Sentencing Commission Law Among Over 200 Bills Left for the Last Day of the 2007 California Legislative Session

• AB 1542 (Evans) Mobilehome park conversions—a measure important to the many low income Californians living in the dwindling mobilehome parks in California.

• All sorts of air pollution, water pollution, and toxic bills. Among the toxic bills is AB 706 (Leno) on fire retardants in furniture and other household products that are known to cause serious health problems. This bill has been the subject of a major advertising and lobbying blitz by industries that make or use these chemicals.

• AB 48 (Saldana) A high priority for Californians Against Waste which has sponsored this bill requiring manufacturers to phase out the use of toxic materials in most consumer electronics, including mercury, lead, cadmium and other carcinogenic substances.

• ACA 8 (De La Torre) on Eminent Domain.

• SB 37 (Migden) Electoral College Reform. Would have California join in an interstate compact with other states to award Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote. This was recently taken off the inactive file and is on for consideration by the Assembly.

• SB 60 (Cedillo) Driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.

• SB 140 (Kehoe) ramping up the use of renewable diesel fuel in California, part of a plan not only for energy independence, but also part of implementing AB 32, the land mark law on global warming passed last year.

• SB 533 (Yee) Pneumococcus vaccinations for young children.

• Changes in the laws affecting chiropractors.

• AB 1743 (Huffman) requiring the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to take steps before spending any money on construction of a proposed condemned inmate complex at San Quentin Prison.

• SB 1021 (Padilla) which funds recycling for apartment and other multi family housing units that do not have what private residences have at their disposal.

• Many more environmental protection laws.

By the sheer numbers, if not the really juicy ones, it looks like the Senate will have most of the action at least in the early hours today. There are 162 bills up for consideration. These include 25 Senate bills where all that is needed is concurrence in amendments made in the Assembly and they will be on their way to the Governor.

There are 134 Assembly bills in the Senate, a very large number which include quite a few by Assemblymember Mark Leno that were held up due to internecine warfare between the houses—some say because Leno is challenging a sitting State Senator, Carol Migden in 2008’s primaries—and others say because as the Assembly Appropriations Chair he held up a number of Senate bills. It is probably due to a combination of the two. Many bills get held up in the fiscal committees of both houses, and in many cases this is due to decisions by the leadership of each house, although sometimes it is the committee chair who gets the punishment for it. Apparently all that has been worked out, and we’ll see how much of Leno’s legislative program for the year fares.

The Assembly has 79 bills on its Daily File, including 23 Assembly bills where concurrence in amendments is the last action before they go to the Governor. They have 46 Senate bills as well.

While technically some of the votes are on whether to agree on amendments made in the other house, in reality there will be a major donnybrook on some of these concurrence votes as legislators recognize this is the last action to be taken by them and then leaves final approval to the Governor. Sometimes earlier in a session it is easier to pass measures knowing that committee and floor votes are merely preliminary and bills will be facing much more scrutiny and legislative hurdles. Also, amendments in the second house a bill goes through can be major—including so called “gut and amends” where the entire bill morphs into something new.

The Senate could, if it passes many of the Assembly bills in its possession, leave the Assembly with a lot of work to finish up. If these bills have been amended in the Senate, the Assembly will need to concur in these amendments and they will be taken up in the Assembly under what is known as WORF—without reference to file—as they do not appear on the official file that has already been printed.

This is the time of year where with a sleight of hand or the wink of an eye, stuff gets put into bills that are not scrutinized as much as it would on a slower day with less traffic.

Bills not passed today, and others that have fallen by the wayside can still become law by passage next year or passed in a special session of the legislature according to the purview of the Governor’s call of that special session.

Bills passed before Friday and signed by the Governor become law January 1, 2008 unless they have a different date specified for them to take effect.

The Governor has until October 14 to act upon all bills passed in the final two weeks of this year’s session. Some signatures and vetoes have been trickling in already.

Governor Schwarzenegger has said he will call a special session on health care--and possibly other subjects. He has called 5 previous sessions. Some have been productive and others have not produced any legislation at all. Here is a list:

1st Extraordinary Session (1/6/05 to 11/30/06): Constitutional amendments to be placed before the voters and related legislation on several issues: 1) reform of the state's budget process; 2) reform of government employee pension systems; 3) reform of education relative employment decisions concerning school teachers and administrators; and, 4) reform of redistricting legislative, congressional and Board of Equalization districts.

2nd Extraordinary Session (6/27/06 to 11/30/06): Specific topics relating to prison overcrowding.

3rd Extraordinary Session (11/18/03 to 1/15/04): Repeal of SB 60, repeal of driver’s license bill (Cedillo).

4th Extraordinary Session (11/18/03 to 11/30/04): “Reform” of California's workers' compensation system.

5th Extraordinary Session (11/18/03 to 11/30/04): Specific topics relating to the Budget shortfall.

More on special sessions later, after we finish up with today and what passed yesterday.