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Legislation

SB 287 - Sales Contracts: This bill would require that injury and loss of money or property would have to be shown before the awarding of any attorney’s fees to a prevailing party in a civil action. Many local automobile dealers have been or are being threatened with frivolous lawsuits that could require complete buyback of the vehicle for minor where no monetary harm to customers has resulted.

SB 376 - Real Estate Brokers: Historically, mobile home park owners have issued small loans to mobile home residents when banks and other traditional lenders were unwilling to do so. Recent changes to federal and state law have restricted owners’ ability to make these small loans, keeping potential new residents from being able to afford or move into mobile home housing. This bill would expand the definition of real estate brokers to allow mobile home park owners to continue issuing these loans.

SB 379 - Telecommunications Policies: California has a long history of supporting the goals of “universal service” – affordable and widely available telecommunications services for all Californians. Universal service cost support helps ensure the connectivity of urban with rural areas of the state, as well as rural customers’ access to the telecommunications network at affordable prices. This bill will affirm the state’s commitment to supporting rural Californians’ access to advanced telecommunications and information services that are reasonably equivalent to those services provided in urban areas.

SB 401 - Regulations: repeal provisions: This bill would require that every regulation proposed by an agency after January 1, 2012, include a provision repealing the regulation in 5 years. The bill would prohibit the agency from approving a proposed regulation unless it contains the repeal provisions. In the year prior to a regulation's scheduled repeal, the regulation could only be reauthorized after a public hearing process where the effectiveness of the regulation’s original intended purpose and/or the continuing need for the regulation.

SB 495 - Unclaimed Property: This bill would lengthen the period before the contents of a safe deposit box would escheat to the state from three to five years. The bill would also require an interest payment to individuals that have had property held in the State’s Unclaimed Property account, and require that property with no apparent commercial value be held by the State for a period of at least 7 years.

SB 553 - Regulations: Effective date: Under existing law, a regulation or an order of repeal of a regulation generally becomes effective on the 30th day after it is filed with the Secretary of State. This bill would require that a regulation or an order of repeal of a regulation become effective, instead, 180 days after the date it is filed with the Secretary of State. As more and more laws are enacted through the regulatory process by the unelected bureaucratic state agencies, the legislature needs a realistic time frame to study the potential impacts of the proposal and repeal the regulation or enact changes, if necessary.

SB 619 - Flight instructor and flight school exemptions to the California Private Postsecondary Act of 2009: This bill provides an exemption from the regulatory jurisdiction of the Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) to flight instructors and flight schools who do not accept payment for service in advance.

SB 769 - Mountain Lion displays:  This bill provides an exemption from the 1990 Mountain Lion Initiative, Proposition 117, with regard to the display of mountain lions carcasses which have otherwise been legally taken.  Proposition 117, approved by the voters in 1990, banned mountain lion hunting and the possession of a mountain lions in the State of California.  While there are several specific exemptions in the bill including the taking of mountain lions under a depredation permit, the Department of Fish and Game has recently determined that there is not a specific exemption that allows for the possession or display of a mountain lion that has been legally taken after it has been killed.

SB 821 - School district reorganization: This bill would require actions taken by an outgoing school governing board to be noticed to the county superintendent of schools, and would authorize the county superintendent to stay or rescind an action taken by an outgoing governing board that would have a material fiscal impact on a reorganized school district, if that action is not necessary for the immediate functioning of the school district.