Legislative Session Wraps Up
AB 1250 Held in Committee, SB 649 Advances
After a week-long rollercoaster of intense floor activity and lengthy sessions in the Senate and Assembly, the Legislature finally adjourned early Saturday morning ending the first year of the 2017-18 Legislative Session. The Senate and Assembly acted on hundreds of measures, including eight newly amended budget trailer bills that included substantive policy changes. Overall, CSAC and California counties had a successful year to date, with some major issues still pending before the Governor or as two-year bills. Provided below are key outcomes from the past week. More information is available online for all the bills tracked by CSAC.
· AB 1250 (Jones-Sawyer) County Contracting Authority – Held in Senate Rules Committee, Becomes a Two Year Bill
AB 1250, the de facto ban on county contracting, was held in Senate Rules Committee with no further action taken by the Senate. The final week of session was spent countering rumors and the false narrative offered by the proponents in an effort to peel back the strong coalition of nearly 500 organizations and 55 counties in opposition. AB 1250 was a top priority for CSAC this year because it would have eroded boards of supervisors’ authority to provide services in the most effective, efficient way possible to their counties’ residents and visitors.
· SB 649 (Hueso) Wireless “Small Cell” Leases and Permits – Headed to Governor, Veto Requested
CSAC opposes SB 649, which would limit local government discretion on aesthetics, permitting, and the lease of space on public property for wireless facilities, passed out of the Assembly with only 46 votes and the Senate with only 22 votes. CSAC will place a high priority on securing a veto from the Governor on this unprecedented and obtrusive measure. Counties are encouraged to send their own veto request letters as soon as possible.
· SCA 12 (Mendoza) Expanded Boards of Supervisors and Elected CEO – Passes Senate, Heads to Assembly as Two Year Bill
Senate Constitutional Amendment 12 narrowly passed out of the Senate with bi-partisan support. The bill heads to the Assembly where the author pledged to take amendments, possibly removing the elected CEO provisions and related budget adoption language. CSAC will continue to oppose this measure in the second house next year regardless of these possible amendments due to the override of county authority and for allowing voters statewide to decide a local governance issue.
· Affordable Housing Funding and Regulatory Reform Package – Headed to Governor
Both houses of the Legislature passed CSAC-supported measures providing funding for planning and development of affordable homes, among other housing-related services and programs, by narrow margins. SB 2 (Atkins), which would impose a $75-$225/transaction document recording fee, passed with the minimum number of votes to meet the two-third threshold for tax measures. SB 3 (Beall), which will ask the voters to authorize $3 billion in bonds and an additional $1 billion for a veterans homeownership program, was also approved by the necessary two-thirds votes.
The Governor sought streamlined housing permitting and other reforms as a condition for new state general fund spending on housing programs. The Legislature approved several bills aimed at streamlining and other goals, including AB 72 and 73 (Chiu), AB 571 (E. Garcia), AB 678/SB 166 (Bocanegra/Skinner), AB 879 (Grayson), AB 1397 (Low), AB 1515 (Daly), AB 1521 (Bloom), SB 35 (Wiener), SB 166 (Skinner) and SB 540 (Roth).Additional information on these bills and CSAC’s positions is available here.
CSAC-supported AB 1505 (Bloom), reaffirms local government’s power to require inclusionary rental housing, was amended with a goal of securing Governor Brown’s approval. While Legislative leaders indicated that the bill was included in the “housing package” it is still unclear whether Governor Brown will sign the measure.
· Budget Trailer Bills – Signed by the Governor on Saturday
Ø Health and Human Services Trailer Bill – CSAC supports AB 130, a Health and Human Services budget trailer bill that includes clean-up provisions to ensure proper implementation of SB 90, the IHSS trailer bill. This bill would clarify language around the parties involved with the Public Employment Relations Board process, make technical corrections to ensure caseload growth is calculated correctly, clarify that 2016-17 sales tax growth will be used to offset IHSS costs, and spell out how the wage supplement provision will work.
Ø Cap and Trade Expenditure Funds –AB 109 and AB 134 contain $1.5 Billion in Cap & Trade expenditure funds. CSAC supports this allocation plan as it contains a significant investment in forest health and critical waste diversion funds.
Ø Cannabis – AB 133 includes clean- up language to help implement the state’s cannabis laws. While CSAC had expressed opposition to components of the cannabis trailer bill, the Administration made a commitment to work on language within the Emergency Regulations process and CSAC was able to remove our opposition.
Ø SB 1 Clean-up - The Legislature passed AB 135 which includes CSAC-sponsored clean-up related to local Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Account funding. These provisions clarify counties’ abilities to manage cash flow to deliver SB 1 projects during the typical summer construction season, clarify year-end reporting, and allow adoption of project lists by Board action outside of the budget to facilitate timely reporting.
· AB 467 (Mullin) Local Tax Ballot Measures – Headed to Governor, Signature Requested
The Legislature sent CSAC’s sponsored bill AB 467 to the Governor, which would help counties reduce expenses and preserve transportation tax revenues for transportation purposes. Specifically, it gives counties the option to post transportation expenditure plans online in lieu of hardcopy printing. The measure had no registered opposition and bi-partisan support.