2024 Fall Elections: The Potential Impact on State and Local Governments

Transcription:

Greg Dawley (00:11):

So I think we'll go ahead and get started. I want to thank everyone for being here early in the morning to be at another RBC sponsored Policy Briefing Breakfast, and I want to thank the Bond Buyer again for allowing us to continue to sponsor this format. We find it's a good way to create some dialogue. My name is Greg Dawley and I'm RBCs, West Coast Municipal Manager and also the Co-Head of Public Power and Utilities nationally for RBC like last year with AI, when we covered that topic, we'll be tackling another small topic in 45 minutes this time, the 2024 fall elections, the potential impact on state and local governments. So obviously a very large category. I know we're in a room full of political junkies and observers, so we've worked to avoid making this just a discussion about poll results and various political horse races.

(01:06):

Many which are very close to call right now, too close to call. We will try to keep much of this discussion. We on the policy implications for state and local government depending on the various outcomes on November 4th. And we have three experts here today who have lived and worked in the local, state and federal sectors for the majority or all of their careers. First I have Jared Boigon, Jared sitting in the middle there. Jared is a Founding Partner of TeamCivX. He's spent almost 30 years in campaign management and has guided over 150 successful ballot and tax measures in California. So he has a very good knowledge of California state and local politics and will be focusing on that today. Emily Brock to his left, Emily is the Federal Liaison to the Governmental Finance Officers Association, essentially GFOA's federal lobbyist. And she's been in the trenches fighting for state and local governments on a daily basis in Washington for years and we often see her quotes in the Bond Buyer whenever we're talking about legislation in Washington.

(02:12):

Finally, I have Natalie McGarry. Natalie is Co-Head of RBCs US Governmental Affairs in Washington. She has formerly worked at the White House and also for various house members or as a staff member to the house and also for several bank and insurance trade associations. She's very focused as you can imagine on the 2025 tax budget legislation in Washington. And we'll discuss this farther when we get into the panel. Before we go, and while I said we're not going to be talking a lot about the races, this is a good setup slide and it's hard to see in the back. On the upper left is as of Monday, this is real clear politics, which is a good poll consolidation website showing that the presidential race is essentially a coin toss. Every day a new poll comes out that kind of shows it to be within the margin of error.

(03:05):

And then there are seventy seven battleground states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, and Nevada, which is an on there are all kind of really within the margin of error and move around a little bit. But it's all going to come down to fighting precinct to precinct and turnout really is what's going to drive a difference there. The house is very close. Also the generic will you vote for a Democrat or Republican is like 0.9% up for Democrats right now in California. Those races on the bottom left, there are five races in California and there are five races in New York that are spending a hundred million dollars in total for each of 'em at least. And those are going to determine the house for the most part. So those are going to be very interesting. So I'm a big college football fan. I'm not used to seeing political ads in California because usually things are soon to be determined for the most part.

(04:02):

But I've seen many, many House and Trump commercials during football games the last few weeks because they're trying to drive down turnout and they're also trying to win these house races in Orange County and Riverside County, at least where I live, I live in LA, the US Senate is leaning Republican and a lot of that just has to do with the fact that the Democrats have a lot more seats to defend. Look, particularly at Montana. Montana looks like the incumbents have a hard time pulling it out. But then also look at in Texas, look at Ted Cruz. He's one point up right now as well and that's not on the table, but that's an interesting one to watch. So nothing's determined, but it's leaning Republican so it's interesting times. And then the state propositions, our data's a little older. It's using some polls that are publicly available that show that the climate bond and the state education bond are both above 50%.

(04:58):

But that proposition five, which would allow local governments to have elections for affordable housing and infrastructure bonds and only require 55% approval as opposed to two thirds now. That was not passing as of a couple of weeks ago. It was kind of even, and this is not a lot of money being put into those races. So I'm going to let my panelists give some initial remarks and then I'll direct some questions to them and then we're going to have the audience ask whatever questions they want to ask as well. So I'm going to turn it over to Jared now.

