CAEZ Meeting Update

CAEZ held its quarterly board meeting yesterday in Sacramento. It was the last CAEZ appearance for Mark Maldonado who, as we mentioned earlier, has opted to take a dream job in Mammoth Lakes. Mark seemed very relaxed and happy as he gave us the HCD update.

The highlights from HCD were:

• Vouchering regulations - Mark said that they were putting the final touches on the responses to comments and the changes to the regulations that that process brought out. He said that we should expect to see these responses and a new draft of the regulations "next week" (but we have learned to take Mark's time predictions with a grain of salt). Once those are released there is a new 15 day public comment period. He then said that while HCD was obligated to respond to every comment submitted during the original public comment period, they are not under any obligation to respond to comments made in the second comment period. He also suggested that a possibility exists to enroll regulations and then later amend them. The issue is that if the regulations are not entirely complete by October, the whole things gets nullified and every time they make a change they have to initiate a new 15 day public comment period.
  

My personal prediction is that HCD will not comment on any comments received in the upcoming public comment period and will send the regulations straight to the Office of Administrative Law soon after the close of the comment period. Mark said that from the time they are filed with OAL, they will become effective in 30 days.

• The application process for new Enterprise Zones is in full swing. Mark's educated guess was that they will be receiving about 30 applications. Conditional designations are still expected to be finalized by 10/27/06. For some reason, they are planning on treating the list of applications as confidential.

The other main topic of discussion was Assemblyman Arambula's AB 485. CAEZ sent a letter expressing their concerns with the bill, and there are apparently a number of amendments that have already been agreed to that have not yet made it into print. Expect hearings on the bill in the Jobs Committee next month.

The next board meeting will take place at the annual CAEZ conference on Nov. 15.