Sacramento and San Bruno CA: Senator Jerry Hill 2014 Bills

News Release - Office of Senator Jerry Hill – December 30, 2014

Part 2 of 2 parts

Senator Jerry Hill’s Bills to Protect Consumers, Improve Oversight of Utilities and Increase Safety Take Effect January 1

This is part 2 of a 2 part article

Part 1 is here http://patch.com/california/sanbruno/sacramento-san-bruno-ca-senator-jer...

SACRAMENTO – Thirteen bills by State Senator Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo/Santa Clara Counties, take effect New Year’s Day, providing greater consumer safeguards, improved oversight of utilities, regulation of waste from auto shredding and prohibitions against extortionate mug shot websites.

In all Governor Brown signed 16 of Hill’s bills into law in 2014. Three were urgency bills that took effect when the governor signed them. The 13 taking effect on January 1, 2015, are:

SB 1311 - Establishing Hospital Protocols for Antibiotic Use in Patients – Requires general acute care hospitals in California to establish antibiotic stewardship programs byJuly 1, 2015. The widespread use of antibiotics has increased resistance to infections and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevent (CDC) estimates that each year more than two million Americans are infected with, and 23,000 die from, antibiotic resistant infections. Antibiotic stewardship programs can reduce antibiotic resistance by ensuring that antibiotics are used only when necessary, that the right antibiotic is chosen, and that antibiotics are administered correctly.

SB 1409 – CPUC Safety Investigations – Requires the CPUC to list in a report the gas and electric accident investigations the commission finalized in the previous year, as well as those pending completion. The bill also requires the commission to summarize these investigations in its annual report. The CPUC has reported that 150 fatalities and 413 injuries have occurred involving PG&E’s, Southern California Edison’s, and San Diego Gas and Electric’s electrical facilities since 2003. An average of 13 such fatalities occur in California each year. Although the CPUC is required by law to investigate accidents involving electricity infrastructure that result in fatalities and serious injuries, the investigations typically take years to complete, and there is no accounting of completed investigations or those in progress, nor has the public been told of the nature of these accidents.

SB 1415 – Bay Area Quality Management District Advisory Council – Modernizes the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s (BAAQMD) Advisory Council. Currently the BAAQMD is the only air management district in the state with prescriptive categories of people that must serve on their Advisory Council which was established in 1959. The bill reduces the cumbersome membership of 20 to a manageable seven, and it would also require the members of the Advisory Council to be skilled and experienced in the fields of air pollution, the health impacts of air pollution or climate change.

SB 1433 – Modern Infrastructure Contracting – Extends the sunset for the “design-build” contracting tool for transit operators for two years. “Design-build” is a contracting process that allows both the design of a project and its construction to be covered in a single contract—a tool well-suited to large, complicated infrastructure projects. This two-year extension better allows transit operators to deliver critical capital projects like the BART extension or the electrification of CalTrain.

Hill’s three urgency bills took effect when Governor Brown signed them in September. Those bills are:

SB 445 – Underground Storage Tank Cleanup
Approved by the governor, September 25, 2014 – Protects soil and groundwater from petroleum contamination by making several reforms to the state’s underground storage tank cleanup fund such as requiring single-wall gas station tanks to be replaced within 10 years. Also allows money from the fund to be used for surface and groundwater contamination cleanup and provide the State Water Board with more authority to crack down on fraud from claimants and consultants.

SB 611 – Limousine Safety Inspections
,Approved by the governor, September 30, 2014 – Spurred by a tragic limousine fire that killed five women last year on the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, this bill expands safety protections to limousines that seat 10 or fewer people. Specifically, the bill requires that modified limousines with a seating capacity of fewer than 10 passengers be equipped with two readily accessible and fully charged fire extinguishers and be inspected by the California Highway Patrol every 13 months.

SB 1430 – San Francisco International Airport Unlicensed Commercial Transportation Operators
Approved by the governor, September 15, 2014
Closes a procedural loophole and enables the San Mateo County District Attorney to prosecute unlicensed commercial transportation operators that illegally transport passengers to San Francisco International Airport.

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Nate Solov

Office of Senator Jerry Hill

916-651-4013

www.senate.ca.gov/hill

CONTACT: Aurelio Rojas 916-747-3199 cell

Leslie Guevarra, 415-298-3404 cell

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Robert Riechel

Photo Credit: San Bruno Patch Archives

Source Credit: California State Senator Jerry Hill

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