2007 Bill Status

Prior Session Bill Status

Below is a display of some of the key issues that FCL worked on during the year 2007.

Bill status is shown as of December 10, 2007. 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.

You may also view 2008 || 2007 || 2006 || 2005 ||2003 || 2002 || 2001 || 2000 ||1999

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

N/A

Capital Punishment

AB 780 (Jim Silva, R., Huntington Beach) as introduced, expands death-eligible special circumstances when the victim is a person who exercises powers of arrest. As amended, no longer of concern to FCL.

SB 511 (Elaine Alquist, D., Santa Clara) requires electronic recording of police interrogations for suspects accused of a homicide or a violent felony. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

SB 609 (Gloria Romero, D., Los Angeles) requires that testimony by an in-custody informant used to convict a person, find a special circumstance, or aggravating fact must be corroborated. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

SB 756 (Mark Ridley Thomas, D., Los Angeles) requires law enforcement to adopt procedures to minimize mistaken eyewitness identifications. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

Children and Youth

AB 1300 (Curren Price, D., Inglewood) adds the provision of comprehensive education to the purpose of incarceration for young people under the jurisdiction of the Department of Juvenile Justice and requires the department to design services that promote family ties. FCL SUPPORTS. Chaptered.

AB 1655 (Sally Lieber, D., Mountain View) requires the Department of Juvenile Justice to stop intake of young people convicted of crimes by April 1, 2008 and requires a plan to close all facilities and return wards to county of jurisdiction. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

SB 344 (Darrell Steinberg, D., Sacramento) requires school districts to track students at high risk of dropping out and allows the use of supplemental instruction funds for intervention programs. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

SB 999 (Leland Yee, D., San Francisco) eliminates life-without-parole for persons under age 18 convicted of first degree murder with a special circumstance and replaces it with a 25-year-to-life sentence. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Inactive File

Criminal Justice and Imprisonment

AB 79 (Cathleen Galgiani, D., Tracy) provides that persons convicted of murder who are denied parole become ineligible for a new parole hearing for 10 years. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

AB 116 (Greg Aghazarian, R., Stockton) requires a caregiver adult who ingests methamphetamine in the immediate presence of a child to serve a prison sentence of 16 months, 2 years, or 3 years. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

AB 148 (Richard Alarcon, D., Los Angeles) allows a lessor of real property to deny housing or to evict a person convicted of a sex offense. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

AB 160 (Sally Lieber, D., Mountain View) and SB 110 (Gloria Romero, D., Los Angeles) establishes the California Sentencing Commission to review and devise sentencing guidelines. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Appropriations Committee and Assembly Appropriations Committee, respectively.

AB 370 (Jim Silva, R., Huntington Beach) allows local governments to prohibit persons convicted of sex offenses from dwelling in single-family residences with other persons convicted of sex offenses and allows sober-living facilities to be classified as single-family dwellings for this purpose. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

AB 639 (Loni Hancock, D., Berkeley) requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to take steps to ensure that a person released on parole has a valid California identification card upon release. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

AB 755 (Sally Lieber, D., Mountain View) makes corporal punishment eligible for felony prosecution and a prison sentence. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Appropriations Safety Committee.

AB 824 (Lori Saldaña, D., San Diego) prohibits prisoners convicted of sex offenses from participating in fire fighting camps. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

AB 1416 (Sharon Runner, R., Lancaster) would allow driving while intoxicated with a child in the car a felony, punishable in state prison for 2, 4, or 6 years. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

AB 1539 (Paul Krekorian, D., Burbank) streamlines procedures for compassionate release of terminally ill prisoners with six months or less to live. FCL SUPPORTS. Chaptered.

SB 40 (Gloria Romero, D., Los Angeles) gives judges sole discretion to sentence defendants to the lower, middle or upper term. FCL OPPOSES. Chaptered.

SB 304 (Gloria Romero, D., Los Angeles) requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to permit media representatives to interview prisoners and prohibits retaliation against prisoners who communicate with the media. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

SB 591 (Dave Cogdill, R., Fresno) makes possession of methamphetamine a felony punishable by a prison term. FCL OPPOSES. Senate Public Safety Committee.

