By Shane LaVigne, Capitol Advocacy

The Legislature reconvened from Summer Recess on August 5 and today the fate of hundreds of bills were taken up by the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees, respectively. Now, the Legislature will hear the bills still remaining prior to the end of session deadline on August 31.  

During today’s Appropriations Committee deadline, both committees conducted “suspense file” hearings to evaluate the fiscal implications of hundreds of bills. If a bill was held on the suspense file, it will not progress further in the legislative process this year, while the bills that were successfully passed off the suspense file will be sent to the Senate and Assembly Floors, to be voted on prior to the August 31 deadline. From there, the bills that pass the Legislature will go to the Governor’s desk where he will have until September 30 to sign or veto those bills.

Legislative Update

AB 1941 (Quirk-Silva) Local public employee organizations – Support

This bill would authorize a recognized employee organization to charge an employee covered by the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act for the reasonable cost of representation when the employee holds a conscientious objection or declines membership in the organization and requests individual representation in a discipline, grievance, arbitration, or hearing from the organization. The bill was signed by the Governor on July 2.

AB 2042 (Jackson) Police canines: standards and training – Oppose Unless Amended

This bill would require the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) to develop guidelines for the use of canines by law enforcement. While this bill is in a much better place than it was when originally introduced, and after multiple conversations with the author and key members on this issue, we continue to be at the table and actively engaged to ensure any standards and training for police canines are workable for peace officers in the state. This bill was held in committee.   

AB 2388 (Patterson) Information Practices Act of 1977: Personal Information.  Opposed

This bill would revise the definition of personal information (PII).  The term “personal information” was redefined to include among other things, “license plate number.” License plates becoming “PII” would have set a bad public policy precedent and would have significantly impacted law enforcement’s use of license plate reader technology in the future.  We opposed this bill actively and it was held in committee. 

AB 2421 (Low) Employer-employee relations: confidential communications – Support

This bill would prohibit a local public agency employer, a state employer, a judicial employer, a public-school employer, a higher education employer, or the district from questioning any employee or employee representative regarding communications made in confidence between an employee and an employee representative in connection with representation relating to any matters within the scope of the recognized employee organization’s representation. This bill was held in committee due to state and local costs. 

AB 2872 (Calderon) Department of Insurance: sworn members: compensation – Oppose Unless Amended

This bill would require that sworn members of the Department of Insurance who are rank-and-file members of State Bargaining Unit 7 be paid the same compensation as the corresponding rank-and-file sworn peace officer employees of the Department of Justice. While we are always supportive of efforts to enhance the pay and benefits of Unit 7 classifications, we are not supportive of the bill’s efforts to tie compensation between classifications via a parity requirement. We would be supportive of this bill if the Legislature either studied the potential pay disparity for DOI Investigators or provided the DOI Investigators a one-time pay increase. This bill passed off suspense, with Republicans voting No. 

AB 3241 (Pacheco) Law enforcement: police canines – Support

This bill would require the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) to adopt uniform, minimum guidelines regarding the use of canines by law enforcement and certify courses of training for all law enforcement canine handlers and those enforcement supervisors directly overseeing canine programs. This bill passed off suspense with amendments we supported, requiring future recommendations around police canines be submitted to the Legislature.