Dave Cox Senate Report: September 2007

2007 Legislative Session Report

The 2007 Legislative session was dominated by the 54 day delay in the State budget, which put many other major issues on the sidelines. Thus, in the judgment of many, few things of importance were accomplished this year.

The budget delay did point out to the Legislature and the public the perilous position in which the $5 billion structural deficit places the State of California. I sincerely hope that the Governor got this message and remembers why he was elected to replace Gray Davis in 2003. We need to adjust our state budget to align expenditures with projected income, and a good time to start will be in January when the Governor proposes next year's budget.

As a member of the Republican minority in the Senate, most of the work we do each day involves defending against the proposals of the majority party that expand government programs and increase regulations. One of my bills this year, SB 544, would have eliminated the need for fire alarm manufacturers to pay a fee to the state to register their alarm devices. The state does not certify the safety of the devices, they just collect a fee. Safety certification is done by nationally recognized testing laboratories such as Underwriters Laboratory (UL). SB 544 was held by the Assembly Appropriations Committee because the majority party apparently felt that it was more important to retain the revenue than relieve the burden placed upon the fire alarm manufacturers.

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Bills I Voted Against

Here is a summary of some of the legislation passed by the Legislature this year. These bills are on the Governor's desk for his signature or veto:

AB 8 (Nunez & Perata) – Requires employers that do not provide health insurance to pay up to 7.5% of their total payroll to the state to provide healthcare for those who cannot afford it. The Governor has said he will veto this measure, because it does not provide that all Californians be required to carry health insurance, which is his fundamental principle in the health care debate.

AB 43 (Leno) – Allows people of the same gender to marry in California.

AB 105 – (Lieu) – Prohibits children under 14 from using ultraviolet tanning booths and requires children 14 to 18 years old to have their parents permission to use them.

AB 881 (Mullin) – Requires children up to 8 years old to ride in child safety seats. Current law requires children six years old or less than 60 pounds to ride in safety seats.

AB 1470 (Feuer) – Prohibits the manufacture, sale, or transfer in California of a firearm that does not "microstamp" each bullet fired by that firearm with a unique identifying number each time it is fired. This bill would take effect on January 1 2010.

SB 1 – (Cedillo) – Allows undocumented immigrants to receive state financial aid in state universities and community colleges.

SB 7 (Oropeza) – Prohibits smoking in cars while a child is present.

SB 63 (Migden) – Requires labeling of food items that are made from cloned animals. Currently, there are no food products that are made from cloned animals.

SB 120 (Padilla) – Requires restaurants with more than 14 stores to post nutritional information on their menus, including the amounts of trans fat, sodium and carbohydrates in food items.

SB 490 (Alquist) – Prohibits school districts from selling or offering food to students that contains artificial trans fat after July 1, 2009.

SB 777 (Kuehl) – Adds "sexual orientation" to the list of characteristics that schools may not discriminate against in textbooks or instructional activities. It also prohibits teachers from engaging in instruction that "reflects adversely" on people due to their sexual orientation.

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Bills That Died This Year

AB 16 (Hernandez) – This bill would have given the state Director of Public Health the authority to decide which immunizations are required of students before they enroll in school. The bill started as an attempt to add the vaccine against Human Pamplona Virus (HPV), a disease passed only through sexual contact, to the list of required vaccines for 12 year old girls in California.

AB 493 (Ruskin) – This bill would have required surcharges on large vehicles, and use those funds to provide rebates to purchasers of small vehicles. This "SUV tax" bill was defeated in the Assembly and never made it to the State Senate.

AB 722 (Levine) - This bill would have banned incandescent lighting in California by January 1, 2010. It also died in the Assembly.

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Bills I Authored and/or Supported

SB 282 would create the State Fair Leasing Authority, a joint powers agency that will allow Cal Expo to obtain funding for improvements to the aging facilities at the Cal Expo State Fairgrounds. This helps Cal Expo stay competitive and attract new business to the Sacramento region. I was pleased to carry this bill for the Cal Expo Board of Directors.

AB 62 is a bill I co-authored with Assemblyman Pedro Nava of Santa Barbara. It provides reimbursement to El Dorado County for the property tax loss suffered because of the destruction of homes and other buildings in the Angora Fire in South Lake Tahoe. It also allows the home and property owners who lost their homes in the fire to maintain their property tax exemption and carryover their disaster loss on their income tax as long as the property is under construction or restoration. The bill also provides the same relief for victims of the Zaca fire in Santa Barbara County.

AB 900 (Solorio) – A prison reform package that adds 53,000 beds to the overcrowded state prison system by selling revenue bonds paid for by the state General Fund. It mandates new rehabilitation programs and allows the Governor to transfer up to 8,000 inmates out of the state. The Governor has already signed this bill.

SB 5 by Senator Mike Machado of Stockton enacts the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan. It sets a goal of 200 year flood protection by 2025. This is a comprehensive plan to address flood safety in the valley. It requires state agencies to supply local government with maps and estimates of the effectiveness of levees by July 1, 2008. It requires the local governments to incorporate this information into its general plans by July 1, 2014, and into their zoning ordinances a year later. After this date, local governments may condition approval of development projects on the progress of flood control measures.

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Governor Calls Special Session

While the Legislature adjourned its regular session at 3:30 a.m. on September 12th, the Governor had already called for a special session to deal with the issues that he identified at the beginning of the year were of most importance to him: water supply and healthcare.

The Legislature is now convened in special session on these two topics. Legislation can be introduced, hearings of committees can be called, and the two houses can meet as a whole when actual legislative proposals are ready for action.

All of us agree that these two issues are of vital importance to Californians. The healthcare system is in need of reform and the state needs to plan to provide an adequate water supply for the future needs of our growing state. The difficulty, as always, is the detailed proposals contain specifics that affect the lives of individuals and employers in California, small and large.

Of course, I will carefully examine the details of any comprehensive measures that result from these special session deliberations. At this time, there is no timeline that tells us when any specific proposal on either topic will be considered and voted upon.

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September 17th is Citizenship Day and Constitution Day

Citizenship Day focuses on the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizens both native-born and naturalized.  The choice of September 17 for this observance commemorates the events of September 17, 1787 when the United States Constitution was signed by delegates from 12 states at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  This day celebrates our Supreme Law of the Land as the oldest working Constitution in the world.

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
-- Preamble to the United States Constitution

"The Constitution is not a panacea for every blot upon the public welfare, nor should this Court, ordained as a judicial body, be thought of as a general haven for reform movements."
-- John Marshall Harlan

"We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our liberty and of our property under the Constitution."
-- Charles Evans Hughes

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