This Week Inside the Capitol

Budget End in Sight?

Last month, on August 31, legislators adjourned “sine die,” meaning indefinitely or without setting a time to reassemble.  Promising to continue to work on solving California’s budget, most legislators left the capital, soon to be joined by the governor, who surprised many by not cancelling a previously scheduled trade mission to the Far East. 

With Schwarzenegger’s return to California mid-month, legislative leaders hoped to resume “Big 5” budget negotiations – meetings between the governor and the top Democrats and Republicans from each chamber – in earnest.  However, returning from overseas, the governor called in sick with a severe cold, so legislators – bearing matzo-ball soup – took off on a southern California road trip to resume talks with the governor. 

On his way out of town earlier this month, Schwarzenegger detoured to San Diego to sign AB 1844 (Fletcher, R-San Diego).  Known as Chelsea’s Law, this bill provides increased potential punishments for sexual crimes when the victim is a minor.  More than 700 other bills, including SB 906 (civil marriage) and SB 543 (mental health counseling for minors), still require the governor’s attention before Thursday’s fast-approaching deadline.  Be sure to contact the governor with your opinion on these – or other – bills.  

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 677 (Yee, D-San Francisco) – would allow for the property seizure of those convicted of human trafficking.

SB 834 (Florez, D-Bakersfield) – would allow a court to prohibit communication between a convicted sex offender and a minor victim.

SB 906 (Leno, D-San Francisco) – would create a new class of marriage – “civil” marriage, likely an incremental precursor to redefining what marriage is.

SB 962 (Liu, D-Glendale) – would allow incarcerated parents – who have waived their right to attend the hearing terminating their parental rights – to view the hearing via videoconferencing.  SB 962 would also allow the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to accept donated materials and services to implement a program at a prison determined by the Department for the participation of incarcerated parents in dependency court hearings.

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.

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.

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

AB 2199 (Lowenthal, D-Long Beach) – would delete state code sections that require research into the causes and cures of homosexual behavior.  Additionally, this bill would require the State Department of Mental Health to conduct research into sex crimes against children and into methods of identifying those who commit sexual offenses.

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.

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.

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.

AB 1022 (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 1022 would establish a director position within the Department of Justice to help law enforcement agencies with the search and recovery of at-risk abducted children, and maintaining up-to-date knowledge and expertise of the best methods and technologies to recover missing children.

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.