Jared Boigon (05:30):

Thanks Greg. Are these on? You guys hear us okay? Great. Well good morning, nice to see you all. Jared Boigon, as Greg said with TeamCivX. So our firm is a little bit of a unique campaign strategy firm. We do bonds and other kinds of tax measures for local agencies. As Greg said, there's going to be a slide, he's got his presentation that there are like 267 local bond measures on the loan, on the ballot in California this fall. Our firm is working with about a quarter of those and several dozen other different sales and other kinds of taxes. So we have a lot of knowledge and awareness of what's going on on the ground in California. And we work with those agencies, issuers, many of you that are here, representatives that are here. And we also work with the political campaigns that do them.

(06:13):

So that's the experience that I bring to this. I wanted to just as overview, kind of give you three big ideas to think about today. And there's a little bit of a more local context than the big presidential election. I know Greg was talking about a moment ago, but this is the bond buyer's conference. I know bonds on everybody's mind, California want to take bonds to the ballot all the time to voters. And so the first big idea is people do not understand bonds. Voters do not understand bonds. I barely understand bonds, right? You guys understand 'em in a very technical, very detailed way. Voters don't even know, am I going to pay for this? Are my taxes going to go up? And in California for example, in the state propositions, the answer is no. But in the local bond measures, the answer is yes.

(07:01):

So it isn't always a simple answer so people don't really understand them. And a big challenge to the whole exercise is how do we help our government agency issuers talk about them in a constructive way? So that's one big idea to think about is that there's a big gap between what voters understand about bonds and what we understand about them and bridging it is complicated. The second thing is I would say there are two California's now that's grossly simplistic. There are endless Californias, California is limitless. It's fascinating, it's a great place to work. It's an amazingly interesting place, but we don't have time for all that. So for this morning, there's two Californians. There's basically people that are getting by just fine. It's a high cost of living, but there's also, revenues are high for companies here as well. And a middle class in California is a pretty well off middle class, upper middle class.

(07:56):

There's a big one does well, there's a lot of wealthy parts of California. People are doing well. They have the ability to sustain a very nice lifestyle and that drives a lot of what's still happening in California. A lot of the progress, a lot of the momentum there are also people that are really, really struggling paycheck to paycheck, month to month housing and security. The cost of housing is really high. There is a significant affordability issue when gas prices and grocery prices go up. And that is not a partisan question. You have people in the first California of both parties or political persuasions. And that same is true in the second California. So when we talk about all of these kind of political issues, the economics are always front and center. What part of California are you in? What part of California you're talking to and who, how many of each are in your various kind of challenge and jurisdictions when we're looking at elections and starting to count votes.

(08:50):

And so it is a very different reality for folks. It's hard for the people in the one to understand the people in the other. And that's something we grapple with every day. And the third thing, and this is a gift I'll give to those of you that are coming from other states as you visit our wonderful golden state that California is 20 years ahead of the rest of the country, whatever you see here today, in about 20 years, you're going to see it in your own state. So that was true. Things like Ronald Reagan was governor in the sixties, ended up being president in the 1980s. We had a movie star governor before Trump. We had Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? I know that sort of happened in Minnesota too, but California had it as well. We had a big immigration debate. Prop 180 7, this is long ago, this is 1994.

(09:38):

So 30 years when there was a big statewide proposition to take driver's license from illegal immigrants, it passed overwhelmingly at that time. However, it precipitated the unbelievable shift to democratic super majorities in this state that you see today, both the state house and state senate in California are super majority Democrat. Not even close honestly, to the margin of changing, to the point where the division within the Democratic party of progressive versus moderate is more important today in California than whether you're a Republican at the state government level. You have almost no power as a Republican in California. And that shift started because of the immigration politics of 30 years ago in California. We had a taxpayer revolt in 1970s and you saw in the 1990s some of those things roll into other states. So when you walk around San Francisco and visit California and you see things like robo taxis that's coming, homelessness is not going to be limited to California.

(10:39):

That is an income divide problem. And even though politicians like to demonize California, that is a bigger issue and that will also be something other communities are going to be dealing with at a bigger and bigger scale. And the wonderful, beautiful diversity of California is something else that is making its way around the country and the incredible kind of richness that brings to our communities is going to also be bringing to everybody else's community within the next 20 to 25 years. That's how America's changing. So that's a little bit of three big ideas for me. Greg, happy to,

Greg Dawley (11:11):

Go to Emily now.

