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California Family Minute

August 30, 2010

On Marriage and Parental Consent, Contact the Governor’s Office

by Rebecca Burgoyne, 
CFC Research Analyst 

The countdown to the end of the 2009-2010 legislative session can be marked in hours, as legislators and special interests furiously rush to navigate their pet bills through the Legislature prior to the deadline midnight Tuesday. Many bills have already reached the governor’s desk, and others will join them in the next few hours. With the desk getting crowded, now is the time to express your opinions to the governor – who has until September 30 to sign, veto, or allow bills to pass into law without any action – on legislation that is important to you. 

Yet, at day 61 and counting of a continuing budget impasse, legislators cannot close the books on the session. Without any agreement in sight, Democrats plan a budget “drill” tomorrow – putting legislators on record on both the Democrat and Republican plans – all for show. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) told the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday that he did not expect either plan to pass, but said, “I'm not going to have the legislative session end without a full public debate on the most important unresolved issue of the session.”

To contact the governor on marriage and parent consent – or any other bill important to you – visit CFC’s Legislative Action Center.

On the governor’s desk: 
Senate
SB 677 (Yee, D-San Francisco) – would allow for the property seizure of those convicted of human trafficking.
To Governor

SB 834 (Florez, D-Bakersfield) – would allow a court to prohibit communication between a convicted sex offender and a minor victim.
Passed Assembly 77-0
To Governor

 SB 906 (Leno, D-San Francisco) – would create a new class of marriage – “civil” marriage, likely an incremental precursor to redefining what marriage is.
Senate concurred in Assembly amendments 22-11
To Governor

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.
To Governor 

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.
Senate concurred in Assembly amendments 35-0
To Governor  

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 35-0
Assembly concurred in Senate amendments 75-0
To Governor
 
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 36-0
Assembly concurred in Senate amendments 73-1
To Governor

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.
Passed Senate 35-0
Assembly concurred in Senate amendments 74-0
To Governor

AB 1841 (Buchanan, D-San Ramon) – would conform California law with federal law, which prohibits a public agency from continuing to provide special education or related services to a child whose parents or guardian have withdrawn their consent in writing. 
Assembly concurred in Senate amendments 75-0
To Governor

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.
Passed Senate 36-0
To Governor 

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.
To Governor

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.
Passed Senate 36-0
Assembly concurred in Senate amendments 76-0
To Governor
 
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.
To Governor

Bills Moving Toward the Governor’s Desk: 
Senate
SB 543 (Leno, D-San Francisco) – would allow minors to seek mental health treatment without parental knowledge or consent. 
Assembly floor (removed from inactive; can be voted on at any time.)            

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 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.
Assembly floor

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 Senate36-0
Assembly floor (concurrence)
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