2008 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 July 9, 2008. 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 2228 (Paul Cook, R., Yucaipa) would allow videotaped testimony of witnesses in death penalty cases. FCL OPPOSES. Senate Public Safety Committee

AB 2745 (Tom Berryhill, R., Modesto) creates new rights for survivors of homicide victims in appellate hearings. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

SB 1305 (Jim Battin, R., Palm Desert) creates a new death-eligible special circumstance when a homicide victim is under age 14. FCL OPPOSES. Senate Public Safety Committee.

SB 1320 (Bob Dutton, R., Inland Empire) requires trial attorneys to review and notify the court of errors in transcripts and requires the trial record to be certified within 90 days of the imposition of a death sentence. FCL OPPOSES. Senate Public Safety Committee.

Children and Youth

AB 2061 (Nicole Parra, D., Hanford) implements mandatory minimum fines for parents and guardians of truant children in order to fund School Attendance Review Boards. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

SB 1199 (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 Appropriations Committee.

SB 1250 (Leland Yee, D., San Francisco) removes bureaucratic and financial barriers to family communication for youth incarcerated in Division of Juvenile Justice facilities. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Criminal Justice and Imprisonment

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 Inactive File and Assembly Floor, respectively.

AB 1965 (Sandre Swanson, D., Oakland) requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to establish a program for prisoners age 55 and older who have been diagnosed
with chronic illness and serving sentences for nonviolent offenses, to be released on summary parole. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

AB 2099 (Loni Hancock, D., Berkeley) requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to take reasonable steps to ensure that prisoners released on parole have a valid California identification card. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

AB 2108 (Todd Spitzer, R., Orange) prohibits persons on parole with outstanding restitution orders from being discharged from parole without approval from the Board of Parole Hearings. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

AB 2109 (Todd Spitzer, R., Orange) prohibits a district administrator from overturning a parole agent’s decision to not discharge a person from parole without approval from the Board of Parole Hearings. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

AB2562 (Jean Fuller, R., Bakersfield) creates a new felony enhancement for parolees required to register with local law enforcement as a result of a conviction for a gang-related offense who fail to register. FCL Opposes. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

AB 2614 (Guy Houston, R., San Ramon and Darrell Steinberg, D., Sacramento) removes financial liability for patients, their family or their estate if the person was committed to a state hospital for the mentally disordered as the result of a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

AB 2681 (Cameron Smyth, R., Santa Clarita) provides that a parolee who used a computer in the commission of a sex offense and who fails to notify their parole agent within five days of receiving a device with internet capability is subject to a parole violation or misdemeanor prosecution. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

AB 2929 (Loni Hancock, D., Berkeley) requires the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to develop a comprehensive re-entry program for parolees and to provide local law enforcement agencies with a copy of the parolee’s re-entry plan. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

AB 3032 (Sally Lieber, D., Mountain View) creates the Innocence Protection Grants Program to investigate claims of innocence and overturn wrongful convictions. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

SB 1342 (Dave Cogdill, R., Fresno) allows trial courts to impose the upper term for certain gang-related offenses without a finding of aggravating circumstances. FCL OPPOSES. Senate Public Safety Committee.

SB 1555 (Sheila Kuehl, D., Santa Monica) requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to implement an elder identification card program for prisoners 55 years of age and older and gives them priority for certain daily living activities. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Appropriations Committee.

SB 1589 (Gloria Romero, D., Los Angeles) provides that a court may not convict a defendant, find a special circumstance or an aggravating circumstance on the basis of uncorroborated testimony from an in-custody informant. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Floor.

SB 1590 (Elaine Alquist, D., Santa Clara) requires the electronic recording of the interrogation of suspects in homicide and violent felony cases. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Appropriations Committee.

SB 1591 (Mark Ridley-Thomas, D., Los Angeles) requires the Department of Justice, in consultation with local law enforcement agencies, to develop procedures to reduce eyewitness misidentifications. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Appropriations Committee.

SB 1651 (Darrell Steinberg, D., Sacramento) authorizes superior courts to implement mental health courts and develop standards for participation. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Appropriations Committee.

SB 1730 (Alex Padilla, D., Los Angeles) as introduced, creates a new felony for the unauthorized possession of a cell phone on prison grounds. FCL OPPOSED. As amended, deletes the felony and instead requires all persons entering prisons to be screened by a metal detector. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Appropriations Committee.

Equality / Non-discrimination

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 437 (Dave Jones, D., Sacramento) clarifies that the time period for alleging pay discrimination accrues from the date of each wage payment instead of when the discriminatory decision was made in order to give employees reasonable time to seek redress. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Inactive File.

AB 1882 (Martin Garrick, R., Carlsbad) requires law enforcement agencies to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of persons arrested for driving while intoxicated who fail to produce documents demonstrating legal residency status. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

AB 2141 (Van Tran, R., Costa Mesa) requires correctional officers to verify the residency status of new prisoners and to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the verification and deportation process. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

AB 2420 (Bob Huff, R., Diamond Bar) prohibits local governments from adoptingordinances that prohibit law enforcement agencies from initiating action to discover a person’s residency status or that prohibits law enforcement from arresting a person for entering the U.S. illegally. FCL OPPOSES. Assembly Public Safety Committee.

Governance

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

Health Care

AB X1 1 (Fabian Nuñez, D. Los Angeles) requires employers to offer health insurance to employees and dependents or pay fees to enroll them into a state health insurance pool and requires individuals to show proof of coverage. FCL OPPOSES. Senate Health Committee.

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

AB 1887 (Jim Beall, D., San Jose) requires health insurers to provide coverage for treating mental illness, including chemical dependency. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Appropriations Committee.

AB 1984 (Sandre Swanson, D., Oakland) requires the Department of Health to offer prisoners voluntary, confidential HIV-AIDS testing and, with the written consent of the prisoner, make a prisoner’s HIV-AIDS status available to public agencies for the purpose of determining eligibility for health and social service benefits. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations 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 healthcare benefits to all California residents. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Housing

AB 2019 (Felipe Fuentes, D., Los Angeles) gives local governments and tenants the right to enforce purchase offers when an owner who plans to convert affordable housing to the market rate fails to comply with the law. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Inactive File.

AB 2069 (Dave Jones, D., Sacramento) requires local governments to demonstrate that they have enough land to meet their affordable housing requirements when allowing commercial developments on doublezoned sites. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Concurrence.

Peace, Nonviolence

AB 2062 (Kevin DeLeon, D., Los Angeles) requires licensing of handgun ammunition dealers and a permit to purchase handgun ammunition. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Appropriations Committee.

AB 2235 (Mark DeSaulnier, D., Martinez) requires all handguns to be equipped with“owner-authorized” technology that prevents anyone other than the owner from discharging the handgun. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Appropriations Committee.

AB 2994 (Sally Lieber, D., Mountain View) creates a process to allow parents and students to opt out from having students’ contact information provided to military recruiters and prohibits the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test from being used for recruiting purposes without consent. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Floor.

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 1322 (Alan Lowenthal, D., Long Beach) creates a religious exemption to the loyalty oath required of public employees provided the employee is willing to uphold the U.S. and California Constitutions and removes unconstitutional language from the Government Code prohibiting membership in the Communist Party. FCL SUPPORTS. Assembly Floor.

SJR 19 (Mark Ridley-Thomas, D., Los Angeles) requests licensing boards to notify health professionals of national and international law regarding torture and that the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency remove all military health professionals licensed in California from prisoner and detainee interrogations. FCL SUPPORTS. Senate Floor.