Legislation
2013 Bills
SB 143 - Small School District Funding: This bill will rectify a funding shortage for the Baker Valley Unified School District. After more than a decade, the California Department of Education changed their interpretation of the rules on necessary small district funding that this isolated district receives. This measure corrects the problem for Baker Valley and 2 other districts in the State and keeps them solvent.
SB 159 - Cemetery District: This bill will allow the Kern River Valley Cemetery District to inter up to 40 nonresidents per year. Under California’s 1909 public cemetery law, only residents of public cemetery districts are allowed to be interred in these cemeteries. The problem is that in rural areas, small populations do not provide enough business for these cemeteries to continue to be maintained. Interment opportunities are further diluted when newer veterans’ cemeteries are opened in close proximity to the districts, as has recently happened in the Kern River Valley.
SB 175 - Game Refuges: By correcting a conflict between the Fish and Game laws and the State Penal Code laws, this bill will prevent private citizens, and peace officers and retired peace officers from unknowingly breaking the law when they venture into a State Game Refuge while carrying a concealed weapon.
SB 246 - Desert View Water District: This bill helps clarify and reorganize the law that established the Bighorn-Desert View water district within San Bernardino County. This reorganization should provide more transparency and accountability to ratepayers in that district.
SB 489 - PUC Receivership: This bill will allow the California Public Utilities Commission to more easily rescue a bankrupt or defunct water or sewer company and ensure that the customers of that district company continue to be served.
SB 561 - Student Discipline and Mental Health: Lost in the debate over gun control is that we are not appropriately identifying and treating mental illness. As a former school administrator, I saw many students who were expelled for violence go unscreened for mental illness. In many cases, I suspected that further acts of violence could have been prevented had these students been identified and then properly treated. This legislation will require that students expelled for acts of violence undergo mental health screening with the hope of identifying and treating them before they do more harm to others.
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2012 Bills
SB 1081 - District Hospital Participation in the Low-Income Health Program: This bill will provide that a non-designated public hospital may be eligible to operate an approved LIHP if it is located in a county that does not have a county hospital and does not intend to operate a LIHP. The bill will bring important federal funds to help pay for the cost of low income health programs. Signed into Law by Governor Brown
SB 1207 - CARE Program: This bill will allow the state’s 3 investor-owned utilities who administer a CARE low income program to request verification of income and require energy audits when utility usage exceeds 400% of usage. It would allow utilities to remove a CARE customer from the program if usage exceeds 600% and is not reduced. As the CARE program is subsidized by regular ratepayers, to the extent that fraud in the program is eliminated, overall energy rates could be reduced. Signed into Law by Governor Brown
SB 1269 - Adopt-A-Highway Tax Credit: This bill will provide a 50% tax credit for the value of materials, equipment, or, in the case of individuals, services donated, by taxpayers for maintenance or roadside enhancement of state highways.
SB 1296 - Require Legislative Analyst to do the Title and Summary of Ballot Initiatives: This bill will require the Legislative Analyst, rather than the Attorney General, to prepare the ballot title and summary for all measures submitted to the voters of the state and would require the Legislative Analyst, instead of the Department of Finance and the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, to prepare any fiscal estimate or opinion required by a proposed initiative measure.
SB 1367 - Archery Hunting/Firearms Bill: This bill will revise the archery provisions of the Fish and Game code to authorize a peace officer or a person with a valid license to carry a concealed firearm, to carry a firearm while engaged in the taking of deer with a bow and arrow, but would continue to prohibit taking or attempting to take deer with that firearm. Signed into Law by Governor Brown
SB 1453 - Teleconferencing Centers: This bill will require the state’s Chief Information Officer to establish eight teleconferencing centers in strategic geographic areas of the state to allow for state boards and commissions to broadcast hearings and receive testimony via teleconference. The CIO could contract with local or federal government or private entities to establish the centers. The bill would provide more government transparency and allow citizens in remote areas of the state to participate in the hundreds of regulatory hearings held by various boards and commissions.
SB 1482 - Juvenile Custody/Relatives and Non-Relatives: A quirk in juvenile law allows for a relative to assume legal guardianship of a child only if the child is currently residing with that relative. The law does not allow a child to be placed with a relative if that child is not currently living with that relative, but would allow the child to be placed with a non-relative who the child is not living with. This bill will allow the child to be placed with a relative, regardless of current residency.
SB 1569 - Reducing the 10 Waiting Period on Firearms to 3 Days: This bill will reduce the existing 10-day waiting period for taking possession of a purchased firearm to 3 days.
SCA 19 - Title and Summary Responsibilities to the LAO: This is the Constitutional Amendment that is required to allow the Legislative Analyst to provide the title and summary for a proposed initiative or referendum.
SCR 50 - Deputy Daniel Lee Archuleta Memorial Interchange: Renames an intersection along Highway 99 after Officer Daniel Archuleta. Officer Archuleta was a Kern County Sheriff’s Deputy killed in the line of duty in 2004.
SCR 80 - Lance Corporal Joseph C. Lopez Memorial Interchange: This measure would designate the Rosamond Boulevard Interchange of State Highway Route 14 in the City of Rosamond as the Lance Corporal Joseph C. Lopez Memorial Interchange.
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2011 Bills
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. Signed into Law by Governor Brown
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. Signed into Law by Governor Brown
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. Signed into Law by Governor Brown
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. Signed into Law by Governor Brown
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. Signed into Law by Governor Brown
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