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Since the terrorist attacks and anthrax mailings of the fall, California policy-makers have been working to improve the state?s ability to pre- vent and respond to similar incidents. Senator Bruce McPherson, Chair of the Senate Public Safety Committee, convened a series of roundtable discussions with emergency agencies. Sixteen Assembly Committees conducted hearings and submitted reports of their findings to the Speaker, with extensive analyses.
These analyses acknowledge that no combination of surveillance and ?target hardening? can prevent all political violence. On the other hand, FCL thinks nearly all terrorism can be prevented if there is sufficient cooperation among all members of the community. State and local entities consider themselves relatively well prepared to respond to most emer-gencies, other than bioterrorism. The Little Hoover Commission, after an independent investigation, concluded that California?s once ?robust? public health system no longer protects us. (See Be Prepared: Getting Ready for New and Uncertain Dangers, available at www.lhc.ca.gov.)
AB 1763 by Keith Richman (R., Northridge) has been introduced to establish a commission for planning ways of meeting health emergencies. He also has introduced AB 1921 to require doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to have continuing education in disaster management.
SB 1350 by Bruce McPherson (D., Santa Cruz) proposes a framework for anticipated federal funding to train health, police, and fire personnel in preventing and responding to incidents of ?terrorism.? He also has amended SB 27 as a companion measure to prepare state training programs for this effort.
Surveillance and privacy policies will certainly be reflected in all of this training and preparation. It is important for California to follow an open security model rather than a repressive one. Ten years from now, most Californians would probably like our society to more resemble Canada than Singapore. The thrust of disaster avoidance training must be to teach an abiding respect for individual privacy and to build strong ethical resistances to surveillance, unless it is the only means to assure safety.
The introduced version of SB 1350 states that prevention is the best way to deal with terrorism, but it fails to define ?terrorism? and ?prevention.? FCL urges the author to attend to both issues as the bills move through the Legislature. While legislation needs to address the broad range of possible threats, California must emphasize bridge-building between people in our communities as the primary strategy for avoiding political violence.
Anti-terrorism training should respect and assist communities that are ready to demand non-violence of their members. Society is safer when people know that their friends and acquaintances disapprove of violence, that there is help for someone who is suicidal, and that neighbors will intervene effectively when anyone threatens violence.
Obtaining a driver?s license can serve as a rite of passage and provide identification for check cashing and other ordinary activities of daily life. Two bills this year reflect the conflicting pressures affecting this wallet-sized document.
Assembly Bill 60 , introduced by Gil Cedillo (D., Los Angeles), seeks to permit people who do not have a Social Security number to apply for a driver?s license. The measure is important for traffic safety reasons, as well as for immigrants who have not been able to comply with federal documentation requirements. Experience shows that most California adults must occasionally drive, and that it is best that they pass the driver?s licensing tests.
The bill went to the Governor after passing both houses of the Legislature last year, but in an unusual action, the measure was returned to the Assembly for further amendment. Security concerns raised in connection with driver?s licenses held by some of the 9/11 hijackers are now leading to more extensive discussion of the many roles played by identity documents.
Some experts favor specialized identification documents issued by employers, schools, and other agencies because they are more difficult to forge. Others want to develop costly universal identity systems tied to a person?s thumbprint, iris, or voice. Because the ability of any identification to track and evaluate people in the system rests on the database that is maintained for each individual, civil liberties issues quickly surface in the debate.
It is hoped that an acceptable solution can be quickly developed, so that the undocumented workers who play an important role in California?s economic growth are not relegated to an under-class status. FCL SUPPORTS.
Senate Bill 1276, by Jackie Speier (D., San Mateo), represents the third time in as many years that the Selective Service System has asked the California Legislature to link Selective Service registration to California driver?s license applications. Two previous bills, carried by Mike Briggs (R., Fresno), failed in the Assembly Appropriations committee.
The Speier bill directs the Department of Motor Vehicles to forward electronic information to the Selective Service system for each male driver?s license applicant between the ages of 18 and 26. It would enact a ?conclusive presumption? that any person not already registered intends to accomplish registration by the application process.
This bill is part of a national campaign to force young men into draft registration. To date, 13 states have passed it, and 17 states are considering similar legislation. If SB 1276 passes in California, it will be a significant victory for the Selective Service System.
The major problem with the bill is that it would force a young man who is conscientiously opposed to the registration system to forego applying for a license to drive until he is age 27. This will not only impose personal hardships on ethical individuals; it will probably interfere with their earning potential, and will even reduce tax revenue to the State.
Testimony in 1999 indicated that the concept of license-linked registration has been aimed at low-income youth and immigrants. Selective Service spokesperson Lewis Brodsky told the Associated Press in 1999 that ?we suspect, based on the demographics we?ve seen, that it?s high school dropouts and immigrants? who are not registering. FCL OPPOSES.