Emily Brock (11:14):

Sure. Hi everybody. Good to see you all. I've had a political conversation with 99.9% of you, so this is a great chance to sort of spread the word right now. A-G-F-O-A is preparing. We are getting ready. I think it's our job to get out and vote our conscience, but it's my job to deal with the fallout. And so what I think is important as we're preparing ourselves for November and shortly after November, what we need to do is we need to remember 2017, we need to remember what it felt like to not be on the bullet train of tax reform. We lost advance funding, we almost lost private activity bonds for hospitals. There was many, many things that we had to band aid in the process of about 30 days when that 1.5 trillion tax reform actually passed. So it's important for us that we start to think about it in terms of offense, not defense.

(12:19):

That is our goal this time around. And it's especially important if, as Jared said, if voters don't know what bonds are and your elected officials don't know what bonds are, we're in a real pickle. We need to make sure that everyone understands what bonds are. And so GFOA is starting a campaign built by bonds.com. You can go to it right now. In fact, I have a slide later on that I'll be sharing with you where we need to input stories about what has been built by bonds and we need at least four projects per congressional district because if we end up having to think about, I mean at worst the preservation of the tax exemption, we've got to make sure that they understand what has been built by bonds. It's as simple as that. We would love to have large macroeconomic conversations with the Joint Commission on taxation, but we've lost those math conversations every time. So it's time for us to make sure that everybody understands what they are, what they have the capacity to do, and that there is an entire market that is unique on this globe to create infrastructure across our country. And so that's my goal today is to have everybody leave, put in several projects or your client's projects on this map and make it so that we can start to play a little offense and not defense.

Natalie McGarry (13:41):

So as we near the election day for about two weeks, less than two weeks out, we're about to vote in a very historical presidential election, the very first for America to have a biracial female as a presidential candidate. And I think that is a pure wow factor and you'll go down in history that should bring a lot of excitement, anxiousness in dc, but it also brings a lot of uncertainties. And the uncertainties bring lack of clarity on how the government works. Congress, what will Congress do when they come back after November 5th? They will have to work on funding the government. That's a must do. I think it's political suicide for anyone to allow the government to go into shutdown mode. Again, the current funding expires on December 20th and aside the funding for the government, they have on their agenda the defense, the National Defense Authorization Act.

(14:46):

That is something that congress generally do on an annual basis, annual basis this year. Each chamber has passed their own version and so they need to come back and meet and reconcile and pass that. Again, that is a must do, but I don't know if this particular Congress can get that done. Usually around this time of the congressional session, the previous congresses have able to pass about 300 or so bills which have been entered into enacted into law. This particular Congress, the 118th, have done 106, so much less. So that leads, but that's a point I wanted to raise, show you that there's not a lot of business that Congress and the government is able to do. And to Emily's point about educating members of Congress and their staff on tax bill and what it means to you, I highly recommend if you have the opportunity to go and talk to your members of Congress about that at RBC.

(16:02):

We do that. I do that for RBC. But as far as the elections go, I think the key word that I will use again and again is tightness. The margin is very slim. And at the presidential level, if one candidate has a narrow leap the next day, the other candidate will gain that back. So in these last few days, I see it's a true horse race, if you will. So it's not clear what they can do or what they will do because after the election's over the first week of January, members will come back and they do what we all know on January 6th, they count the electoral votes. That's the first thing that they must do. And we've seen before there's a little hiccup with that in the past. Hopefully it'll go smoothly this time. And then after that they elect their, each chambers will elect their leadership.

(17:10):

So Senate has the senate leader and the house will have their speaker, and then after that they get into the committee organizations and assignments. I don't see real work on legislative issues until March or April. So tax and tax will be on the agenda. When can that get through? Committees can start working on that maybe March or April or even later if the speakership in the house is delayed for whatever reasons. So in my opinion, you may not even see a tax bill until after August. Can they get it done in 2025? That's a hard push. But if we all work together, we may get there.

