Disinfecting California Senate chamber cost $70,000 after anti-vaccine protester threw blood
The California Senate paid at least $70,000 to clean and disinfect its chamber after an anti-vaccine activist threw a menstrual cup that splattered lawmakers with blood in September.
According to invoices obtained by The Sacramento Bee through the Legislative Open Records Act, the Senate paid $8,700 to ForensiClean, a Sacramento company that specializes in the “removal of blood and other potentially infectious material,” and $62,595 to NRC US Holding Company, an agency that sends response teams to manage “spill and high hazard” situations.
Rebecca Dalelio had traveled to the Sacramento Capitol to protest legislation, since signed into law, that restricts when doctors can write vaccine medical exemptions for California school children.
She was watching Senate floor votes from the upstairs balcony where the public regularly observes the Legislature when she threw the menstrual cup around 5:15 p.m. on Sept. 13, the final day of the 2019 legislative session.
“That’s for the dead babies,” she was heard saying.
The incident shut down procedures for several hours as several lawmakers went home to shower and the chamber was declared a crime scene. At least six senators were hit by the blood. The Senate resumed floor votes three hours later in a committee room large enough to fit the 40 lawmakers, their staff and the press.
ForensiClean provided “after-hours” services to disinfect the Senate gallery and floor, invoices show. The company sanitized “all desks, all chairs, all microphones, trash cans and all laptops” and bagged and disposed of “several sensitive items that were sprayed with blood.”
NRC’s bill explicitly included more than $44,000 in labor costs, about $11,000 in equipment, materials and travel expenses, $5,430 for “other NRC” charges and $1,800 for Adam Laboratories, which specializes in hazard tests and inspections.
Dalelio was among a group of ongoing protesters who showed up to the Capitol for the larger part of 2019 to oppose Senate Bills 276 and 714, which vaccine-skeptics and anti-vaxxers said were “draconian” efforts by state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, to legislate parents’ medical decisions.
Pan had written the bills after reports found doctors in pockets of California were writing a questionable amount of medical exemptions, raising concerns that the slips were invalid and therefore jeopardizing the health of sick kids in public schools.
The new laws drew crowds of supporters and opponents to policy hearings and floor votes. Hundreds of people would cram hallways and committee rooms to advocate for or against the crackdown, as well as defend or disparage Pan.
“The person who committed the act should be fully responsible for the financial cost of cleaning the chamber,” Pan told The Bee on Monday. “Taxpayers should not have to bear the cost of this act of vandalism.”
Dalelio was arrested and charged with vandalism and assault on public officials. She posted $10,000 bond and was released from the Sacramento County Main Jail the next morning, according to sheriff’s department records.
A Sacramento County Superior Court judge has since ordered her to stay away from the Capitol while she awaits trial.
The blood did not contain pathogens or infections, according to test results following the episode.
As lawmakers reconvened later that evening, Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Senate Majority Leader Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, offered a bipartisan rebuke of the situation.
“A crime was committed today, but the Senate will not be deterred from completing the Senate’s business,” Atkins said.
Grove said the then-suspect should be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” though she and her Republican colleagues had not supported the vaccine legislation.
State Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, followed up with routine blood-exposure tests after he was hit by the blood.
“A couple hours of sleep since our Senate adjournment around 3am and I’m at a doctors appointment to follow safety protocols from blood exposure,” Glazer wrote on Twitter. “Still absorbing it all. But as my hat says Relax! Thankful that none of my Senate colleagues appear hurt and we finished our work.”
Pan said “a little bit” of blood hit his jacket, but a bulk of the liquid splashed on his surrounding colleagues.
“I think she was aiming for me,” he said. “But it splattered out everywhere.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Disinfecting California Senate chamber cost $70,000 after anti-vaccine protester threw blood."