in government. We are grateful he’s decided to take the helm and move from citizen to government leader. I hope you will get a chance to meet him along with the rest of our top-flight district team.

New District Director Evan Meyer (left)

As we enter this New Year, we hope you will lean on us with new ideas for legislation, and whatever challenges you face, no matter how big or small.

Faithfully yours in service, 

Senator Henry Stern