By Lynn La, Alastair Bland
Just in time to go home for Memorial Day weekend, legislators bulldozed their way through a bunch of bills at the end of last week to beat the even bigger deluge this week, when there’s a Friday deadline to pass remaining bills through the house where they were introduced.
Some of the bills that passed include:
- Concealed carry: When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a New York state law in 2022, it resulted in the loosening of concealed carry permit requirements. To limit the proliferation of concealed guns, this bill approved by the Senate Thursday would add more gun training requirements and add more public places to the list where Californians cannot carry their concealed weapons.
- Legislative union: The Assembly bill that would give legislative staffers the right to unionize passed off the floor Thursday. It has been amended to ensure that political affiliation will not influence the makeup of bargaining units. Though previous efforts failed, the bill’s author, Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, a Democrat from Inglewood, told CalMatters that this year, “the political will is here.”
- Fossil fuel divestment: Democratic Sen. Lena Gonzalez of Long Beach wants to wind down investments in fossil fuel companies from the pension funds for state employees and teachers. Opponents argue that the bill would reduce investment diversification and returns. And according to the appropriations committee, divesting in these companies would cost the state employee retirement fund $75 million to $125 million in one-time transaction fees and $31 million for teachers.
- Fentanyl crisis: After a marathon 5-hour committee meeting on Wednesday about the fentanyl crisis, the Assembly on Thursday passed several fentanyl-related bills, including legislation that would create a fentanyl task force, prioritize cooperation between state and local law enforcement to crack down on trafficking, increase fines for dealers and expand Narcan accessibility.
- End travel ban: In 2016, California banned state-sponsored travel to states it deemed anti-LGBTQ. Amid criticism that the ban has hindered more people than it helped, Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, a San Diego Democrat, wants to repeal it and instead establish a marketing and advertising campaign promoting “social equity, civil rights and antidiscrimination.”
- Protect abortion providers: To strengthen protections for California abortion providers, this bill proposes to shield them from out-of-state civil action where abortion is illegal, and prohibits the California Department of Health Care Services from automatically suspending providers from the Medi-Cal program if they were dropped from Medicare and Medicaid for providing abortion services.
- Decriminalize psychedelics: Despite the California District Attorneys Association arguing that psychedelics have “no federally accepted medical use and have a high probability of misuse,” the Senate approved a bill to decriminalize certain hallucinogenic substances, which are known to be used by some veterans to treat PTSD, anxiety and depression.
And to stay alive, some bills changed:
- Healthcare minimum wage: Healthcare workers who are advocating for a pay hike are supporting Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles, and her bill to boost their minimum hourly wage to $25, starting in January (the current minimum wage is $15.50). But the bill has been tweaked to increase pay to $21 an hour by June 2024 and to $25 by June 2025.
- Ebony Alert: To bring more attention and resources to missing Black youth, Sen. Steven Bradford, a Democrat from Gardena, wants to establish an “Ebony Alert” for missing children and young people between the ages of 12 and 25 years old. The bill has been amended with more specific circumstances when the alert can be issued, including if the missing person has a disability or is missing under suspicious circumstances.
No accounting for climate change?
Meanwhile, a quarrel is brewing between California officials over two of the century’s hottest topics: water supply and climate change.
In a report released Thursday, State Auditor Grant Parks scolded the Department of Water Resources for failing to sufficiently factor changing climate conditions into its water supply forecasting methods, ultimately affecting reservoir management and leading to reduced supplies.
“Despite acknowledging the need to do so more than a decade ago, DWR has not fully updated its forecasting model and related procedures to better account for the effects of climate change,” the auditor said. His report cited two instances, in 2008 and 2018, when the department admitted that climate change was affecting water supply management and reducing forecasting accuracy.
Central to the dispute is the 2021 water year, a time of drought in which the department “significantly overestimated the State’s water supply,” according to the auditor.
Because of this expected inflow, releases from reservoirs were increased, sending stored water downstream toward the ocean. When the predicted mountain snowmelt did not arrive — partly due to higher temperatures, dry soils and increased evaporation — California entered summer with less water than it would have under more accurate forecasting.
In their response, department officials said they are in the process of honing their forecasting capabilities but that accurately understanding novel and unprecedented climate patterns “requires time, because new tools must be developed to characterize conditions and shape forecasts in meaningful ways.”
The auditor’s report included a list of recommendations to improve the department’s forecasting methods, better evaluate its own science and make summaries of such work available for the public — suggestions that department officials said “would layer additional processes and procedures on reservoir operations.”
They added, “No amount of paperwork will solve the challenges of climate change.”
