Hold onto Your Hats: California Legislature Will Pass Hundreds of Bills in a Little Over a Week

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Major Bills in Health, Flood Control, Environment, Prisons, Ports, to Name a Few

By Frank D. Russo

There are over 700 bills now pending in the California State Legislature that have made it through committees in both houses and are scheduled for votes on the floor that could send them to the Governor's desk with little over a week to go in this year's regular session.

The numbers do not tell the entire picture, as there are major issues yet to be resolved, including near universal health care coverage, redistricting, gay marriage, clean air, the state's prisons, flood control and water, and a host of bills from green building standards to low carbon fuel standards designed to help implement AB 32, the landmark greenhouse gas reductions bill passed last year.

Any list is necessarily incomplete, as many of the bills that will be considered just moved out of the fiscal committees in both houses at the end of last week. For instance, SB 974 by Senator Lowenthal, on pollution from the state's ports, that would impose a fee on containers shipped into the state, passed out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee and should be set for a final vote in the Assembly, but does not appear in the file yet.

There are also many significant bills that have largely flown below the radar screen of even those who follow legislation:

• AB 97 (Mendoza) would ban the sale in food outlets of products containing transfat;

• AB 16 (Hernandez) that would require immunization of school children requiring children based on recommendations of the federal Centers for Disease Control and that may include an HPV vaccine;

• AB 319 (Nava) on the underappreciated risks of tsunamis in California,

• AB 508 (Swanson) repealing the lifetime disqualification for food stamps of those convicted of certain drug offenses;

• AB 1167 (Nava) to have absentee ballots delivered and counted even if they lack sufficient postage;

• AB 338 (Nava) allowing seriously injured workers to receive temporary disability payments for a longer time, and AB 1212 (Nunez) on permanent disability payments to those with lifetime disabilities from work injuries;