Greg Dawley (18:03):

So we're going to turn to some questions now for the panel. Sorry about that. I'm turn to Emily first and kind of hit you with a couple of things. Talk about sort of the bread and butter of Munis, BAB subsidies and salt. What do you think? And then you talked about tax exemption. You have your shirt on, keep calm,

Emily Brock (18:21):

Hang On, hang on. Keep calm and issue bonds. All right guys, it's got to keep it going.

Greg Dawley (18:29):

How much in you see your opinion is tax exemption sort of in jeopardy compared to 2017? Is it the same? Is it worse? Is it better? It's hard to know, but,

Emily Brock (18:38):

Well, I mean we've all seen, there are three now national reports from conservative think tanks that say that tax exemption is an efficient subsidy and therefore it should be eliminated in two sentences just like that. And we have books and pages and pamphlets and primers and all the things that tell you why it's not an inefficient subsidy. The problem is of course, when you look at the tax exemption as an inefficient subsidy, you're myopically looking at it from an investor perspective, which is fine. But there is also the other side of the coin, which is it as an investment tool in communities, right? It costs the federal government about 135 billion to provide the tax exemption per the JCT map. We save about $300 billion. So a two to one ratio on creating infrastructure, that's a heck of an ROI for a federal expenditure. But the tendency is to only look at it from the investor perspective.

(19:37):

So you've got to really kind of make sure that everybody understands there's two different ways that the tax exemption works. Now, of course in the last tax reform, and of course in every year, every spending year, which is bi-annually, since they have discussed Babs subsidy payments or subsidy payments, carte blanche as sort of a principle of saving money, right now our national debt is at $35 trillion. So every time the Republicans are going to say We're spending too much, we need to claw it back. And heck, they even have some Democrats on their side to say, we need to claw back federal spending. So anytime there's a spending bill, they're going to be talking about clawing back subsidies. Now thankfully, Babs fall within farm subsidies and healthcare subsidies. These are much larger subsidies than ours, but they are considered along with sequestration concerns. And so now it's time.

(20:33):

We will probably see at the end of this year another sequestration, another subsidy conversation simply because it's the end of the year and they have to Natalie's point, there are things that they have to address. But with Babs in particular, and I've had this conversation with a few of you in this room, that's another keep calm moment. It's very unlikely that Congress will eliminate subsidy payments to farms and therefore we are safe. Unfortunately, we find our way on the ticket that way. When it comes to salt, what an interesting conundrum we are in $500 billion was a pay for the $1.2 trillion tax bill in 2017. And what we have right now is the president that actually sponsored and passed that $1.5 trillion tax bill is now saying we should lift the salt cap. What does that mean? Well, salt cap has not gotten any cheaper, so it's going to cost more than $500 billion. And the tax bill, the way that the CBO scored it stands at about $8 trillion. So if we don't have salt to pay for that $8 trillion total tab, what else is going to be used to pay for the $8 trillion tax bill? Everyone is going to be at stake including the municipal bond tax exemption, and our $135 billion tab is going to fall right underneath that. So again, couldn't emphasize more the importance of what communication means to this Congress, educating them and making sure that we're prepared for what happens in the fallout.

Jared Boigon (22:17):

Something you said, I'm not surprised to hear you say that there's a growing sort of conservative concern about the tax exemption because we see it at the grassroots level that in the last several years, anti-tax groups have really focused on bonds as a target for trying to lessen the property tax burden for property owners. For a long time, I think there really wasn't a strong connection in most people's minds between local bond measures and property tax increases. And again, in California, the state proposition bond propositions don't do that. They obligate the general fund. They don't obligate the property taxpayer, but the local level, it is a property tax bill. And we've seen a lot of efforts in California by conservative groups. They've changed the laws to make these bonds harder to pass, have put more language into the actual ballot questions themselves to try and clarify the amount of tax that people pay when they put these on the ballot.

(23:06):

So the movement, the anti-tax movement is sort of percolating up in, I think from the grassroots and bonds are in the crosshairs, I would say there's no question about that. So the way to combat that, the way we combat that when we are taking these local propositions forward is just as you said Emily, we have to talk about the impacts in the community. What do these bonds do? We can't get caught in debates about math because you can't win. When you have a debate about government and math voters just hold their wallets tighter. That's not going to make them feel generous. But you can talk about what the money is doing, you can talk about what it builds. And even more so when we talk about schools, for example, not just what you build, but what building enables for education. So we don't even try to talk about the school building.

