CITY OF HAWAIIAN GARDENS
CITY COUNCIL
STAFF REPORT
Agenda Item #B9
DATE: May 27, 2026
TO: Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
FROM: Ernesto Marquez, City Manager
BY: Steve Gomez, Director of Public Safety & Community Relations RECOMMENDATION:
Recommendation to authorize the Mayor to send on behalf of the City of Hawaiian Gardens a letter in opposition to Assembly Bill (AB) 1383 and a letter in opposition to Senate Bill (SB) 866.
SUMMARY
AB 1383 (McKinnor) Public employees’ retirement benefits.
AB 1383 (McKinnor), would make several significant changes to Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act (PEPRA), resulting in substantial cost increases for cities and other public agencies. AB 1383 is in the Senate Labor Employee Relations & Retirement Committee.
What the Bill Does:
• Increases the pensionable compensation cap for PEPRA public employees. • Reduces the retirement age for public safety employees from 57 to 55, applied prospectively.
• Creates a new fourth safety tier, establishing a 3% @ 55 formula that is prospective and subject to collective bargaining.
• Allows local agencies to adjust their local pension formulas prospectively, providing them with the authority to modify benefit structures going forward.
AB 1383 is Important to Cal Cities Members:
• PEPRA reforms have generated an estimated $5.8 billion in savings to date and $26.5 billion projected over 10 years.
Agenda Item #B9
May 27, 2026
• Changing these reforms would increase employer and employee contribution rates, create new administrative and long-term solvency challenges for cities, and would undermine a decade of progress in stabilizing pension systems and managing long-term liabilities.
• Cities are already facing rising pension obligations, stagnant revenues, and new federal and state mandates that strain local budgets.
• Higher pension costs would threaten core city services, staffing levels, and overall fiscal stability.
• Increased mandated costs would limit cities’ ability to invest in workforce compensation, community programs, and essential public services.
SB 866 (Blakespear) Planning and zoning: Housing Element Mandates:
Homelessness
SB 866 is eligible to be heard on the floor and can be taken up at any time before May 29, 2026.
What the Bill Does: SB 866 would require all but 14 cities to add extensive homelessness reporting to their housing elements. SB 866 targets cities without direct access to homelessness funding, placing extensive new reporting burdens on cities with the fewest resources.
Background: Since 2019, HHAP has provided state funding to the 14 largest cities, all 58 counties, and 44 Continuums of Care. The other 469 cities in California do not get direct state support. To receive funding, HHAP recipients must submit regional plans that include system performance metrics. SB 866 would impose those same performance metrics as a new housing element requirement only for those cities that do not receive HHAP funding.
Why SB 866 is bad for cities:
• SB 866 mandates reporting on systems operated by counties, the state, and private entities, not cities. Despite a city's best intentions, it may be unable to collect this data, and under SB 866, it would have a non-compliant housing element as a result.
• The reporting required in SB 866 does not belong in a long-term housing planning document that, for most cities, is updated every eight years. The information would quickly become outdated and would no longer be responsive to the evolving needs of unhoused residents.
• SB 866 would create siloed data, requiring 469 cities to report this information through housing elements, while counties and larger cities do so through regional plans, raising concerns about how the state would synthesize this data into meaningful policy.
• Over 300 of the 483 cities in California have populations under 50,000, representing very small numbers of unhoused individuals. Requiring these cities Agenda Item #B9
May 27, 2026
to report this level of data without funding for homelessness programs will not move California forward in addressing homelessness.
The League of California Cities opposes AB 1383 and SB 866.
FISCAL IMPACT
None.
SUGGESTED ACTION
Approve Recommendation.
ATTACHMENTS
A. AB 1383 (McKinnor) – Proposed Letter of Opposition
B. SB 866 (Blakespear) – Proposed Letter of Opposition