Senator McNerney’s 2025 Legislation

Dear Neighbors and Friends,

As you know, this is my first year representing you as your state senator in Sacramento. One of the most important roles I have is to deliver new legislation on critical issues facing the people and families of Senate District 5 and California as a whole.

My 2025 legislative package is designed to help make California and our district more affordable, ensure that we have clean water while protecting against future droughts, accelerate our transition to clean energy, and ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) is safe and beneficial and does not cause harm to our society.

Below is a summary of the bills I have introduced this year by the above topic areas. The summaries include links to more information about each bill.
 

Helping Make CA More Affordable
 

• SB 24 Protecting Ratepayers
  SB 24 helps protect Californians against skyrocketing utility bills by preventing investor-owned utilities like PG&E and others, from using ratepayer funds for lobbying, campaigning, political advertising, and fighting local efforts to create a municipal utility. Also prohibits utilities from turning off people’s power on days when outdoor air pollution is unhealthy.
• SB 225 Summer Meals for Families
  SB 225 fights hunger in CA by expanding the state’s free summer meals program to enable a parent or caregiver of children who participate in the free summer meals program to also receive a free meal, and allowing parents to eat alongside their children.
• SB 69 Clean Cars 4 All
  SB 69 helps low-income communities impacted by air pollution, including in San Joaquin County, by directing more funding to programs helping lower-income consumers to trade in their older higher-polluting cars with newer and cleaner cars.
• SB 279 Helping Farmers & Winegrape Growers
  SB 279 reduces costs for CA farmers and winegrape growers by allowing them to compost large amounts of green waste onsite during a biomass event, such as the removal of an orchard or vineyard. This follows California’s ban on nearly all agricultural burning. Also allows community composting programs, urban farms, and school farms to compost larger amounts of green waste onsite.
• SB 543 Low-Cost Housing
  SB 543 helps address CA’s housing affordability crisis by streamlining the construction of new, low-cost housing known as accessory dwelling units (ADUs), also called backyard cottages or in-law units, and junior accessory dwelling units (JADUs), such as an attached garage converted into living space.
• SB 711 Making Tax Filing Easier
  SB 711 makes it easier for CA taxpayers – especially tax payers with small businesses – to file their taxes by aligning several state requirements with federal requirements.
• SB 846 Protecting Farmworkers’ Wages
  SB 846 protects farmworkers from wage theft by updating state law that holds agricultural employers accountable.
   

Ensuring Clean Water and Protecting Against Drought
 

• SB 31 Expanding the Use of Recycled Water
  SB 31 helps drought-proof California by boosting the use of recycled water. It also enhances the state’s fresh water supply by allowing businesses, homes, and agencies to expand their use of recycled water for irrigation and other uses, rather than relying on drinking water.
• SB 454 Addressing PFAS Water Pollution
  SB 454 addresses PFAS pollution in CA’s water supply by creating a special state fund — the PFAS Mitigation Fund — that local agencies and cities could access to help pay for the cleanup of toxic PFAS in drinking water. Our district, including the city of Pleasanton, has a significant PFAS pollution problem.
   

Creating Clean Energy Jobs and Fighting Climate Change
 

• SB 787 Strengthening Clean Energy Supply Chains
  SB 787 helps ensure more clean energy jobs will come to California by requiring state agencies, labor unions, environmental organizations, clean energy industries, and other sectors to coordinate CA’s supply chain development for three key clean energy sectors: batteries, offshore wind, and building-decarbonization technologies.
• SB 86 Clean Energy Funding
  SB 86 creates clean manufacturing energy jobs in California by extending and expanding a key program providing tax incentives to CA green energy manufacturers that open up shop in California and hire California workers. Also adds nuclear fusion manufacturing to the tax incentive program.
• SB 235 Critical Minerals Recycling
  SB 235 helps ensure California is reducing its reliance on foreign countries and foreign supply chains by laying the groundwork for a state market for recycling and reusing critical minerals essential to clean energy applications, including batteries, electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind turbines. Also would reduce CA’s reliance on critical minerals mined overseas in processes that harm the environment.
• SB 327 Accelerating Fusion Energy
  Fusion energy has the potential to produce unlimited amounts of safe clean energy by mimicking the power of the sun to combine atoms. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in our district has been on the cutting edge of fusion technology. SB 327 boosts fusion energy by creating a fusion data center that would foster research and collaboration, and establish fusion data standards.
• SB 698 Solar Equipment Standards
  SB 698 modernizes and preserves CA’s world-leading solar equipment standards – which ensure that solar equipment installed in California is safe – and expands them to include bidirectional charging equipment standards and battery storage systems standards, which homeowners with rooftop solar are increasingly using in conjunction with their solar systems.
   

Ensuring AI Is Safe and Beneficial
 

• SB 7 No Robo Bosses Act
  SB 7 requires human oversight of artificial intelligence systems in the workplace to help prevent abuses. It also bars the use of AI systems that use personal information of workers to “predict” what they’ll do in the future. If enacted, the No Robo Bosses Act would be the first such law in the nation.
• SB 813 Safety Standards for Artificial Intelligence
  SB 813 lays the groundwork for the nation’s first transparent safety and security standards for artificial intelligence created by independent, third-party panels of AI experts and academics, while also cementing CA’s position as a global leader in AI innovation.
• SB 833 Human Oversight of AI in Critical Infrastructure
  SB 833 requires human oversight of AI in CA’s critical infrastructure in order to safeguard the state’s transportation, energy, communications, emergency services, and financial services systems. If enacted, SB 833 would also be the first such law in the nation.

I am also joint author of the following legislation this year:

• SB 80 Nuclear Fusion Hubs (with Sen. Caballero)
  SB 80 accelerates adoption of fusion energy in CA by creating a fusion energy hub within the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz).
• SB 663 Wildfire Property Tax Exemption (with Sens. Allen and Perez)
  SB 663 doubles the amount of time that survivors of the LA wildfires have to access property tax relief, while extending the length of time survivors have to rebuild.
• SCR 25 Advancing Fusion Energy (with Sen. Blakespear)
  SCR 25 advances fusion energy in CA by setting a goal of establishing a first-of-a-kind fusion pilot plant in the state by the 2030s.

For updates on my legislation and on the California state budget, please visit my website or follow me on Facebook, X-Twitter, Instagram, BlueSky, or Threads. It is an honor serving you in the state Senate.