(23:55):

We talk about how it makes teaching better and how it makes learning better, how parks enhance neighborhoods, not just what the park will be or what a safe play surface looks like, but what that does for the feel of a neighborhood, how that enhances your property values in general. So the impact of that. And then of course bonds are big job creators and there are lots of very strong political alliances in California that I hope find a way to flex their muscle in Washington as well that are unified, both labor unions and the union hiring construction firms who use them, the engineering companies, the contractors, et cetera. That is a very powerful alliance. We have a southern California, Northern California coalitions here in California that can be very effective when they focus on pushing for those projects because they keep the focus on the working person, the working family, the jobs that bonds create. And so that's the kind of narrative that we need to be pushing to keep our bonds protected.

Greg Dawley (24:51):

So I'm going to pivot to a different topic with Natalie. There's been a lot of discussion over the last five years about a concept called safe banking that allows cannabis and marijuana distributing companies to have bank accounts, and that's not currently allowed at the federal level. It's led to a lot of different challenges at the local level. So I once wanted to get it, and we've been following this one for quite a while. Treasurer has been very focused on this, also the state treasurer. So I wanted to see what your view was on that in this session coming up and after.

Natalie McGarry (25:25):

So with this bill, I had to start with it from inception when then Congressman Perlmutter from Colorado came into the committee room where I worked for the House Financial Services Committee back then. He waived this piece of paper and he's like, which one of you want to join to co-sponsor this bill? That was in 2011, and it has garnered bipartisan support, bicameral support from then till now. But the pickle is Congress can't get it to the president's desk for him to sign for him or him to sign into law. And during the Obama years, we thought we were close last cycle, we thought we were close. This year we think we're close again. And it is a priority item for Senator Schumer. He is working intently on this. Do I think it has a chance to pass just like anything else? It is on his priority list.

(26:32):

He is still the senate leader. He construct the agenda for the remainder of this Congress. So there is a chance, I personally think, and there are other legal folks in DC seem to think that the bill may not help so much or as much as what the DEA and DOJ are doing, they are looking into descheduling cannabis. And that might help most to make cannabis not illegal, an illegal substance so that banks can work to provide services. So I think that's the better route. However, DEA was supposed to hold a hearing, they now have pushed the hearing back to December 2nd, which means they won't be able to make a decision until much after the election. So it might even be punted into 2025. But the good thing is both the presidential candidates, Harris and Trump have said that they would support the descheduling. So it's looking good. Will it happen? I don't know.

Emily Brock (27:48):

So Natalie, really quick, just for general understanding, and I know your time on house financial services and the general way it works, sometimes I'll have conversations with my members who are issuers and they'll be like, why did they just not pass advanced refunding? And I think the challenge for Congress and the way that it works at Congress, the Congress congressional level is there are these things that are must pass bills. And sometimes they're referred to as Christmas tree bills because it's kind of like a Dr. Seuss book where the senators are kind of singing around the Christmas tree and right as soon as the bill has to pass, they throw their amendments at the tree and whatever sticks goes.

(28:35):

So everything has to ride on something else and the parliamentarian has to figure out whether or not it's relevant to the core of the Christmas tree. And so that's why for the past seven years, advancer funding hasn't just walked on over to the president's desk. That's why say thanking is having a hard time getting it over to the president's desk. And so our strategy a lot of times is to find one of those Christmas tree bills, get sponsors, have it be an amendment to something else, and that's the way that it passes. But rarely, if ever does a tax bill or a bill with a cost just grace itself on over to the president's desk and pass. It has to be kind of part of a much larger conversation.

Natalie McGarry (29:26):

Yeah, I agree. So there's a lot. So for what we do in DC, it's not as simple as getting the bill introduced and have it move. It doesn't magically move, like you said, I would even go back to the inception. Who introduces that bill is key Advanced refunding did Senator,

Emily Brock (29:48):

So we have senator Wicker that's on the senate side.

