Food vendors and facilities: enforcement activities.

Senator Durazo’s privacy-centered measure links local sidewalk vending regulation to clear protections for personal data and tighter boundaries around immigration-enforcement activities, aiming to reduce vendors’ exposure to sensitive government records while keeping health and safety considerations in local oversight. The proposal would standardize how sidewalk vendors are defined and treated, and it would limit local authorities from requiring immigration status information or fingerprints as a condition of obtaining a permit. It would also allow permit processes to accept non-SSN identifiers such as driver’s licenses, ITINs, or municipal IDs, with strict confidentiality and limits on public disclosure.

Key mechanisms emphasize data minimization and safeguarding vendor privacy. The bill would bar voluntary access to records containing personally identifiable information without a subpoena or judicial warrant, and would require that such information be exempt from public records requests. It would mandate destruction of certain records created before a specified date—including birth place, criminal history, fingerprints, and related data—by a defined deadline unless preservation is legally required. Enforcement by local authorities and any contracted nonpublic entities would be restricted from using funds or personnel for immigration-enforcement purposes in regulating sidewalk vending, and contracts entered into or modified after a set date would require explicit adherence to these protections with immediate termination for violations.

The same privacy and immigration-enforcement constraints extend to enforcement of compact mobile food operations, alongside permit-related requirements and data protections in health and safety regulation. Permit applications for these operations would likewise accept non-SSN identifiers and prohibit immigration-status inquiries or fingerprinting, with corresponding destruction deadlines for pre-2026 records and CPRA exemptions for collected data. The package preserves a defined penalty framework for violations, along with ability-to-pay considerations and other administrative dispositions, while prohibiting the use of enforcement resources for immigration enforcement in these contexts.

Overall, the measure foregrounds privacy protections and limits on immigration enforcement in local vending regulation, while preserving health and safety objectives and local regulatory authority within defined boundaries. It contemplates possible state-mandated-cost reimbursements if costs are found to be mandated by the state, and it includes severability provisions and findings to justify limitations on public-access rights in service of privacy and safety goals. The bill envisions a phased implementation timeline, including a data-destruction deadline and contract-termination provisions for nonpublic enforcement entities that fail to comply, as well as requirements for local agencies to adapt permit processes and data-management practices accordingly.