SACRAMENTO >> With a final dispatch sent four minutes to midnight Sunday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to create a third, “nonbinary” gender designation for driver’s licenses, but vetoed controversial measures that would have required presidential candidates to release their tax returns and which would have allowed telecom companies to more easily install broadband equipment — microwave radiation antennas — on city-owned utility poles, a bill that cities and counties fought fiercely.
In all this year, the governor signed 859 bills into law, and vetoed 118 — his rationale laid out in colorful turns of phrases in many veto messages.
“Today we require tax returns, but what would be next?” Brown wrote in his veto message for Senate Bill 149, introduced in response to . “Five years of health records? A certified birth certificate?”
Showing a libertarian streak, Brown this year blocked, yet again, bills to ban smoking in parks and beaches. He also vetoed new legislation to enshrine Obama-era sexual harassment guidance for colleges into state law as the Trump administration moves to change it.
“It is time to pause and survey the land,” he said in his veto of Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson’s Senate Bill 169. Before adding new rules for colleges, he argued, the state should evaluate the effect of its new affirmative consent (“yes means yes”) standard for sexual assault cases — and assess whether the policies are fair to the accused.
Over the weekend the governor approved Senate Bill 5, a $4 billion parks and water bond; a bill to make it illegal for pet stores to sell dogs or cats that aren’t rescue animals; and a bill requiring companies to list the chemicals in the cleaning products they sell. Brown also signed Senate Bill 179, a bill by Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, to make it easier for transgender people to change their gender on birth certificates, driver’s licenses and other documents. The bill will also allow people to choose “nonbinary” as a gender on their driver’s licenses.
“With the passage of SB 179, California continues its fight for a more inclusive society, even as some in Washington continue to try to take away rights from LGBT people,” said Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, a co-author. “With Gov. Brown’s signature on this bill, transgender and non-binary people will now be able to identify themselves as they are, not as who society tells them they should be.”
Brown also last week signed a bill by Jackson to extend 12 weeks of unpaid maternity or paternity leave to new parents who work at businesses with 20-49 employees — and legislation by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, to require middle and high schools serving low-income students to provide feminine hygiene products in bathrooms at no cost.
“With more women in the workforce, and more parents struggling to balance work and family responsibilities, our policies must catch up to the realities of our economy and the daily lives of working families,” Jackson wrote after the bill was signed.
Brown had previously vetoed similar parental leave legislation, as well as a bill last year by Garcia to make feminine hygiene products tax-free. But this year Brown signed a number of bills promoted by the Legislative Women’s Caucus, including an equal-pay bill by Assemblywoman Susan Eggman, D-Stockton, Assembly Bill 168, that will make it illegal for employers to ask for an applicant’s salary history. It also requires employers to make pay scales available to applicants who request them.
The governor vetoed, however, another equal-pay bill by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, who heads the Assembly Select Committee on Women in the Workplace: Assembly Bill 1209, that would have required large companies to provide data on gender salary gaps to the state. Brown called its wording “ambiguous” and said he feared it “could be exploited to encourage more litigation than pay equity.”
“Obviously I’m not happy,” Gonzalez Fletcher wrote in a statement Sunday evening. “We know there is a wage gap at all levels of work. This is indisputable. Policies that tinker on the edges will help, but until we become honest with ourselves and transparent, we will spend decades tackling this issue. That means my 21-year-old daughter will face wage inequities based on her gender. That’s not good enough. We are far from done and we will be bringing legislation next year to further address the gender pay gap.”
