Garamendi Testifies Before California Legislature Senate Committee on Agriculture
SACRAMENTO, CA —Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA08) testified before the State Legislature’s Senate Committee on Agriculture on navigating threats to California agriculture.
In 2018, Flannery Associates began purchasing 400 parcels and 55,000 acres of land in unincorporated Solano County, using a Delaware LLC to conceal the source of over $800 million. Flannery Associates now surround three sides of Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, the busiest transit base in the United States and a strategically important military installation for national security.
On August 22, 2023, public reporting finally revealed that Flannery Associates is backed by a cadre of billionaire tech investors from Silicon Valley and that they intend to override the local zoning that protects Travis Air Force Base, farmers, and the wind industry to build a megacity east of Fairfield.
A video of Garamendi’s testimony is available here.
A copy of Garamendi’s written testimony to the Committee is available here.
“The big tech billionaires should be held to account as financial backers for Flannery Associates, who are using secrecy, bullying, and mobster tactics to force generational farm families to sell their land. They have forced farmers off the land, hiring big city lawyers to file a federal constraint of trade lawsuit against seven families who refused to sell their land. Many of these families are unable to pay the exorbitant legal fees to protect themselves and two families have been forced to sell their generational heritage land.” Garamendi said.
“If these out-of-town investors plan to convince Solano residents and their elected representatives that building a new city on productive agricultural land is a wise scheme, they are off to a terrible start at earning the community’s trust,” Garamendi continued.
“My primary concern has always been the operational security of Travis Air Force Base, which is critical to national security as the U.S. Air Force’s Gateway to the Pacific. Having purchased land on three sides of the base, Flannery Associates must come forward with specific plans and assurances that their development proposals will in no way degrade the operation of, or erode security, at the base.” Garamendi continued.
“I thank the California Legislature’s Senate Committee on Agriculture for holding this important hearing and inviting me to testify. I look forward to working with the Committee to help California’s agricultural producers navigate the threats ahead,” Garamendi concluded.
On the House Armed Services Committee, Garamendi has worked to increase funding for the Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) Program, which makes available $40 million annually in federal funding to purchase easements from willing landowners.
As the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, which oversees all U.S. military installations, Garamendi secured key reforms in the House-passed annual National Defense Authorization Act to require the U.S. Department of Defense to better identify any type of land sale that might pose a risk to military installations and report on foreign-owned agricultural land within proximity of installations.
This past July, Garamendi and Congressmen Mike Thompson (D-CA04) and Mike Gallagher (R-WI)—chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party—introduced the “Protect American Farmland and National Security Sites from Foreign Adversaries Act” (H.R.4577). This bipartisan legislation would empower the U.S. Department of Defense and other federal agencies to better review suspect real estate transactions to prevent encroachment or espionage by foreign adversaries at sensitive military and national security sites like Travis and Beale Air Force Bases in California.
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