Who killed the bills? + Flavor tobacco ban gets a hearing + Teens and COVID stress
Happy Tuesday! Let’s get right into the news!
TENSION MOUNTS BETWEEN ASSEMBLY AND SENATE
Via Hannah Wiley...
A common maxim in the California Legislature holds that lawmakers shouldn’t fall in love with their bills.
This year, there are a lot of broken hearts in the Capitol.
Hundreds of bills meant to alleviate the homeless crisis, decrease medical bills and bolster labor laws ran into the buzz saw of a legislative year abbreviated twice because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Now, with just three weeks to go, Democrats in each house are showing hard feelings over which remaining proposals deserve a vote and which will have to wait until next year.
Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, a Santa Barbara Democrat and chair of the Judiciary Committee, lamented in a July 23 letter to Assembly members that she was left with the “unpleasant task” of making the “extremely difficult and frustrating” choice to shave dozens of bills from the 80 assigned to her committee.
“I recognize there will be many who are disappointed, but I want to assure you that this painful process has not been undertaken lightly, nor has any Assemblymember been singled-out one way or the other,” Jackson wrote. “This has been a conundrum that has made my work in my final year as Chair of this Committee extremely difficult and frankly, unsatisfying. This was not the way I had hoped to conclude my service in the California Legislature.”
She isn’t the only Senate committee chair on the spot culling bills. Sens. Steve Glazer and Richard Pan told us about their own hard decisions trimming their calendars.
How does that look on the Assembly side of the building?
“The Senate is failing us, and is failing the state of California,” Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-Marin County, said at a hearing last month.
FLAVOR TOBACCO BAN GETS A HEARING
Tuesday is a big day for the bill to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products in the state.
SB 793 is set to be heard by lawmakers on the Assembly Health Committee, a critical step in the bill’s path to passage with just weeks left in this legislative session.
The bill has significant legislative support, including Assembly Health Committee Chairman Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, and Congressional Black Caucus chair and rumored Joe Biden vice presidential pick Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles.
But there are still some wobblers on the Health Committee, says Jim Knox of the American Cancer Society - Cancer Action Network.
Besides Wood, SB 793 has the support of committee members Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters; Rob Bonta, D-Oakland; Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara; Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento; and Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, Knox said.
“None of the other Democrats have committed yet, nor any Republicans,” he said.
Knox said that members of the coalition to get SB 793 passed into law have heard that lawmakers have some conflicting feelings about the bill.
“There is some desire to exempt cigars and also menthol cigarettes, which would essentially make it a vape-only bill that we believe is a sham that we would oppose,” Knox said.
Knox said that his group would not support amending the bill to go after flavored vapes only, saying that a carve-out for menthol or cigars would simply provide a different avenue for young people to get addicted to tobacco.
“It’s critically important to remove all flavored tobacco products, no exceptions,” he said.
YOUTHS OF COLOR ARE STRUGGLING
Nearly half of young Californians, age 18 to 29, are struggling with affording basic necessities, such as food, household supplies and medicine.
That’s the finding of a new survey out from Power California and Latino Decisions, which surveyed more than 1,500 young Californians and found that many are struggling.
The survey included representative samples of young eligible voters in California, including Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, African American and white youths. The survey also oversampled Orange County and the Central Valley.
The findings are bleak.
Half of young people have had hours or pay cut. A third have lost their job altogether. More than a third have had difficulty with paying rent or mortgage payments. Half have not received federal aid, either because they did not qualify or they did not receive a payment.
Two-thirds of those surveyed said that the state government is not doing enough to address the impact of COVID-19.
Young people want to see more revenue sources and not cutting (73 percent), and want to see commercial property taxes on large corporations to fund schools and public services (77 percent).
You can read the full results of the poll by visiting here.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The truth is kids with special needs, lacking a politically powerful lobbyist or PAC, have long been neglected at our Capitol. So it’s sadly not a surprise they’re being hit hardest by the school closure order.”
- Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, via Twitter.
Best of the Bee:
After months of escalating COVID-19 rates, California is finally seeing some promising declines, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday, via Sophia Bollag.
California’s wealthiest households pay the highest income tax rate in the country. It could go up a few more percentage points if Democrats follow through next year on a new proposal that would levy on a new millionaire’s tax for seven-figure earners, via Mackenzie Hawkins and Hannah Wiley.
California lawmakers this week will debate Black inequality and injustice in an unlikely arena: Trophy hunting, via Ryan Sabalow.
