Legislative Session Sliding Into Home

The state Legislative session is rounding third base and headed for home as the final push of this year's grueling legislative stint gets under way August 6 in the Assembly… Senate to follow...  and there's a little something for everybody.

There are a myriad of policy issues to tackle in the upcoming weeks, although it's unclear how many will reach home plate. Proponents of lifting medical malpractice non-monetary damages hope for a lift in caps, and have filed a ballot initiative for same to help 'legislative deliberations'. Opponents, conversely, have deposited $5 million into a campaign account to show that it will be a fight.

Also in play: legalizing Internet poker; bumping up the tax on a pack of cigarettes; rewriting a multibillion-dollar water bond for the 2014 ballot; changing Proposition 65, the 1986 voter-approved law intended to protect the public from harmful chemicals; and, cutting a “no fracking” deal.

That'll be done in the final weeks of session – which will be interesting considering the decided lack of capital the environmentalists have when compared to the oil interests. Face it, no matter how noble these sorts of deals may be, they don’t become reality without some palms being greased.

Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) is carrying the only environmentally progressive bill of consequence, SB 731, which would make changes in the California Environmental Quality Act. Biz groups want to see the measure impose more changes to speed the often time-consuming process of examining a project’s environmental impact. Meanwhile, to no one’s great surprise, the unions and the envrios want to halt everything.  

Then there’s the business yin: support the sales tax exemption for purchases of manufacturing equipment and the research and development tax credit for biotech entrepreneurs that Brown conferred when he signed legislation in June… and the yang: Brown’s elimination of enterprise zones whose demise unions strongly supported.

But business is worried that manufacturing and biotech’s modest gains could be erased by sharp hits to their bottom line like a boost in the money employers must pay into the $10 billion-in-the-red unemployment insurance fund.

No doubt doctors believe the budget’s $125 million in one-time grants to increase capacity at mental health crisis centers around the state is laudable but their chief worry – other than the previously mentioned initiative war with trial lawyers over the size of damages in malpractice cases – is three bills expanding the medical care that could be provided by pharmacists, optometrists and nurse practitioners.

What role Gov. Brown will play in the final weeks is unknown. He said at the beginning of the year that his priorities were implementing the federal Affordable Care Act, boosting the state’s economic climate and reworking the state’s formula for distributing funds to public schools. So far, so good.

Both houses still plan to quit for the year on Sept. 13… yet for the first time in 50 years, the Assembly decided to take its one-month summer recess at the beginning of July and return Aug. 5 for an extra week of committee hearings. Barnum & Bailey are boring when compared to this time of year in the state Legislature.