SB 851 (Darrell Steinberg, D., Sacramento) authorizes the creation of mental health courts and requires each court to develop procedures for assessing a defendant’s mental health to determine amenability for participation in treatment. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

Equality / Non-discrimination

AB 21 (Dave Jones, D., Sacramento) creates a state Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income Californians. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

AB 22 (Sally Lieber, D., Mountain View) repeals the exclusion of any children born into a family more than 10 months after the family begins receiving CalWORKs benefits when calculating the family’s grant amount. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

AB 43 (Mark Leno, D., San Francisco) provides that marriage is a personal relationship arising out of a civil contract between two persons and makes conforming changes to state law. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

AB 167 (Karen Bass, D., Los Angeles) prohibits eligibility for CalWORKS aide from being conditioned on the limitation of individual or family assets. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Appropriations Committee.

AB 176 (Dave Jones, D., Sacramento) increases the amount of child support received without being declared as income for determining eligibility for CalWORKS assistance. FCL SUPPORTS. Chaptered.

AB 508 (Sandre Swanson, D., Oakland) eliminates the food stamp eligibility exclusion for persons convicted of a drug felony. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

AB 537 (Sandre Swanson, D., Oakland) expands eligibility for Family Leave by allowing a parent to care for an adult child suffering from a serious illness, expanding the definition of “parent” to include a parent- in-law and allows employees to care for a seriously ill grandparent, sibling, grandchild or domestic partner. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

AB 1379 (Julia Brownley, D., Santa Monica) requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to identify alternative criteria for high school seniors unable to pass exit examinations to demonstrate competence and receive a diploma. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

Governance

AB 466 (Loni Hancock, D., Berkeley) authorizes pupils volunteering in voting precincts to be included in independent study without reducing schools’ average daily attendance. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

AB 583 (Loni Hancock, D., Berkeley) creates a voluntary system of publicly financed campaigns for elective office. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Health Care

AB 8 (Fabian Nuñez, D. Los Angeles) requires employers to offer health care coverage to employees and dependents or pay fees to enroll them into a state health insurance pool. FCL SUPPORTS if amended to address concerns with affordability. Vetoed.

AB 110 (John Laird, D., Santa Cruz) authorizes public entities to use funds from the Department of Public Health for clean needle exchange programs. FCL SUPPORTS. Chaptered.

AB 1334 (Sandre Swanson, D., Oakland) allows nonprofit and health care agencies to distribute condoms in state prisons. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

AB 1554 (Dave Jones, D., Sacramento) regulates increases in health insurance premiums, co-payments and deductibles. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Health Committee.

SB 32 (Darrell Steinberg, D., Sacramento) expands eligibility for children in the Healthy Families Program to families with income up to 300 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Inactive File.

SB 840 (Sheila Kuehl, D., Santa Monica) creates the California Universal Healthcare System to provide affordable and comprehensive health care benefits to all California residents. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Housing

AB 239 (Mark DeSaulnier, D., Martinez) authorizes Contra Costa and San Mateo counties to charge $25 document recording fees and use the proceeds for low-income housing. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Local Government Committee.

AB 414 (Dave Jones, D., Sacramento) limits “double-zoning” in designating sites for affordable housing to encourage more highdensity and mixed-use zoning. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.

AB 607 (Julia Brownley, D., Santa Monica) requires locking mailboxes for residential hotel tenants. FCL SUPPORTS. Chaptered.

AB 641 (Alberto Torrico, D., Fremont) reduces up-front costs of affordable housing developments by requiring local governments to provide fee deferrals until the developer has received a certificate of occupancy. FCL SUPPORTS. Chaptered.

SB 464 (Sheila Kuehl, D., Santa Monica) limits the prohibition on public entities for adopting statutes, ordinances or regulations compelling owners of real property to continue to offer accommodations to those who have owned the property five years or longer. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Inactive File.

Peace, Nonviolence

AB 658 (Karen Bass, D., Los Angeles) awards grants to community-based organizations for the development and implementation of evidence-based approaches to homicide and violence prevention. Vetoed.

AB 1471 (Mike Feuer, D., West Hollywood) expands the definition of “unsafe handguns” to include semi-automatic pistols not equipped with microstamping technology. FCL SUPPORTS. Chaptered.

AB 1661 (Paul Cook, R., Yucaipa) allows males under the age of 26 to register with the Selective Service System on their application for a California Driver’s License or Identification Card and requires the Department of Motor Vehicles to provide a notice on the application form of the consequences for failure to register. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

SB 468 (Alex Padilla, D., Los Angeles) creates the Shaken Baby Syndrome Education Pilot Program modeled after programs in New York that have reduced deaths by half. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

SB 924 (Don Perata, D., Oakland) places an advisory on the ballot asking voters if President Bush should end the U.S. occupation of Iraq and immediately begin the orderly withdrawal of military forces. FCL SUPPORTS. Vetoed.