RCRC members are encouraged to share letters addressed to state and federal representatives and regulatory bodies with RCRC’s Government Affairs staff.
Today (May 23, 2014) is the last day for fiscal committee to meet, and either pass, or hold fiscal bills held on the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Suspense File this legislative session. Following the hearing, RCRC staff will update the bill status on the RCRC website by Tuesday afternoon next week. Please check the website for bill status updates, or contact the RCRC Government Affairs staff at (916) 447-4806 with any questions. These bills include:
Assembly Appropriations Suspense File
AB 1451 (Holden): Concurrent Enrollment. AB 1451 would help provide rural high school students with access to higher education opportunities. RCRC Position: Support
AB 1540 (Hagman): Concurrent Enrollment. Current law restricts a principal from recommending more than 5 percent of the total number of students in the same grade-level from concurrent enrollment in a summer session course. AB 1540 would reinstate the 5 percent enrollment cap through 2017 and would add computer science courses to the exemption list. RCRC Position: Support
AB 1661 (Bonta): Healthy Options for Everyone Act of 2014. AB 1661 would create a standard definition for “food desert” within statute and would allow local governments to create Healthy Options for Everyone (HOPE) incentives zones, whereby fresh food vendors could operate within specified food desert areas. RCRC Position:Support
AB 1739 (Dickinson): Groundwater Basin Management: Sustainability. AB 1739 would require a sustainable groundwater management plan to be adopted, except as provided, for each high or medium priority groundwater basin by any groundwater management agency as defined. RCRC Position: Amendments Requested
AB 1799 (Gordon): Land Use: Mitigation Lands. AB 1799 would exempt a governmental entity or special district from the requirement to provide an endowment for long-term stewardship of mitigation lands if the entity provides evidence that it possesses an investment-grade credit rating and provide a resolution or contractual agreement to enforce the mitigation requirements. RCRC Position: Support
AB 1867 (Patterson): Forestry. AB 1867 would allow landowners to sell timber removed during the course of defensible space vegetation management work up to 150 feet on all sides of a legally permitted structure. Status: AB 1867 passed off the Assembly Floor. RCRC Position: Support
AB 1961 (Eggman): Land Use: Planning: Sustainable Farmland Strategy. AB 1961 would require each county with significant agricultural land to develop on or before January 2, 2018 a sustainable farmland strategy. RCRC Position: Oppose Unless Amended
AB 1970 (Gordon): Global Warming Solutions Act: Community Investment. AB 1970 would create the Community Investment and Innovation Program which would provide funding to local governments in the form of grants and other financial assistance to develop and implement greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction projects. RCRC Position: Support
AB 2241 (Eggman): Local Government: Agricultural Land. AB 2241 would change the rescission fee charged by a county when land under Williamson Act contract or land designated as a farmland security zone enters into a solar-use easement to 10 percent of the fair market value of the property and allows for counties that choose to utilize this approach to retain half of the rescission fee. RCRC Position: Support
AB 2402 (Buchanan): Weed Management. AB 2402 would appropriate $2.5 million from the General Fund to the Noxious Weed Management Account within the California Department of Food and Agriculture and specify the allocation of the funds from the Noxious Weed Management Account to the various entities. RCRC Position: Support
AB 2703 (Quirk-Silva): County Veterans Service Officers. AB 2703 would allocate $6,000,000 from the General Fund to counties for the purpose of funding various CVSO activities, and would create a formula through which those funds would be allocated. RCRC Position: Support
Senate Appropriations Suspense File
SB 848 (Wolk): Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality, and Flood Protection Act of 2014. SB 848 would repeal the provisions of the proposed 2012 Water Bond and would, if adopted by voters, authorize the issuance of bonds in the amount of $6,825,000 pursuant to the State General Obligation Bond Law to finance a safe drinking water, water quality and water supply program. RCRC Position: Amendments Requested
SB 1137 (Torres): School Transportation Apportionments. SB 1137 would reimburse school districts for 50 percent of approved transportation costs. RCRC Position: Support
SB 1168 (Pavley): Groundwater Management. SB 1168 would establish the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act which declares the Legislature's intent to have all groundwater basins and subbasins managed by local entities pursuant to an adopted sustainable groundwater management plan. RCRC Position:Amendments Requested
SB 1270 (Pavley): Surface Mining Operations. SB 1270 would shift the annual inspection, review and approval of financial assurance responsibilities of surface mining operations from local governments to a state agency. RCRC Position: Oppose
SB 1292 (Hueso): Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. SB 1292 would increase the maximum amount of a construction grant award from $3 million to $5 million for a water system serving severely disadvantaged communities. RCRC Position: Support
SB 1341 (Mitchell): Medi-Cal: Statewide Automated Welfare System. SB 1341 would require SAWS to be the system of record for Medi-Cal, and contain all Medi-Cal eligibility rules and case management functionality. RCRC Position: Support
SB 1410 (Wolk): Wildlife Management Areas: Payments. SB 1410 would appropriate $19 million from the General Fund to the Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) to make payments to counties for past due PILT obligations. SB 1410 also appropriates $2 million annually, beginning in the 2014-2015 fiscal year, to DFW for ongoing annual payments to the impacted counties. RCRC Position: Support
SB 1268 (Beall): Natural Resources Climate Improvement Program. SB 1268 would establish the Natural Resource Climate Improvement Program. RCRC Position: Support