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Legislative Update – Policy Committees Passing Almost Everything…

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Over the past two weeks, the Legislature’s policy committees held long hearings to consider a nearly overwhelming number of bills of potential interest. Below, sorted by subject, is a summary of the bills that passed out of committee during the last two weeks.

Remarkably, the only bill to fail passage (of those we’re tracking) was AB 750 (Chen, R-Yorba Linda), which would have required school districts and charter schools to have at least one school resource officer present at each school during regular school hours and any other time when students are on campus. Despite support from the Democrat Chair and Republican Vice-Chair, the bill couldn’t get a fourth vote needed to pass out of the Assembly Education Committee. The bill failed passage 3-0-3 and was not granted reconsideration.

Why so many bills? In 2016, the California State Assembly increased the bill limit (the maximum number of bills a legislator can carry in a given session) from 40 to 50 bills. While a ten-bill increase may sound small, multiply ten by 80 members of the State Assembly and you have 800 more bills. Remarkably, neither the Assembly, nor the Senate, increased the number of personal staff (for legislators), or committee staff, to fully accommodate the increase in legislation.

And why won’t some die, already? While the increased bill limit means more legislation, it is accompanied by a reluctance on the part of many legislators to kill their colleagues’ bills. This is often referred to as a “courtesy vote.” Why kill your colleagues’ bill when the other house will do it? We’re seeing more courtesy votes early in the legislative session with new legislators – when many haven’t fully formed their personal/professional alliances and relationships.

So far this year, we’ve watched multiple committee votes where it is clearly a courtesy vote situation – either because a legislator is helping their colleagues, or because the committee members are falling-in-line with the committee chair for political circumstances. For these reasons, we don’t expect to see many more bills die until they move to the second house.

What’s Next? This week is Spring Break for the Legislature, but they return next week for what will be another wild week because the next Friday (April 26) is the deadline for bills with costs to pass out of policy committees. Fiscal bills that fail to pass out of the policy committee by next Friday will be dead for 2019 and considered two-year bills (absent a rule waiver). We will provide an update on those upcoming actions.

Some Key Issues

A number of notable issue advanced over the past two weeks, but we want to highlight some a few here:

Charter School Reform

Easily the most contentious issue from the past few weeks, the Assembly Education Committee considered three bills (AB 1505, AB 1506, and AB 1507– detailed below). The bill package drew more than four hours of testimony, mostly due to long lines of union members, charter school operators, homeschool supporters, and parents voicing their positions at the microphones.

It wasn’t a surprise these three bills advanced, as a majority of the committee members were either authors or coauthors of all three bills. The three bills passed with the same vote count, 4-1-1.

This issue was extensively covered by the press:

CTE Funding

Assembly Education Committee Chair Patrick O’Donnell (D-Long Beach) is carrying AB 1303, which would consolidate funding for the CA Career Technical Education Incentive Grant (CTEIG) Program within the K-12 system by moving $150 million away from Community College control. It would also augment the annual appropriation by $150 million, bringing the total funding for the program to $450 million.

The bill is a proxy for a budget negotiation between the State Assembly, State Senate, and the Governor’s Administration. There is considerable bi-partisan support for a proposal like this and it is on the top of many budget-watchers’ lists of potential negotiation items between the Governor and Legislature. AB 1303 passed out of the Assembly Education with a unanimous, bipartisan vote of 6-0-0.

Special Education Funding

One of two bills dealing with Special Education funding advanced out of the Senate Education Committee last week.

SB 217 (Portantino, D-Pasadena) would create the Early Intervention Grant Program, which would be designed to increase inclusive access to early education programs for children with exceptional needs and expand eligibility for transitional kindergarten to include children with exceptional needs turning five years old at any time during the school year.

SB 217 is the Senate’s vision for spending additional funds in the area of special education. Governor Newsom raised the prospect of new spending in this area in his January Budget proposal. The Assembly also has a proposal, AB 428 (Medina, D-Riverside), which would equalize special education funding rates to the 95th percentile, among other things. AB 428 is currently pending on the Assembly Appropriations Committee suspense file. However, don’t expect either of these bills to end up on the Governor’s desk. This issue will likely be worked out in the context of the state budget, sometime before June 15. If April revenues miss projections, there may be little room in the budget for either approach. Stay tuned…

CCAP Reform and Extension

A bill to expand dual enrollment opportunities, AB 30 by Assembly Member Holden (D – Pasadena), advanced in the Assembly. The bill streamlines the process for developing College and Career Access Pathways (CCAP) partnerships, in part by:

Below are all of the bills that advanced out of Assembly and Senate Education Committees over the past two weeks.

Assessment and Accountability

Charter Schools

Curriculum and Instruction

Early Childhood Education

Facilities

Governance/Operations

Human Resources

School Finance

School Safety

Student Services

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