The fear of peace has been sprinkled on California?s political landscape in this election year by Republican U.S. Senate nominee Bruce Herschensohn, who has pledged to oppose all cuts in military spending. But hedging for a rekindled arms race to protect jobs and profits in a war-dependent economy is as short-sighted as it is dangerous: in the long run, war is never profitable for any nation ? neither victor nor vanquished. The United States and the states of the former Soviet Union have reached the brink of economic impoverishment, while Japan and Germany, both forbidden after World War II to build massive war machines, have prospered dramatically by directing their national capital and their best scientific minds to peaceful industries. And like our Cold War adversaries in the old USSR, Americans have seen our basic infrastructure ? our educational system, our transportation networks, our bridges, water and sewer systems, our environment ? decline sharply while the national coffers have been emptied to fill the national arsenal.
The State Military Reserve (SMR) is a program that is supposed to provide California with a disciplined military force for emergency state security in the event the National Guard is mobilized. But many familiar with its operations say it is a haven for right-wing mercenaries and, because it is poorly trained and supervised, a possible threat to civil liberties.
FCL has worked in vain in recent years to eliminate funding for the SMR. Our effort, with the help of sympathetic members in the Assembly, typically has resulted in the Assembly Budget Subcommittee deleting the funds, only to see them approved by the Senate Budget Subcommittee, and later by the full Budget Conference Committee. The Legislature seemed to be convinced that this group of overzealous citizen- soldiers ? which has never in its 50-year history been activated ? was justified in spending several hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer money annually to support its non-mission. But this year California was in such dire financial straits that lawmakers could no longer rationalize giving $189,000 to the SMR, and instead transferred the money to the Military Department?s Temporary Emergency Shelter program.
This program, inaugurated during the Deukmejian administration, allows state armories to be used as emergency shelters for the homeless when the temperature drops below 40 degrees, or when rain combined with a low of 50 degrees is expected. Last year, use of the armories for shelter was temporarily expanded to three months during the winter regardless of temperatures. Legislative budget language appended to the Military Department?s spending plan authorized it to operate the shelter program without regard to the temperature requirements, but Governor Wilson used his line-item veto to delete the language. Six weeks later the administration announced that National Guard amories would no longer be available to shelter the homeless after the 1994-95 fiscal year.
[Note: The SMR?s proposed budget this year is $235,000.]
Maldonado?s bill proposes to open the facility to minors with any offense resulting in expulsion from school, and extends the length of the Academy?s operation until July 1, 2004. This year?s budget suggests it will cost about $3 million to maintain the academy with its existing low enrollment ? a stratospheric $300,000 per person!
Although juvenile courts need a wide variety of placement options for young offenders, FCL doubts the wisdom of having a state-run military school. The National Guard, which provides mission-ready forces to the federal government and emergency public safety support, is not well equipped to provide quality services to students who have such problems with authority that they have suffered school expulsions. FCL OPPOSES.
Last year?s budget called for a modest $30 million increase for after-school programs in poor neighborhoods. However, the Governor proposed a delay in these expen-ditures for a full year due to the revenue downturn. Widespread support for youth activities of this kind resulted in a compromise: $7.5 million will be available to fund programs for the last three months of the current fiscal year ending June 30.
In practice, this restoration should mean that the same number of schools will receive grants this year as originally proposed, although schools will receive only enough funding to run the activities for three months this school year. This is an important step because these schools are likely to receive full funding to remain open before and after the regular school hours in next year?s budget.
FCL advocates funding for these programs to increase at the rate of $100 million per year; the Governor has proposed only an additional $45 million expansion of these programs in the 2002-03 budget.
One out of four California children are living in poverty. FCL is supporting the Movement to Leave No Child Behind, a nationwide effort to address public policy challenges affecting our children. Affordable, quality child care, after-school programs, income support, food security and health care are major issues for our nation?s working families in these difficult economic times. With California facing a $12 billion budget deficit, families at our own doorstep are particularly vulnerable.
Join us on March 19 as faith-led people from across California come together to learn about federal and state-level legislation affecting our children, and discover practical strategies you can employ at the local level for affecting change.
This year?s legislative briefing, held at the historic Westminster Presbyterian Church across from the State Capitol, is being co-sponsored by the Children?s Defense Fund and a variety of faith-based groups working at the State Capitol. Keynote speakers will include Angela Glover Blackwell, Executive Director of PolicyLink, and Jackie Goldberg, California State Assemblywoman. Together we want to mobilize California?s religious community to be effective advocates on behalf of children!
There also will be a breakfast with FCL staff at 7:30 a.m.
To register for breakfast, call (916)
443-3734 no later than March 15.
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You can have each issue of the FCL Newsletter mailed to your home or place of business, simply by mailing a request to our office, together with a check for $20 ($7 low-income). Bundle subscriptions to a meeting, congregation, or other group may also be arranged at a cost of $75.
Friends Committee on Legislation 717 K St., Suite 500-B, Sacramento, CA 95814-3408 (916) 443-3734
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