This Week Inside the Capitol June 21, 2010
Is it Finally “Crunch” Time?
By Rebecca Burgoyne, CFC Research Analyst
June 21, 2010
Despite a July 1 deadline for enacting a state budget, California’s legislative leaders have not been pursuing solutions to the nearly $20 billion debt and the significant decrease in income taxes. A summer of budget bickering looms before them.
When asked last week by Capitol Alert, legislators were not hopeful about enjoying summer in their home districts. Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said, “I’m not making vacation plans.” Assembly Republican leader Martin Garrick answered, “Next year.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a recent Politico interview, promised to “hold up the budget” for the issue of pension reform. “It doesn’t matter how long it drags—into the summer or fall or into November or after my administration—and I think the people will support that,” he said.
In the interim, legislators continue policy or subject-matter committees, from which all legislation must clear by July 2. Bills are being amended, heard, and voted on this week – and throughout the month. Tomorrow, SB 906 (D-Leno, San Francisco) is scheduled to be heard before the Assembly Judiciary Committee. SB 906, which would create a new class of marriage – “civil” marriage, is likely an incremental precursor to redefining what marriage is. Should it pass the heavily stacked Democrat committee, it will then need to pass muster before the entire Assembly and the governor.
Also on tap this week, legislators are focused on the special election for the Central Coast Senate seat vacated by Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado. Millions have been poured into this contest – between Assembly member Sam Blakeslee (R) and former Assemblyman John Laird (D) – which Democrats are eyeing as a possible 26th seat for themselves. (27 seats represent the magic two-thirds super majority needed for the passage of budget and tax measures.) A win for the openly homosexual Laird would also net the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender) Caucus a solid vote for their causes.
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:
Senate
SB 203 (Harmon, R-Costa Mesa) – Current law criminalizes the distribution of obscene matter and child pornography. SB 203 would add the making of materials available for access or possession over the Internet to the definition of distribution. SUPPORT
Assembly Public Safety Committee June 22
SB 543 (Leno, D-San Francisco) – would allow minors to seek mental health treatment without parental knowledge or consent. OPPOSE
Assembly floor (inactive file)
SB 677 (Yee, D-San Francisco) – would allow for the property seizure of those convicted of human trafficking. SUPPORT
Passed Assembly Public Safety Committee 7-0
Assembly Appropriations Committee
SB 834 (Florez, D-Bakersfield) – would allow a court to prohibit communication between a convicted sex offender and a minor victim. SUPPORT
Assembly Public Safety Committee June 29
SB 840 (Yee, D-San Francisco) – Current law requires an observer of a murder, rape, or certain other serious crimes, accompanied by force – where the victim is under 14 – to report the observed crime to the police. SB 840 expands this to where the victim is under the age of 18. SUPPORT
Passed Assembly Public Safety Committee 5-0
Assembly floor
SB 906 (Leno, D-San Francisco) – would create a new class of marriage – “civil” marriage, likely an incremental precursor to redefining what marriage is. OPPOSE
Assembly Judiciary Committee June 22
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 pilot program for the participation of incarcerated parents in dependency court hearings.
Passed Public Safety Committee 7-0
Assembly Judiciary Committee June 22
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.
Assembly Health Committee June 29
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. SUPPORT
Assembly Public Safety Committee June 22
SB 1253 (Strickland, R-Thousand Oaks) – would prohibit a paroled sex offender from living within half a mile from a minor victim – unless the victim is a member of the parolee’s household. SUPPORT
Passed Assembly Public Safety Committee 5-0
Assembly floor
SB 1279 (Pavley, D-Santa Monica) – would authorize a pilot program to help commercially sexually exploited minors in Los Angeles County, identical to a program currently operating in Alameda County.
Passed Assembly Public Safety Committee 7-0
Assembly floor
SB 1300 (Correa, D-Santa Ana) – Pupils: Teen Dating Violence Prevention, would authorize a school district to provide teen dating violence-prevention education as part of the sexual health and health education program it provides to grades 7 to 12.
Assembly Education Committee June 30
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. OPPOSE
Assembly Public Safety Committee June 22
SB 1361 (Corbett, D-San Leandro) – would prohibit social networking sites from displaying the home address or phone number of a minor.
Assembly Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media Committee June 22
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.
Passed Assembly Education Committee 6-2
Assembly Appropriations Committee
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. SUPPORT
Senate Rules Committee
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 Senate Judiciary Committee 3-2
Passed Senate 22-9
In Assembly
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 Violent Crime Information Center (within the Department of Justice) to release a list of registered sex offenders in the proximity within two hours of a child reportedly abducted by a stranger.
Senate Public Safety Committee June 29
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.
Senate Public Safety Committee June 22
AB 52 (Portantino, D-Pasadena) – would require the University of California to establish the Umbilical Cord Blood Collection Program to collect and store blood for public use, transplantation, and specified research. SUPPORT
Senate Health Committee June 23
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 task force at 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.
Senate Public Safety Committee June 22
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. SUPPORT
Passed Senate Education Committee 6-0
Senate Judiciary Committee June 22
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 under 14 years old.
Senate Public Safety Committee June 29
AB 2015 (Arambula, I-Fresno) – Current law requires the creation of multidisciplinary personnel teams to assist and monitor families who are potential child abusers. By allowing these teams to track potential abusers via computer databases, AB 2085 may ultimately permit the government regular access into families’ lives, even if there has been no abuse.
Assembly Human Services Committee
AB 2034 (Knight, R-Palmdale) – would prevent persons convicted of sex or substance offenses from volunteering at school activities. SUPPORT
Senate Education Committee June 23
AB 2199 (Lowenthal, D-Long Beach) – would delete state code sections that require research into the causes and cures of homosexual behavior.
Senate Health Committee June 23
AB 2380 (Lowenthal, D-Long Beach) – would redefine “reasonable suspicion” for mandated child-abuse reporters as not including certainty that abuse or neglect has occurred nor does it require a specific medical indication of abuse or neglect.
Passed Senate Public Safety Committee 7-0
Senate floor
AB 2412 (Tran, R-Costa Mesa) – would designate February 6 of each year as Ronald Reagan Day, and would encourage public schools and educational institutions to engage in exercises remembering the life of Ronald Reagan.
Senate Education Committee June 30
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. SUPPORT
Passed Senate Judiciary Committee 5-0
Senate floor
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.
Senate Judiciary Committee June 22
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 Education Committee June 23
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 Judiciary Committee June 22
ACR 74 (Portantino, D-Pasadena) – expresses the Legislature’s desire to find ways to help the state gain a viable public umbilical cord blood banking system to ensure that all races and ethnicities have an equal probability of finding a match when medically necessary. SUPPORT
Passed Senate Health Committee 8-0
Senate floor
AJR 15 (DeLeon, D-Los Angeles) – encourages the federal government to pass legislation to treat same-sex couples by the same immigration standards as married couples. OPPOSE
Senate floor
AJR 19 (Brownley, D-Woodland Hills) – urges Congress and the President to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). OPPOSE
Passed Senate Judiciary Committee 3-2
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.
Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee June 23
Updated 6/19/2010
