California lawmakers kill dozens of bills. Child trafficking penalties, Newsom bonds survive

Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!

WHICH BILLS ARE IN, AND WHICH ONES ARE OUT?

Via Lindsey Holden and Maggie Angst...

Friday was the California Legislature’s make-or-break day for bills that will cost the state money.

Bills of this nature are placed in the “suspense file,” and members of the Senate and Assembly Appropriations committees vote twice per year to pass them to their chamber’s floors or hold onto them. Suspense hearings are held ahead of deadlines for bills to make it out of fiscal committees.

The suspense file is meant for measures that will require expenditures of $50,000 or more from the general fund and $150,000 or more from a special fund. But some bills that don’t meet that fiscal threshold sometimes still end up on the suspense file.

The process is one of the Legislature’s least transparent, making it an easy way for lawmakers to kill politically contentious bills. There is no public testimony during the suspense hearings, public votes are limited and information on amendments is almost non-existent.

Friday’s deliberations didn’t yield many fireworks. Several significant bills made it through Appropriations and onto the Senate and Assembly floors, where lawmakers will consider them during the final two weeks of session.

Here are some that made it to the legislative home stretch:

Assembly bills

• AB 1 would allow legislative staffers to form a union and collectively bargain for better wages and benefits. Similar proposals have failed four times in recent years, but it looks like this one could get to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

• AB 28 would levy an excise tax on firearms and ammunition. This one has also fallen short multiple times, but gun control advocates are hopeful this year will be different.

• AB 531 and SB 326 is Newsom’s bill package for a March 2024 mental health bond measure. The governor wants to put a $4.7 billion bond on the ballot to add thousands of new behavioral health beds and change how counties pay for mental health services.

Senate bills

• SB 2 would shore up California’s concealed carry permitting process in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen. The June 2022 ruling struck down parts of California’s firearm permitting framework, pushing lawmakers to bring requirements in line with new legal precedent. A bill from Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank, failed to make it through the Assembly last year. He’ll get to make his case again.

• SB 94 would allow state prison inmates serving life without parole for crimes committed before June 5, 1990, to petition courts for resentencing.

• SB 43: Would reform the state’s conservatorship laws by updating the criteria for determining if a person is with severe mental illness is gravely disabled.

• SB 4 and 423: Would streamline multifamily housing developments and homebuilding on properties owned by houses of worship. The powerful State Building and Construction Trades Council of California has opposed these measures in a push for more union labor requirements. But they seem headed for success.

CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING BILL GETS AMENDED

Via Lindsey Holden...

One of the most controversial bills of the session will get its day on the Assembly floor — with a last-minute amendment.

Senate Bill 14 from Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, would make child sex trafficking a serious felony, meaning it would become a strikable offense under California’s Three Strikes law.

SB 14 drew intense debate ahead of the Legislature’s summer recess when Democrats in the Assembly Public Safety Committee initially declined to vote on it.

After significant public outcry — and intervention from Newsom and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister — committee members later held an emergency hearing to approve the bill, paving its path to the Assembly floor.

Chair Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, pushed for amendments to ensure trafficking victims forced to ensare others on their abusers’ behalf would not get swept up in the new penalties.

But Grove repeatedly insisted the amendments were not necessary and that her bill is “victim-centered.”

On Friday, the Assembly Appropriations Committee advanced the bill off the suspense file. However, Chair Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, said SB 14 had been amended to specify that the more stringent penalties will not apply to trafficking victims.

Holden said the amendments were to “address the recommendations and concerns.”

“But it’s also just to make sure that it’s lined up with what I think the senator was also concerned about,” Holden said. “To make sure that anyone, including a victim, is not further victimized by being caught up in a situation where they need to have some relief, as well.”

After the hearing, Grove said she received the amendments after the committee had already begun meeting. The senator said she didn’t think they were needed, but she is willing to work with lawmakers to get the bill passed.

“It’s already something that was protected in statute,” she said. “It’s already in our language. But I didn’t want to give anybody any excuse not to support this bill.”

SB 14 will now advance to the Assembly floor for final consideration.

NEWSOM EMERGES AS SUSPENSE DAY WINNER

Via Maggie Angst...

Newsom’s wish is the Legislature’s command — at least when it comes to clearing the way for the governor’s March mental health ballot measure.

The Senate and Assembly rules committees announced Friday they were making all 2024 bond measure bills — besides the two that make up the governor’s proposed mental health initiative — two-year bills.

This prevents the other proposed bond measures from going before voters during the March 5 primary election, reducing competition for ballot space and voter support.

Newsom is rallying support to place a $4.7 billion bond measure on the March ballot to add up to 10,000 new mental health beds and overhaul how California counties pay for behavioral health care. To qualify for the ballot, the bills need support from two-thirds of lawmakers by the end of the session on Sept. 14.

Other 2024 bonds proposed by lawmakers include measures to build more affordable housing, strengthen defenses against wildfires and floods and modernize school campuses. Following Friday’s decision, lawmakers won’t consider those until next year.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I just have to say…I’m not loving everything in alphabetical order that always starting with A. The trivia is at least entertaining tho. #CALeg #AppropriationsDay”

- Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Santa Clarita, via X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Anthony Portantino is known for filling his suspense file hearings with fun facts based on bill numbers.

Best of The Bee:

• Arguing that a Northern California man who participated in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol came “prepared for violence,” prosecutors are asking a judge to impose one of the longer sentences handed down on Jan. 6 defendants, via Sam Stanton.

• An eight-figure dollar deal for a trio of Sacramento-area Eskaton skilled nursing facilities can go forward with conditions, California’s attorney general announced Friday, via Darrell Smith.

• California women and people of color make less money, while the state’s executive suites continue to be dominated by white men, according to data released by the California Civil Rights Department, via Andrew Sheeler.