Opposition to California’s 2023 AB-965

“Good afternoon, Senators. Thank you for your time. Please ask me questions when I am done.

What is this? 27 volumes of evidence, 12,000 pages of studies [evidence accepted by the U.S. Court of Appeals (D.C. Cir)] showing cell antenna radiation is harmful to one’s health. 27 volumes showing why California should not be putting up [densified] cell antennas [for wireless broadband]. On August 13, 2021 the U.S. Court of Appeals (D.C. Cir) ruled that the Federal Communications Commission had ignored this evidence when it decided not to update its 1996 [microwave] radiation exposure limits. [Environmental Health Trust,] Childrens Health Defense [et. al.] v FCC.

90% of Californians already have access to high speed internet. Where [these residents] live [the state] should not require batch processing. [of Wireless Telecommunications Facility (WTF) applications].

Why are there people in your district without high speed internet access? It’s because Telecom has failed to apply for permits in certain areas. They have had years to apply for permits but they decided it was not going to be profitable in certain areas. This bill does not change the underlying economics. It does not require them to provide access to even one person. And they will not.

AB-965 promotes the irresponsible placement of cell antennas. It is an unnecessary, misguided gift to the trillion-dollar wireless industry at the expense of localities. [The SGF Committee’s] bill analysis ignores and omits everything that the opponents have told the Committee.

Cities and counties can already do application batch processing. If you think they are not aware of the advantages of batch processing, then tell them about it and let them decide. And VOTE NO on AB-965.

Telecom will use this bill in order to circumvent local zoning codes by filing 25-50 WTF applications at a time with local planning departments, [preventing reasonable review. Any applicant can file 25-50 applications on consecutive days, for as many days as they wish]. The total number of [WTF application] submittals is insufficiently constrained.

[Wireless broadband applicants] cannot meet the speed requirements for the NTIA BEAD grants. Wireline broadband is too slow. But [Wireline broadband applicants] can meet [the speed requirements] with fiber-optic cables. Please VOTE NO on AB-965 and study the issues more.

California should stay on the course which it set with SB-156, which was passed unanimously and signed into law in 2021, a budget bill that emphasizes hardwired internet connections. [Fiber optics does] not create a health hazard. [Fiber-optic cables] are more reliable, faster [and future proof]. This should remain the course for California. I urge you to VOTE NO on AB-965 and study the issues.

Thank you.”

“I am a former two-time Mayor and Council member [from Northern California].

I know first-hand how cities process Wireless Telecommunications Facilities applications. Let me give you some evidence that contradicts what Mr. Carrillo has said.

Drinking from a firehose.

All in local government and State government know what that’s like. You are experiencing it right now, trying to weigh the trade-offs involved in 28 bills on today’s agenda. Do you feel fully prepared to make a good decision on each? I know from experience you probably don’t. It is very difficult.

Well that is exactly what you are asking thinly-staff planning departments and commissions of 58 counties and over 400 localities to do, completely unnecessarily, because you have not been honest about the real purpose and impacts of this bill.

Allow me to explain. The evidence shows that Bill Gates is not a force for good in America, backing the WHO, the WEF, and AB-965 bill sponsor, Crown Castle. I just watched an interview a week ago by Dr. Peter McCollough. McCollough always cites evidence for every conclusion he makes, unlike Dr. Peter Hotez. McCollough reports that Bill Gates is gleefully announcing the next pandemic for 2025.

Mr. Gates, we all know has profited handsomely over the last three years game and he is also the top shareholder of today’s bill sponsor Crown Castle, with a billions of dollars invested in the most litigious firm in the wireless game. What is Bill Gates’ goal? A medical-tyranny agenda.

For that Gates aims to have Crown Castle build a 24/7 wireless surveillance grid to lock down the population and force a CCP-style social credit score system on Americans. It doesn’t matter that totalitarianism hides behind the phrase Environment, Social Governance, or ESG. It is actually a matter of national security. The people of California reject this agenda and need our elected representatives to work hard to defeat it.

[Therefore,] please vote to make AB-965 a two-year bill and enter substantive discussions about [Wire California’s amendments that would] return AB-965 to its original fiber-optic micro-trenching purpose and properly define appropriate radio signal strength levels for wireless telecommunications infrastructure in our communities.

And if you [don’t do that, then] I emplore you VOTE NO on AB-965. Thank you.”

“Thank you for the time.

In the words of the late, great Yogi Berra, “It’s Deja Vu All Over Again.”

AB.965 in many ways is a redo, a mulligan, a repeat of two earlier Wireless Telecommunications bills — both of which were vetoed. 2017’s SB.649 was properly deliberated in these chambers, but 2021’s SB.556 was not.

In 2017, the CA Legislature in the Committees allowed 60 minutes of substantive testimony on SB.649, per Committee: 30-minutes for Support and 30-minutes for Opposition. In 2021, that was cut down to four minutes per side, due to specious rules written for the now-proven scam of a pandemic by the California Legislature that was playing along.

Californians deserve fair and open deliberations on AB-965 at 2017 levels, but we’re still stuck at 2021 levels which is more than 85% less testimony time than in 2017 — and there is NO EMERGENCY in 2023.

Such an end-run around the public is unacceptable, unconstitutional and as of yesterday, illegal. As I informed Senators Caballero and Dahle yesterday face-to-face, my two-minute testimony today is not an acceptable ADA accommodation for the 1 to 4 million Californians with Electromagnetic Sensitivity, [a federally recognized disabling characteristic that affects one or more life activities — people] who may be forced out of their homes if these WTF batching requirement become law.

