California Family Minute

Against budget backdrop, legislative session rushes to an end

Day 47 of the 2010-2011 fiscal year, and Californians are still without a state budget. While Democratic leaders have united behind their smoke-and-mirrors mixture of raising and lowering taxes (and promising taxpayers they’ll break even by taking increased state taxes off federal tax returns), Republicans have joined Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with his barebones plan that does not raise taxes. Last week, however, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said the Democrats’ tax-swap plan would raise taxes on middle-class Californians, contrary to the assertions of Democrats. 

In yesterday’s Sacramento Bee, Dan Morain reported that termed-out Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) sees the beginnings of a solution in the Democrats’ tax-swap plan. “I think we could put together a package that works,” said Ashburn. Ashburn suggests “going big,” perhaps lowering the sales tax to 1 percent. He also insists that Internet sales companies – like Amazon – start collecting taxes from California residents. 

In another twist, Democrats are still eyeing the Senate seat of now-Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado. Maldonado’s Central Coast seat would bring Democrats one seat shy of the coveted two-thirds majority needed to pass a budget. While Democrats have a slight edge in the district, the seat has been held by Republicans since 1996. Although Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee’s (R-San Luis Obispo) 49 percent showing in the June primary election fell short of a clear majority, next week’s run-off with openly homosexual Democrat John Laird has continued to draw powerful and wealthy interests to the campaign – including support for Laird from Pres. Barack Obama. 

Against that backdrop, legislators approach the end of the official legislative session in Sacramento. All legislation must pass out of the Legislature and to the governor’s desk by the end of the month. Should a budget be in place, legislators would then return to campaign in their districts, while the focus turns to the governor’s desk in September. 

The next two weeks in the Capitol will be floor sessions only. No committees except rules committees and joint conference committees – like the budget – are allowed to meet without a waiver. Anything left in fiscal committees can no longer be considered. That means legislation like SB 906 (Leno, D-San Francisco) which would create a new “class” of marriage – “civil marriage” – must be considered on the floor of the Assembly prior to August 31. You can contact your Assemblyman by visiting CFC’s Legislative Action Center. 

Following are bills on CFC’s “watch” list, based on the bills’ content and CFC’s pillars of life, marriage, and the authority of parents:

SB 1064 (Alquist, D-San Jose) – would make changes, including requiring the creation of a succession plan, to the stem-cell agency created by voters with Proposition 71 in 2004.
Passed Assembly Appropriations Committee 17-0
Assembly floor

*SB 1204 (Runner, R-Lancaster) – would prevent convicted sex offenders from opening accounts with – or participating on – any social networking sites, and would require them to report their e-mail addresses, online addresses, and instant-messaging aliases to law enforcement.
Assembly Appropriations Committee

SB 1317 (Leno, D-San Francisco) – would hold a parent criminally responsible for the chronic truancy of a child over six years of age in grades 1-8. Misdemeanor crime could be punishable by a fine up to $2,000, one-year imprisonment, or both.
Assembly floor

SB 1451 (Yee, D-San Francisco) – requires the California State Board of Education to review proposed textbooks for content deemed to result from Texas’ recent action – and to insure that the materials satisfy guidelines in current California law. The bill would also require the board to keep the Secretary of Education, and the chairmen of both the Senate and Assembly education policy committees informed of this information.
Assembly floor

SCR 76 (Corbett, D-San Leandro) – would proclaim the Legislature’s support of human-trafficking awareness events and encourage Californians to become aware of the problem of human trafficking and work to eradicate the criminal practice.
Passed Assembly Judiciary Committee 8-0
Passed Assembly 78-0
To Enrollment

SJR 28 (Kehoe, D-San Diego) – would urge the Congress and the President of the United States to enact legislation to have the 2020 Census gather data on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Passed Assembly Judiciary Committee 6-2

Assembly

AB 33 (Nava, D-Santa Barbara) – part of a package of bills to enable quicker law enforcement response time in the event of reported missing children, AB 33 would require the Department of Justice’s Violent Crime Information Center’s investigative support unit to release a list of registered sex offenders in the proximity within two hours of a child reportedly abducted by a stranger. AB 33 would also require the development of policies, checklists, and guidelines for dealing with the investigation of missing persons. \Passed Senate Appropriations Committee 11-0
Senate floor

AB 34 (Nava, D-Santa Barbara) – part of a package of bills to enable quicker law enforcement response time in the event of reported missing children, AB 34 would require the release of certain information to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System to assist in the search for the missing person or persons. If the missing person is under age 21 – and there is evidence the person is at risk – within two hours the law enforcement agency will send the report to the Department of Justice for inclusion in the Violent Crime Information Center and the National Crime Information Center databases.
Passed Senate Appropriations Committee 11-0
Senate floor

AB 52 (Portantino, D-Pasadena) – would request – at a future time when the state Controller determines adequate funding is available – the University of California to establish the Umbilical Cord Blood Collection Program to collect and store blood for public use, transplantation, and specified research.
Passed Senate Health Committee 5-3
Senate Appropriations Committee

AB 1844 (Fletcher, R-San Diego) – known as Chelsea’s Law, this bill would provide increased potential punishments for sexual crimes when the victim is a minor.
Passed Senate Appropriations Committee 11-0
Senate floor

AB 2199 (Lowenthal, D-Long Beach) – would delete state code sections that require research into the causes and cures of homosexual behavior.
Passed Senate Appropriations Committee 11-0
Senate floor 

AB 2416 (Cook, R-Yucaipa) – Current law provides that a party's absence, relocation, or failure to comply with custody and visitation orders is not, by itself, sufficient to justify modification of a custody or visitation order if the failure is due to activation to military service and deployment out of state. AB 2416 would expand this provision to cover additional military-related deployments.
Passed Senate 34-0
Assembly concurred in Senate Amendments 78-0
To Governor

AB 2426 (Bradford, D-Inglewood) – would define and regulate “surrogacy facilitators,” and require non-attorney surrogacy facilitators to direct clients to deposit client faith funds into an independent, bonded escrow account or a trust account maintained by an attorney.
Signed into Law

AB 2444 (Furutani, D-Long Beach) – would require that – if a district has an enrolled student, per a transfer agreement between two districts – the student may remain in the outside district without having to annually re-obtain waiver approval.
Senate floor

AB 2700 – (Ma, D-San Francisco) enables domestic partners who have married each other to dissolve both their marriage and their partnership in a single proceeding.
Senate floor

AJR 29 (Feuer, D-West Hollywood) – urges the Internal Revenue Service to regard married same-sex couples as married under federal tax laws.
Assembly concurred in Senate amendments 60-11
To Enrollment 

* bills left in Appropriations can no longer be considered without a waiver.