This Week Inside ths Capitol June 28, 2010
Budget, Budget, Who’s Got the Budget?
by Rebecca Burgoyne CFC Research Analysts
June 28, 2010
As the new fiscal year begins July 1, California is still without a budget in place, but there are three proposals to deal with the estimated $20 billion shortfall. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger released his proposal in January, which legislative Republicans have endorsed. Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), a battle-scarred veteran of past budget skirmishes, and Assembly Speaker John Pérez (D-Los Angeles), a rookie behind whom unions have gathered, have their own separate proposals. (See a comparison of the current plans in Sunday’s Sacramento Bee.)
by Rebecca Burgoyne CFC Research Analysts
June 28, 2010
As the new fiscal year begins July 1, California is still without a budget in place, but there are three proposals to deal with the estimated $20 billion shortfall. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger released his proposal in January, which legislative Republicans have endorsed. Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), a battle-scarred veteran of past budget skirmishes, and Assembly Speaker John Pérez (D-Los Angeles), a rookie behind whom unions have gathered, have their own separate proposals. (See a comparison of the current plans in Sunday’s Sacramento Bee.)
While both Democratic proposals include massive tax increases to support the social-services programs on the Republican chopping block, the plan from the Democratic Assembly Caucus relies heavily on legally questionable borrowing that may simply punt the problems further into the future for others to pay. Taking a different tack in the Democratic Senate Caucus, Steinberg – despite fierce union opposition – supports structural reforms, which he attempts to begin by transferring many state services to local government. Pérez, on the other hand, takes a hardliner partisan approach, vowing to boycott talks with the governor should he not meet the legislative majority’s demands.
A joint Democratic proposal will emerge from the ten-member joint budget committee in the near future, but it is unlikely to yield any definitive solutions, as Democrats will still have to garner the support of the governor and a handful of Republicans.
In years when a final budget is passed by the July 1 deadline, a feat accomplished only five times in the last 20 years, the Legislature heads home for a month-long break with the Fourth of July holiday. When they remain in the Capitol, they continue to address bill proposals. This week their emphasis is on policy or subject matter committees, although many bills are continuing to reach the floor, where they can be considered anytime. The following bills of interest to California families are currently on the floor of their respective chambers:
· SB 203 (Harmon, R-Costa Mesa) – Internet Pornography SUPPORT
· SB 906 (Leno, D-San Francisco) – “Civil” Marriage OPPOSE
· SB 1279 (Pavley, D-Santa Monica) – Pilot Program: Commercially Sexually Exploited Minors
· AB 1841 (Buchanan, D-San Ramon) – Parental Consent: Special Education SUPPORT
· AB 2380 (Lowenthal, D-Long Beach) – Child Abuse
· AB 2416 (Cook, R-Yucaipa) – Parent in the Military: Custody or Visitation Orders SUPPORT
· AB 2426 (Bradford, D-Inglewood) – “Surrogacy Facilitators”
· AB 2444 (Furutani, D-Long Beach) – School Districts: Transfer Agreements
· ACR 74 (Portantino, D-Pasadena) – Cord Blood Banking System SUPPORT
· AJR 15 (DeLeon, D-Los Angeles) – Same-Sex Couples: Immigration Standards OPPOSE
· AJR 19 (Brownley, D-Woodland Hills) – Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA): Repeal OPPOSE
· AJR 29 (Feuer, D-West Hollywood) – Internal Revenue Service: Married Same-Sex Couples
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
Passed Assembly Public Safety Committee 6-0
Assembly floor
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 June 30
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 Appropriations Committee
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
Passed Assembly Judiciary Committee June 6-3
Assembly floor
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 Assembly Judiciary Committee 7-10
Assembly Appropriations Committee
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
Passed Assembly Public Safety Committee 4-3
Assembly Appropriations Committee
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 68-0
To Governor
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 73-0
Senate (concurrence)
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
Passed Assembly Public Safety Committee 4-1
Assembly Education Committee June 30
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 28
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
Assembly Judiciary Committee
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. AB 33 would also require the development of policies, checklists, and guidelines for dealing with the investigation of missing persons.
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.
Passed Senate Public Safety Committee 7-0
Senate Appropriations Committee
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 August 4
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 Public Safety Committee June 7-0
Senate Appropriations Committee
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 Judiciary Committee 4-0
Senate 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 under 14 years old. SUPPORT
Senate Public Safety Committee June 29
AB 2034 (Knight, R-Palmdale) – would prevent persons convicted of sex or substance offenses from volunteering at school activities. SUPPORT
Senate Education Committee failed passage 0-3
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
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.
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.
Passed Senate Judiciary Committee 3-1
Senate floor
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 Education Committee 6-0
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.
Passed Senate Judiciary Committee 3-1
Senate Appropriations Committee
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.
Passed Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee 3-0
Senate floor
updated 6/26/10