We have written- and video-evidence to prove that Wire California and EMS Californians were not granted fair and open deliberations on AB-965. We experienced discrimination, systematic hiding of public information and a tortuously slow-walk of our valid ADA request, all of which violates federal law.

The solution to these violations is to vote on one motion today: make AB-965 a two-year bill, giving the California Legislature the time to correct these errors before voting AB-965 to the Senate floor. There is no rush for this bill; you don’t need it.

Sen. Caballero, these are matters of Governance; the very purpose of your committee.

It is time for California Legislature to go back to open and fair deliberations, consistent with the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act. Senators your vote today, not your words, states your position to all Californians.

Please make AB-965 a two-year bill. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Chair Bradford and Committee members.

In our CA government of, by and for the people, ‘We the People’ are offering to take over sponsorship of AB-965 and fix it, with five strong amendments — that you can read on the home page of https://wirecalifornia.org/. CA can stop the 30- years of lies and finally establish universal access to all fiber-optics for last-mile broadband providers. Doing just that means that CA will then NOT waste $Billions of public money to unnecessarily install 4,000 miles of redundant fiber just because the CPUC is unwilling to face the detailed evidence in the public record for AB-965, given to the author, Juan Carrillo, and every member of this committee. The author could amend AB-965, to grant last-mile wired broadband providers universal access to the entire fiber-optic backbone including these 4000 miles, via regulated pricing. You have the authority to do so: the 2019 US Court of Appeals DC Cir. ruling in Mozilla Corp. v. Fed. Commc’ns Comm’n, 940 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2019) lets you to do it.

Wire California is telecommunications subject matter expert. We understand that the term “Digital Divide” was coined in 1994 to perpetrate a long-running con on Californians and its legislators — by the Telecom incumbents and their agents, the very entities that extract obscene profits, repeatedly steal public money and falsely claim that fiber optic cables financed with rate payer funds or installed in the public rights-of-way are private assets. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Look no further than the 2022 book by Bruce Kushnick, The Book of Violations & Egregious Acts: Trillion Dollar Broadband Scandal and the contracts provided that prove that precursors to modern-day AT&T and Verizon committed to replace copper phone lines with fiber optics to 80% of homes and businesses by the year 2000 in exchange for adding ratepayer fees to landline phone bills. The companies collected over $16 Billion in CA from the public, but did not deliver the fiber. Bait-and-Switch — repeatedly — over 30+ years.

The evidence shows a massive accounting and tax evasion scandal by Telecom incumbents. Substantial Fiber Optics to the Premises (FTTP) didn’t happen in 2000, not in 2010, not in 2020 and will not again in 2030 if you, the members of this committee don’t finally stop playing a starring role in “Digital Divide Theater” and finally end this racketeering by Telecom incumbents and their agents like Crown Castle the corporate sponsor of AB-965, and VOTE NO on this high-jacked bill.

I say high-jacked because AB-965 started out in February as a fiber optic bill with no mention of Wireless shot clocks and deemed approved ratchets. Enter Crown Castle with its billion dollar investment from Bill Gates and his medical-tyranny agenda to build a 24/7 wireless surveillance grid to lock down the population and force a CCP-style social credit score system on Americans. It doesn’t matter that totalitarianism hides behind the phrase Environment, Social Governance, or ESG. The people of California reject this agenda and need our elected representative to work hard to defeat it. Vote NO on AB-965.”

Mr. Chairman and Committee members, good morning.

AB-965 bill is inconsistent with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The 1996-TCA Conference report was recognized by the US Supreme Court in its 2005 ruling in Abrams vs Palos Verdes as the definitive source of the legislative intent of the 1996-TCA.

The 1996-TCA Conference Report says:

“It is not the intent of this provision to give preferential treatment to the personal wireless service industry in the processing of requests, or to subject their requests to any but the generally applicable time frames for zoning decision.”

AB-965 represents a direct conflict with the congressional intent of the 1996-TCA.

Wireless companies have had over five years to get all the permits they needed in any city in California. You cannot blame the cities for wireless cos. not achieving their co. business goals.

Cities and counties can already do batch processing. Batch processing should only be recommended in areas where it is needed. It is not needed in at least 90% of the state.

If you give Big Telecom more favors but no requirements forcing them to provide service to the underserved, they will not provide it. The history over the last 30 years proves that.

Big Telecom will use this bill to overwhelm local planning departments in order to circumvent local zoning codes.

Let me give you a principle, Members. If something is planned well, it will work out well – if you let it. But if you change course in the middle, you often find out that you wish you had stuck with your original plan. What is California’s plan for broadband and telecommunications?

It is a mix of wired broadband and wireless telecommunications with an emphasis on wired broadband: fiber optics or coaxial cables directly to homes and businesses.

The NTIA of the federal government is administering the federal grants on the BEAD funds to the states; and the NTIA says wired broadband is the way to go.

Two years ago California passed SB 156 re: broadband in California. It was passed unanimously in both houses in July of 2021.

It created the Department of Technology and the Office of Broadband and Digital Literacy and allocated $2 billion for this. The CPUC and the Department of Technology and other agencies are working on this. So why would you undermine their efforts and why would you sabotage their work?

CPUC decision 22-04-055 says:

“Application Criteria. Consistent with federal rules, the ACR proposed that approved projects must deliver, upon project completion, service that reliably meets or exceeds symmetrical upload and download speeds of 100 Megabits per second.”

Wireless cannot meet this requirement at scale. Actual data proves that actual 45/5G download speeds top out below 50 Mbps and its upload speeds are at least ten times less.

Please stay the course, don’t get distracted and please don’t get fooled again. Pleases vote NO on AB-965.