You know what they say — April policy committee votes bring May Appropriations suspense file fights! Just kidding, but May is upon us and that means that we have passed the first big legislative deadline. All non-urgency bills with a fiscal impact had to pass policy committees in the originating house by April 27. Now these bills head to the Appropriations committees where they must pass by May 25, and then to the floor of the originating house where they must pass by June 1.

This month, the Appropriations committee will put together a fiscal analysis of the bills, outlining how much each bill will cost the state. All bills that require more than $150K will automatically be referred to the Appropriations suspense file (aka, “the zombie file”).

Priority bills that are headed to Appropriations in their house of origin:

Policing

• AB 3131 (Gloria) Requires police and sheriffs to hold open public hearings and transparency reporting when acquiring military-grade equipment. Indivisible CA: StateStrong is proud to co-sponsor this bill with the ACLU of California, American Friends Service Committee, Anti-Police Terror Project, and the Friends Committee on Legislation.
• SB 1421 (Skinner) Permits public disclosure of records of police officers using firearms or other weapons, or involved in sexual assault.
• SB 1186 (Hill) Requires law enforcement agencies to develop and publicize a proposed Surveillance Use Policy for each type of surveillance technology.

Gun violence prevention

• SB 1100 (Portantino) Raises age to 21 for buying a gun and prohibits anyone from buying more than one gun per month.

Criminal justice

• AB 1793 (Bonta) Allows automatic expungement or reduction of a prior cannabis conviction.

Health care

• AB 2965 (Arambula) Extends Medi-Cal to all those eligible, regardless of immigration status.
• SB 974 (Lara) Extends Medi-Cal to all those eligible, regardless of immigration status.

Privacy & civil rights

• SB 822 (Wiener) Net Neutrality: Prohibits internet service providers from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing paid tiers of traffic if they use state-provided funding or infrastructure, such as utility poles.

Women’s & reproductive rights

• AB 3118 (Chiu) Requires statewide audit of existing rape kit backlog.

After the Senate and Assembly Budget committees release their budgets in mid-May, the chairs of the Budget Committees (Assembly: Ting, Senate: Mitchell), the chairs of the Appropriations Committees (Assembly: Gonzalez-Fletcher, Senate: Lara), the leadership (Assembly: Rendon, Senate: Atkins), and Governor Brown will get together and decide which bills are deserving of our great state’s money. The chosen ones will get moved off of the suspense file for a vote in the Appropriations Committee.

This process is opaque. However, as you probably already know, about half a dozen legislators with an enormous amount of power and several more who are members of the Appropriations Committees hold the keys to the progress of the bills we care about.

So, for the next week, the call to action is for the folks in the following districts:

Senate

Lara* –  SD 33 Bates –  SD 36 Beall –  SD 15 Bradford –  SD 35 Hill –  SD 13 Nielsen  –  SD 4 Wiener –  SD 11

Assembly

Gonzalez Fletcher* – AD 80 Bigelow –  AD 5 Bloom –  AD 50 Bonta –  AD 18 Brough –  AD 73 Calderon –  AD 57 Carrillo –  AD 51 Chau –  AD 49 Eggman –  AD 13 Fong –  AD 34 Friedman –  AD 43 Gallagher  –  AD 3 Garcia –  AD 56 Nazarian –  AD 46 Obernolte –  AD 33 Quirk –  AD 20 Reyes –  AD 47

The other bills we are following are in the following states. If you live in one of these districts, give your representative a call about the bills you care about. Let them know what’s important to you!

In the Zombie “Suspense File”

Environment

• AB 1775 (Muratsuchi) Prohibits the development of new oil pipelines and other infrastructure in coastal waters controlled by the California State Lands Commission.
• SB 834 (Jackson) Prohibits the development of new oil pipelines and other infrastructure in coastal waters controlled by the California State Lands Commission.

Women’s & reproductive rights

• SB 1449 (Leyva) Requires testing of rape kits.

Moving fast! Have passed the first House

• AB 3 (Bonta) Raises age to 21 for buying a gun or ammunition.
• SB 183 (Lara) Prohibits ICE from entering public schools, community college campuses, and state buildings without a warrant.
• SB 419 (Portantino) Protects legislative staff and legislative advocates from retaliation for reporting any form of harassment in the Capitol.
• SB 320 (Leyva) Requires student health centers at public universities to offer abortion by medication.

Dead 🙁

• AB 1745 (Ting) Requires all new vehicle registrations (under 10,000 gvw) to be zero-emission by 2040.
• SB 562 (Lara) CA single-payer healthcare.

Died last year when Speaker Rendon refused to move it forward. Although it is dead, we kept it on the priority list because our groups voted for it! We are focusing our efforts on SB 974 & AB 2965 this year because extending Medi-Cal to undocumented folks will single-handedly cut California’s uninsured rate in half and bring us that much closer to universal coverage.

Held over from last year and moving by a different and somewhat mysterious timeline

• SB 100 (de León) Establishes a state policy that renewable and “zero-carbon” generating facilities supply all electricity procured to serve California end-use customers no later than December 31, 2045.
• SB 10 (Hertzberg) California money bail reform. Bases a person’s eligibility for pretrial release on community safety and that person’s likelihood of showing up in court, not on their ability to post bail.
• SB 651 (Allen) Requires state and local initiative, referendum, and recall petitions to include a statement identifying the three largest contributors of $50,000 or more.

Special cases

• AB 2066 (Stone) Remove eligibility barriers to immigrants for California Earned Income Tax Credit. This bill would go into effect right after passing and is not subject to any legislative deadlines!
• SB 1346 (Jackson) Bans bump stocks.This bill is non-fiscal so it is skipping Appropriations and heading straight for the floor.
• AB 931 (Weber) Permit lethal force by police only when it’s “necessary,” meaning when there’s no other way to prevent “imminent” injury. This was a “gut and amend” bill from last year, the result of completely changing a previous bill that had gone through a partial process. The new bill, although it has different content, can inherit the status of its parent bill and pick up where that bill left off in the process.. As a result,  this bill is already in the Senate.

Stay tuned for more updates!