This post was written by Tracy Rosenberg. Tracy Rosenberg is the executive director of Media Alliance, a Northern CA democratic communications advocate and Advocacy Director at Oakland Privacy, a citizens coalition that protects privacy rights. She can be reached at tracy@media-alliance.org.
California’s state legislature introduces and debates about 2,500 bills a year. It’s safe to say that the average Californian resident will hear about 50 of them, at most. As a grassroots lobbyist for two organizations, Media Alliance and Oakland Privacy, I get to pay attention to a lot more of them, and the somewhat impenetrable process of them becoming, or not becoming, law.
The goal of this column is not just to highlight a few of the more significant bills out there, but to shine some light on how the process works and make it feel less mysterious and more accessible. I would never be so harsh as to say that we get the quality of laws we deserve. But it is true that participation by lobbyists makes outcomes worse and participation by real people makes outcomes better. It’s hard, but not impossible, to stay in the loop about what’s happening and to intervene when Sacramento decisions have significant impacts on our lives. This column hopes to make it a little easier for more Berkeleyans to do just that.
Up through mid-February, Senate and Assembly members introduce new bills. Bills can be and are introduced at other times, but after mid-February they have to be changes or amendments to other bills which are famously called “gut and amends.” An example is when a bill originally about cattle ranching suddenly turns into a bill about police drones by “amending” every single word in it. We will see a few of those as the year progresses.
Here are some early bills that would have big impacts on civil and human rights. You can find the status and text of each bill at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.
SB 50 by Gardena rep Steven Bradford, who has been responsible for many seminal criminal justice reform bills, would restrict the use of pretextual traffic stops. This bill would have a significant impact on Berkeley’s own drive to eliminate pretextual stops (see “Tainted BPD Bike Unit Still Operating,” elsewhere in this issue). The language for the bill is similar to the San Francisco proposal recently adopted by the San Francisco Police Commission.
AB 280 by Pasadena rep Chris Holden would greatly reduce the use of solitary confinement in CA state prisons to no more than 15 consecutive days and eliminate it entirely for people under 26, over 59, or diagnosed with physical or mental disabilities. The Mandela Act was vetoed last year by Governor Newsom after passing both the State Assembly and State Senate.
AB 223 by San Diego representative Chris Ward would require all petitions for gender change filed by a minor under 18 years old to be kept under seal by the court. This protects the safety of trans youth from those that would violently react to their decisions.
SB 254 by hometown rep Nancy Skinner would mandate media access to all CA state, county and city jails including tours and access to prisoner interviews.
AB 48 by Davis representative Cecilia Aguiar-Curry would require informed consent for the use of anti-psychotic drugs in nursing homes and prevent their use for convenience, discipline and restraint. According to researchers, 20% of nursing home residents are treated with these strong drugs, which are not recommended for dementia-related conditions.
Berkeleyans may also be interested in Matt Haney’s AB 12, which would limit landlord demands for security deposits on apartment rentals to no more than one month’s rent.
On the bad side, here are a few bills that shouldn’t be enacted.
SB 31 and AB 257 (matching bills) from Republicans Brian Jones of San Diego and Josh Hoover of Sacramento, would enforce a statewide “Sit/Lie” law to prohibit sitting, lying, sleeping or placing personal property within 1000 feet of a school, park, library or daycare center. Police could issue misdemeanor or infraction charges at their discretion. Governor Gavin Newsom introduced one of California’s first sit/lie laws as mayor of San Francisco in 2010.
SB 64 by Orange County rep Tom Umberg would loosen search warrant requirements which currently require probable cause that a felony has been or will be committed to allow for warrants to be requested for misdemeanor level hate crimes against protected groups.
AB 13 by Riverside rep Bill Essayli would end California’s experiment with automatic mail ballots and once again require CA voters to specifically request a mail-in ballot.
In the next issue, we will talk about how to intervene so legislators know what you think about their proposals.