Natalie McGarry (29:49):

Yep. So I personally, when I worked for the trade association and we had a bill to be passed, we select, we carefully selected the person who introduces the bill. This person, this member of Congress has to have the oomph, has to have the energy and the want to get it across the finish line. I've seen so many members just sponsor a bill just because they can fundraise on it or for whatever reason, and they don't either, they don't have the staff or the energy to push it over the limit so it doesn't will stall and it will sit back here. It won't even get close to the Christmas tree like Emily said. So you need to pick that person very carefully. That person needs to work with others across the aisle. I believe that you do need to work across the aisle to get anything done these days and then continue to work with the stakeholders. You guys in the room and us.

Greg Dawley (30:50):

We're going to do audience questions in a minute, but I wanted to go back to Jared. A couple quick questions. One was any, even though we're not doing horse races, any kind of recent information on state propositions you've learned in the last couple days? There's one question and question two is could you talk about one of your projects you're currently working on that's going to be up for election?

Jared Boigon (31:09):

Sure. Yeah. Thanks Greg. So there's three statewide propositions that I think are probably of interest to folks in this room right now. There's a prop four, which is a $10 billion. We're calling it the climate bond, but it's really a collection of different kinds of projects and wildfire resilience and some water, not so much supply but treatment kinds of, or water kind of maintenance kinds of projects, infrastructure as well, parks, other kinds of things. That is in that. There's a $10 billion state school bond, which is more heavily weighted towards repairing and modernizing older facilities than historically. A lot of those bonds have been for new construction, this was really, we've got a lot of schools in California. They were built in the fifties and sixties that are desperately overdue for significant modernization and the state needs to provide some match to local districts to do that.

(31:59):

It's part of why we have 267 local bonds on the ballot is to garner matching funds from that state proposition. So the climate bond is interestingly, appears to be the most popular, more popular of the two. The polling is a little bit stronger. We kind of go from drought to wildfire season in California often we've had some fires. So that kind of messaging is on people's minds. And again, these state propositions, they don't obligate the taxpayer. And it says right there when you vote, there's a paragraph from the legislative analyst office that explains the fiscal impact and it talks about the fiscal impact on the general fund, but does not say that you have a tax burden yourself to vote. So that seems to be polling somewhere in the public polls, probably have it in the low sixties. I would suspect that it's probably a little tighter than that, maybe high fifties, but still a pretty good place for a state proposition to be in a strong, well-funded campaign.

(32:49):

I think they have $9 million or something to spend that. They have some ads up. The school bond is doing a little bit less. Well. I'm not totally sure why. I think there's a lot of anti, the last couple presidential elections, we've had such big division culturally in this country, but this is the first one where public schools, public education has been so closely in the cross airs. There are a lot of school related issues in this election for your clients that are education agencies. Suddenly there's a lot of federal politics, and I remember this from the early two thousands, but we hadn't seen it in a while. And it's really in the cross fairs right now, bathrooms and school library books and things of that nature. So I think that's probably hurting the school bond a little bit. There's just sort of a general anti-public education feeling among some members of the electorate that wasn't there, hasn't been there historically.

(33:40):

So the school bond polling is a little bit less favorable than the climate bond right now, but is still north of 50. They had last time I looked between four or 5 million. So they could probably use a little bit of late help, but they have some ads up and a good message and good ballot language as well and good allies. And so hopefully that one goes to the third proposition that's kind of interesting is something called prop five, which would, in California for a school or education agency to pass a bond of meeting certain characteristics, you need 55% voter approval. That's a super majority. But for all other jurisdictions, as many of you know, it's two thirds. Two thirds for tax measure is an unbelievably hard bar to get over. You have in almost any community, probably 20 to 25% of voters who will never support a tax just on pure ideology.

(34:28):

They think government has enough, you don't need more. So that means you're trying to count to 67 out of 75 available, not 67 out of a hundred. That is a very hard political exercise, and that's why non-school agencies barely ever pass bonds in California. Prop five would lower for cities and other districts to 55. Unfortunately, the proposition almost got orphaned at the end of the political process. It was driven primarily through the affordable housing community and they took the lion's share of the advocacy work to get that on the ballot along with the firefighters association because there's a need for fire station construction and wildfire resilience. Also in California, by the time this came out of the legislature, it had a much narrower group of supporters than maybe it could have had, right? Hospitals have all kinds of seismic needs in California that are unmet.

