Senate Select Committee on Economic Development and Technological Innovation

5 February 2026

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Senate Select Committee on Economic Development and Technological Innovation Wed, 4 Feb 2026 California State Senate

00:24 - 03:48

Speaker 1

The Select Committee on Economic Development and Technological Innovation will come to order. We're meeting here in the 0 Street Building in Room 1200. And I appreciate all of our panelists here today. We will have a number of members who will be dropping in and out. And we appreciate we had to reschedule this due to the Senate budget retreat to a post session meeting.

But we'll have a number of our colleagues I know who are watching remotely and have staff watching remotely and who will be with us today. And I appreciate Senator Wahab. We're just starting. I'm going do my opening remarks and then I'll turn it over to you for opening remarks. You have your whole team here from Fremont.

Very exciting. I called this hearing the select select community of economic development and innovation to examine California's industrial policies as it relates to manufacturing. California is the fourth largest economy in the world, and we're a leader in advanced technology research and development. My district is one of the many, but is certainly a distinction of being a hub of innovation in California and an incubator for ideas that tackle today's most pressing challenges. I myself am a former founder and often hear from innovators that when it comes time for them to scale their ideas with manufacturing facilities here, they face regulatory uncertainty and risk that forces them to look to other parts of the country.

While yes, California costs are higher than average, companies in high-tech sectors have real incentives to stay here as the lines between engineering labs and factory floors become increasingly blurred. And I'll veer off script to just tell a quick story. When I was which this is right before I was elected and I took a red eye to New York for something else and I saw a dad from my kid's school. I said, oh, what are doing here? He said, well, I'm about to board the flight to Syracuse.

I said, you know, why are doing that? He said, well, you know, they gave us a lot of incentives to build a manufacturing facility in Upstate New York. I said, you know, would you've done it in the Central Valley, say, if it was remotely close? He's like, yeah. Absolutely.

I'd much rather have done it in the Central Valley, but, you know, this was with the opportunity for us. And and But he clearly would have much rather stayed in California if it was a remotely close situation. Anyway, in 1990 the state had nearly 2,000,000 manufacturing jobs. Today that number sits at about 1,200,000 after three decades decline and stagnation. Particularly in the tech sector, these are not just lost jobs but careers which offer wages that allow people to move up the economic ladder without a college degree.

And I would say that across not just in the tech sector but across the whole manufacturing sector. I'm proud of the work our governor has done to address these losses. In 2025, the California Jobs First Plan delivered $1,600,000,000 in funding, 61,000 jobs and 142,000 trained workers into the economy. This investment is paying real dividends back to the people in our state. But there's still much more work for us here in the legislature and we must build on that progress.

Manufacturing doesn't just present opportunities for employment but also for California to lead the charge in addressing climate change, which is another area where I hear from friends all the time about companies they've invested in that are manufacturing elsewhere. But climate change, particularly, we need to lead in the face of federal inaction. We have

03:48 - 03:56

Speaker 2

a duty to ensure California innovation is scaled here on a grid where more than nine out of 10 in 2025, we're powered by 100%

03:56 - 04:26

Speaker 1

clean energy for at least some part of the day and with a labor force that has strong protections for health and for safety. With our real structural barriers that manufacturing companies face, we had a roundtable in my district with about 25 folks. One of the things we heard that manufacturers here are subject to more than 3,800 regulatory constraints on average, more than three times the national median. Again, the feedback was clear from these manufacturers. They often want to stay in California.

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