2009 Bill Status
This is a summary of some of the significant bills that FCL is following in the current legislative session.
Bill status is shown as of April 19, 2009. The text, committee analyses, status and history of each bill may be found on-line or by contacting the author’s staff.
To express your views on legislation, please
write to the governor, your state senator, and your assembly member, with a copy to the bill’s author at “State Capitol, Sacramento, CA 95814.” You may find out who your legislators are by consulting
the State Government pages of your local telephone directory.
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Bills are displayed in numeric order by the catagories below:
Budget and Revenue
Capital Punishment
Children and Youth
Criminal Justice and Imprisonment
Equality and Nondiscrimination
Governance
Health Care
Housing
Peace, Nonviolence
Budget and Revenue
AB 2897 (Loni Hancock, D., Berkeley) raises
the top personal income tax rate of 9.3 percent
to 10 percent on incomes over $136,115
and 11 percent on incomes over $272,230.
FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Revenue and Tax
Committee.
Capital Punishment
AB 1359 (Jared Huffman, D., San Rafael) provides
that condemned prisoners may be housed at any
level four security prison. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly
Appropriations Committee.
SB 28 (Jeff Denham, R., Merced) decommissions
San Quentin State Prison without reducing the prison
population and authorizes the governor to designate
which prison would house condemned prisoners. FCL
OPPOSES. Senate Public Safety Committee.
Children and Youth
AB 12 (Karen Bass, D., Los Angeles) extends services
for emancipated foster youth to age 21. FCL SUPPORTS.
Assembly Appropriations Committee.
AB 61 (Pedro Nava, D., Santa Barbara) eliminates
deferred entry of judgment for minors convicted of
certain sex offenses. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly
Appropriations Committee.
AB 743 (Anthony Portantino, D., Pasadena) requires
social workers to make reasonable efforts to place siblings
and half-siblings together when being placed in
foster care. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Judiciary
Committee.
AB 999 (Nancy Skinner, D., Berkeley) expands program
credits for youth incarcerated in Division of
Juvenile Justice facilities. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly
Public Safety Committee.
SB 399 (Leland Yee, D., San Francisco) establishes
criteria under which minors sentenced to life without
parole may be re-sentenced to a lesser term. FCL SUPPORTS.
Senate Appropriations Committee.
Criminal Justice and Imprisonment
AB 16 (Sandre Swanson, D., Oakland) makes
solicitation of a person under 18 years of age a serious
and violent felony eligible for a “third strike” prosecution.
FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Appropriations
Committee.
AB 27 (Kevin Jeffries, R., Murrieta) increases the
amount of damage required for a person to be guilty of
aggravated arson from $5,650,000 to $6,500,000. FCL
SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.
AB 114 (Wilmer Amina Carter, D., Los Angeles)
authorizes counties to create restorative justice programs
to address the needs of minors, victims and
communities. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Floor.
AB 151 (Ira Ruskin, D., Palo Alto) extends the sunset
date on the City of East Palo Alto’s re-entry program
to January 1, 2012. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.
AB 390 (Tom Ammiano, D., San Francisco) legalizes
the possession, sale and cultivation of marijuana for
persons age 21 and older and regulates distribution,
providing fees to fund drug abuse prevention programs.
FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Public Safety
Committee.
AB 777 (Karen Bass, D., Los Angeles) requires the
creation of a pilot program to provide prisoners with
a valid California identification card prior to being
paroled. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations
Committee.
AB 785 (Karen Bass, D., Los Angeles) requires
the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
to implement a parole violation decision-making
instrument to provide guidelines for parole agents
and states the Legislature’s intent that community
sanctions be utilized for low-level parole
violations. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations
Committee.
AB 845 (Karen Bass, D., Los Angeles) extends the
sunset date on Department of Correction’s Re-entry
Advisory Committee to January 1, 2014. FCL SUPPORTS.
Assembly Appropriations Committee.
SB 46 (Elaine Alquist, D., Santa Clara) eliminates the
statute of limitations for certain sex offenses. FCL
OPPOSES. Senate Public Safety Committee.
SB 118 (Ted Lieu, D., El Segundo) adds the provision
that incarcerated parents receive services to reunify
with their children to existing family reunification
requirements. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Human Services
Committee.
SB 738 (Loni Hancock, D., Berkeley) elevates the
Superintendent of Correctional Education to Deputy
Director with expanded duties to facilitate prisoner
education. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Education
Committee.
Equality / Non-discrimination
AB 974 (Audra Strickland, R., Thousand Oaks) creates “limited public forums” at school sponsored activities
on public school grounds to allow pupils to proselytize
and express their religious views. FCL OPPOSES.
Assembly Judiciary Committee.
HR 5 (Tom Ammiano, D., San Francisco) and SR 7
(Mark Leno, D., San Francisco) express the Assembly
and Senate’s finding that Proposition 8 revised the
California Constitution and was not constitutionally
enacted. FCL SUPPORTS. Adopted.
Governance
AB 1308 (Curt Hagman, R., Chino Hills), SB 370
(George Runner, R., Lancaster) and SB 631 (Mimi
Walters, R., Laguna Hills) would make persons on
felony probation ineligible to vote. FCL OPPOSES.
Assembly Elections and Redistricting Committee and
Senate Elections, Reapportionment and Constitutional
Amendments Committee respectively.
Health Care
AB 1218 (Dave Jones, D., Sacramento) requires
the Department of Managed Health Care to regulate
health insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Health Committee.
SB 1 (Darrell Steinberg, D., Sacramento) expands children’s
eligibility for Medi-Cal and Healthy Families by
modifying income requirements. FCL SUPPORTS.
Senate Health Committee.
SB 810 (Mark Leno, D., San Francisco) establishes the
California Healthcare System to provide affordable
and comprehensive health care benefits for all California
residents. FCL
Housing
AB 494 (Anna Caballero, D., Salinas) authorizes landowners
subject to the Williamson Act to subdivide up
to 10 acres to be sold or leased to a nonprofit organization
or housing authority for farmworker housing. FCL
SUPPORTS. Assembly Agriculture Committee.
Peace, Nonviolence
AB 223 (Fiona Ma, D., San Francisco) requires the San
Francisco Board of Education to make JROTC courses
available to pupils in grades 9 to 12. FCL OPPOSES.
Assembly Appropriations Committee.
AB 351 (Mary Salas, D., Chula Vista) authorizes
local school districts to exempt high school students
who participate in JROTC and other designated
activities from physical education courses. FCL OPPOSES.
Assembly Floor.
AB 814 (Paul Krekorian, D., Burbank) establishes procedures
for persons convicted of a felony to relinquish
firearms. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations
Committee.
AB 962 (Kevin de Leon, D., Los Angeles) requires the
Department of Justice to maintain records pertaining to
ammunition transactions and requires that ammunition
transactions be conducted face-to-face. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Public Safety Committee.
SB 115 (Alan Lowenthal, D., Long Beach) creates
an exemption to the loyalty oath requirement for
public employees and applicants based on religious,
moral and ethical beliefs provided the employee is willing
to uphold the laws of the land. FCL SUPPORTS.
Senate Floor.
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