(35:16):

They're running up on the deadline. Hospitals have big foundations, there's a lot of money in healthcare that would've been a nice ally for a bill like this and it didn't come together. League of Cities was interested very much in this bill, but they had a different bill that they were mostly focused on killing from the taxpayer side of the house. So they weren't able to, I think, really focus on making this. So that one is on the ballot, but it does not have really the support or coalition behind it that makes observers feel as optimistic. And it's too bad because it could have a generational change in the face of California in terms of aging, storm drain infrastructure, aging streets and road infrastructure, aging park infrastructure, aging hospitals and affordable housing and fire stations, all those things that need to be built and do enhanced communities and could be bond funded. So prop five is the one really to watch. That would be a game changer, but it's probably the least likely.

Greg Dawley (36:03):

Okay. Why don't we switch to audience questions. So we have a microphone we can pass around, but it's not a big room if someone wants to shot one out. Go ahead.

Emily Brock (36:11):

Greg, do you mind if we advance the slides to my RFID? Just a quick note. Remember, we would like to see your projects on this map and your client's projects on this map. You see California's doing a decent job of staying in making sure they put projects on the map. You're not doing as good as Washington. If there's any competition between you and Oregon and Washington, it's time for California to step up. So my question is, if you could just go to built by bonds.com and today, put in a project that you've financed or you've consulted on or of or ask your clients to put in a project, we would love to make sure that we get those stories told. And to Jared's point, it is far more important that you tell the story of the benefit to your community than specifically talk about the financing aspects of this bond issuance because they care about that, but they really care that kids are going to school in decent schools, that your water is flowing through non-lead pipes. They care about that kind of stuff. Like when we talk about private activity bonds with certain members of Congress, we say private activity bonds, blah, blah, blah. They do blah, blah, blah. And they say, did you say housing? I like housing. I don't like bonds though. And I said, but those are the same thing. So let's keep this conversation alive about what is built by bonds for communities across the country. So that RFID is on two slides prior. Sorry,

Greg Dawley (37:48):

Keep going.

Emily Brock (37:49):

Backwards. One more. There you go. The RFID. Everyone take out your phone, get a picture of that RFID. Let's do it. Let's populate this map. Thank you.

Greg Dawley (38:02):

Okay, thank you. Any questions? And we have a few minutes for, you can just shout it out if you want.

Audience Member 1 (38:11):

Okay. This is not my idea. I heard that some journalists was saying that the Republicans are dumping new polls into the mix now to give them a credence to the argument that the election is rigged if Harris should win. Any comments about that?

Greg Dawley (38:37):

Any comments from,

Emily Brock (38:38):

I mean, look, this is not, we are in a highly hotly contested election as we were four years ago, as we were four years before that. And that's unfortunate because we will still have to operate and continue to do our jobs throughout this nonsense that's happening if it is allegedly happening, if it is not allegedly happening. What I think is an interesting question is afterwards, a decent question is concession of power because that concession of power will have a significant impact on the finalization of a lot of congressional acts that need to be finished before the end of the year. And if they aren't finished, then we see a discontinuation of large services like national security and in the case of NDAA or in subsidy payments to farms. I mean that concession of power one way or the other is going to have to be swift in order for us to make sure that January comes and we can continue to do our jobs.

Natalie McGarry (39:50):

I agree.

Greg Dawley (39:52):

Okay. Time for one more question. Anything people want to ask?

Audience Member 2 (40:03):

I think last year Governor Newsom was saying that the state's debt capacity was $26 billion. I was wondering, do you guys have any numbers on what it is this year? Is that an arbitrary number?

Greg Dawley (40:17):

I mean, on the treasurer's website, they sort of have the state capacity. I don't have the number right with me right now, but we can send that to you. If it gives us your card, we'll send that to you. Anything else? That was a quick one. Any last questions? I mean, it's hard to cover a topic like this quickly. We've got some good information from different viewpoints. We appreciate everyone's coming in early this morning and being part of this and enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you.