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Sen. Monique Limón talks about her legislative priorities NEWS-PRESS FILE PHOTOSState Sen. Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara, seen here speaking in front of the Santa Barbara City College Food Pantry in 2019, has focused on a variety of social issues in the Legislature. “I understand the issues that impact students and families really extend beyond a classroom,” she told the News-Press.
In the legislature, Sen. Monique Limón isn’t focused on just one policy area. Her priorities run the gamut, from health care to pay equity to the environment and much more.
Sen. Limón’s multifaceted approach to politics is indicative of her time working in education.
She is the former assistant director for the McNair Scholars Program at UCSB and served multiple terms on the Santa Barbara Unified School District board. She’s mentored a bevy of UCSB and Santa Barbara City College students, getting to intimately understand their needs and those of their families.
“I understand the issues that impact students and families really extend beyond a classroom,” Sen. Limón, D-Santa Barbara, told the News-Press. “Everything that is happening in a community shows up in the classroom, and that is where my interest in different policy areas started.”
Sen. Monique Limón speaks at a reproductive rights rally in December in De la Guerra Plaza in Santa Barbara. She has focused on other issues as well, and they vary from early detection of Alzheimer’s to pay equity.One legislative priority for Sen. Limón — an issue that’s been of great importance for many years for her — is Alzheimer’s and dementia care.
In October, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed her bill establishing a “first in the nation” new program giving Medi-Cal providers (California’s Medicaid program) training and incentives to conduct cognitive health tests for Alzheimer’s detection and diagnosis.
Sen. Limón said she wants to continue to enable community health providers to increase outreach and education about early detection of Alzheimer’s.
She is particularly passionate about helping with Alzheimer’s education and detection after experiencing her grandmother Genoveva Gil’s battle with the disease. Ms. Gil passed away in 2019.
Another recently successful bill from Sen. Limón gave the California Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, the authority to spend $5 million per year to plug abandoned and deserted oil wells.
This is “an issue that really so many constituents email me about: the fact that we have to do a better job of plugging and properly abandoning our deserted oil wells in the district,” she said. “We’re looking at the mechanisms to safely do that in order to eliminate and reduce some pollutants that go into the air.”
And Sen. Limón is also championing pay equity legislation. Her SB 1162 would require companies to publicly report salary data broken down by ethnicity, race and sex for potential employees to review.
“SB 1162 will help identify the gender and race-based pay disparities by requiring pay transparency at every stage of the employment process, from hiring, to promotion, and ongoing employment,” Sen. Limón previously said in a statement. “We must increase pay transparency in order to close the gender and racial wage gap, which prevents women, particularly women of color, from achieving economic security.”
The bill has been referred to the Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee as well as the Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Limón called herself an “accidental politician,” meaning she didn’t plan for her experience, background and work throughout the years to culminate in her running for office. And yet, she did.
Before her election to the upper chamber in 2020, the Santa Barbara native served as the assembly member for District 37 for four years. There, she chaired the Banking and Finance Committee and was the vice chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus.
Sen. Limón was born and raised in her Senate district, which encompasses all of Santa Barbara County and most of Ventura County.
She is an alumna of UC Berkeley and has a master’s degree from Columbia University. Sen. Limón is a former member of the Santa Barbara County Commission for Women.
email: kschallhorn@newspress.com
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