This Week Inside the Capitol July 7, 2010

This Week Inside the Capitol July 7, 2010

Session’s Out – Sort of

by Rebecca Burgoyne
CFC Research Analyst 

July 7, 2010

Last week, just in time for the Independence Day holiday weekend, legislative leaders sent their members home – despite their failure to enact a budget prior to the July 1 start of the 2010-2011 fiscal year. Joint Rule 51 (b)(2) – principles formally adopted to govern the operation of both houses – says “The Legislature shall be in recess from July 2 until August 2. This recess may not commence until the Budget Bill is passed.” Yet, Friday, both Senate pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Assembly Speaker John Pérez (D-Los Angeles) dismissed their respective bodies for summer recess – provided members can return to the Capitol within a 24-hour window should a budget deal be reached. Only legislative leaders and the 10-member joint budget conference committee will remain in Sacramento. 

Don’t look for a deal to happen anytime soon. As California entered its new fiscal year without a budget in place for the 19th time in 25 years, Democratic leaders announced last week that they have agreed on a loose framework, but buy-in from the governor and Republicans is far from certain – and may be a long time coming; Democrats remain united in their efforts to spare cuts to education and social programs by increasing taxes and using legally questionable borrowing. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Republican minority remain united in their opposition to raising taxes on California citizens. 

Each day without a budget costs California $52 million, and without a budget in place the state legally cannot pay certain bills. Should the budget stalemate drag out long enough – the latest budget signing on record was in 2008 when the governor signed it on September 23 – California will be forced to issue IOUs, a move which further jeopardizes the state’s bond rating and ability to borrow money. 

But could this be the goal of certain partisan legislators? Certainly, they’ve played such tricks before, and raising voter ire prior to a November election that will include an initiative to lower the number of votes necessary to pass the budget (from two-thirds to a simple majority) might be the prize. 

Prior to fleeing Sacramento, legislators worked through a flurry of bills. Bills that have not successfully passed their policy committees can no longer be considered. When legislators return later this summer, bills must navigate fiscal committees and floor votes prior to an August 31 end of session.

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 Appropriations Committee

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 Appropriations Committee 17-0
Assembly floor (consent)

SB 834 (Florez, D-Bakersfield) – would allow a court to prohibit communication between a convicted sex offender and a minor victim. SUPPORT
Passed Assembly Public Safety Committee 7-0
Assembly Appropriations Committee

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
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
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.
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.
Passed Assembly Health Committee 19-0
Assembly Appropriations Committee

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 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
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 Senate 34-0
To Governor

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.
Failed Passage Assembly Education Committee 2-2

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 Education Committee 7-2
Assembly floor

SB 1361 (Corbett, D-San Leandro) – would prohibit social networking sites from displaying the home address or phone number of a minor
Failed Passage Assembly Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media Committee; reconsideration granted

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 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
Passed Senate 34-0
In Assembly

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. 
Passed Senate Public Safety Committee 7-0
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.
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.
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
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
Passed Senate Public Safety Committee 7-0
Senate Appropriations Committee

AB 2199 (Lowenthal, D-Long Beach) – would delete state code sections that require research into the causes and cures of homosexual behavior.
Senate Appropriations 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.
Passed Senate 32-0
Passed Assembly 77-0
To Governor

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
Not heard

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 26-9
Assembly floor (concurrence)

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 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
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
Passed Senate 23-12
Passed Assembly 48-25
To Governor

AJR 19 (Brownley, D-Woodland Hills) – urges Congress and the President to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). OPPOSEPassed 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 24-11
Assembly floor (concurrence)





 
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