California legislators introduce bills on guns, elections

While Day 2 of the California Legislature’s 2024 session wasn’t as eventful as the first, legislators wasted no time introducing new bills or revising measures that didn’t pass last year.

Among the noteworthy put in the hopper Thursday: 

Elections: To avoid another “Fong fiasco,” Assembly elections committee chairperson Gail Pellerin, a Santa Cruz Democrat, authored a measure to prohibit a person from filing nomination documents for more than one office at the same election. In the same vein, Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, a Los Angeles Democrat, introduced a bill that establishes when a candidate files to run for a second office, they automatically withdraw their candidacy from the first office.

Quick recap: The bill is in response to the recent court battles of Assemblymember Vince Fong. In December, the Republican from Bakersfield filed paperwork to run for both his state Assembly seat in 2024 as well as for Congress to succeed former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Despite state election officials rejecting his candidacy for Congress, a ruling by a Sacramento County Superior Court judge has allowed him to run in multiple races. The judge appeared to suggest the need for a fix, ruling that while “it somewhat defies common sense to find the law permits a candidate to run for two offices during the same election,” she was “compelled to interpret the law as it is written by the Legislature.”

Gun violence: Democratic Sens. Nancy Skinner of Oakland and Catherine Blakespear of Encinitas introduced a bill to strengthen the state’s red flag law, which authorizes law enforcement to confiscate firearms from individuals who have a gun violence restraining order against them, and pose a danger to themselves or others. The new proposal requires courts to follow-up with individuals — not just those involved in domestic violence incidents — to ensure they relinquish their firearms properly.

Public transportation: Saying that there “is no reason for there to be 27 public transit agencies for just the Bay Area,” Democratic Sen. Aisha Wahab of Fremont gut-and-amended a bill about electric vehicles into legislation that aims to consolidate the various public transit agencies operating across nine counties in the San Francisco Bay area. With several transit agencies across California struggling to avoid a “fiscal cliff,” some officials, including BART Board President Janice Li, view consolidation as a key step towards stability.

Cannabis: In October, Gov. Gavin Newsom blocked a bill to legalize “cannabis cafes” — where retailers can sell regular food and drinks to customers — arguing that it would undermine the state’s “long-standing smoke-free workplace protections.” Now Assemblymember Matt Haney, a Democrat from San Francisco and author of that bill, is trying again. In a statement Thursday, Haney announced he was reintroducing the measure to allow “businesses where smoking (cannabis) is already happening to sell coffee and food…”

Stay tuned and read this newsletter as more bills are introduced, as lawmakers have until Feb. 16 to introduce new measures.

Compared to Wednesday’s session — which had to adjourn early due to demonstrators inside the Assembly chamber calling for a ceasefire in Gaza — Thursday’s convening was undramatic. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas did address the protests, however, telling legislators that “this is a difficult moment for our communities… and for everyone around the world,” according to Politico. 

Rivas also told his colleagues that climate change, crime and housing are at the top of his priority list in his first full session in charge.

Meanwhile, Gov. Newsom, who has declined Republicans’ call for a special session to deal with the budget deficit, is being urged by fellow Democrat, Sen. Steve Glazer of Orinda, to convene a concurrent special session to focus on homelessness. 

How big a problem is racial profiling in traffic stops in California?

To find out, the state’s Department of Justice looked at more than 4.5 million stops (of both drivers and pedestrians) by 560 law enforcement agencies in 2022. Among key findings in the report released this week:

• Of those stopped by police, 42.9% were Latino, 32.5% white and 12.5% Black
• Relative to population, Black individuals were disproportionately stopped the most, 131.5% more frequently than expected.
• Though officers discovered contraband or evidence of a crime at a lower rate for Black or Latino individuals than white individuals, they were searched at a higher rate.

The study was overseen by the department’s California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board. It is far more comprehensive than prior reports, covering 502 more agencies than last year’s report, but the disparities found in the 2022 data among race, age and disability are consistent with prior years, according to the department.

• Andrea Guerrero, advisory board co-chairperson, in a statement: “This report marks a major milestone as the first to include stop data from law enforcement agencies across the entire state. The scale of data that California is collecting allows us to say definitively that profiling exists — it is a pervasive pattern across the state.”

The report was released the day after a new law took effect Monday that requires police officers to explain to drivers why they are being pulled over. The law is meant to curb pretextual stops, which other research shows police employ disproportionately against people of color. Stopping drivers for low-level traffic violations is a practice Sen. Steven Bradford, a Democrat from Inglewood, tried to outright prohibit with SB50, though that failed in the Legislature last year.

Speaking of racial prejudice: To curb unconscious bias when deciding whether to file criminal charges, Attorney General Rob Bonta released Thursday guidelines for prosecutors that outline a new two-step evaluation process. The guidelines require prosecutors to first conduct a “race-blind” evaluation where mentions of the race of suspects, victims or witnesses are redacted, followed by an “ordinary charging evaluation” that looks at “all available evidence.” Prosecution agencies must implement the new process by Jan. 1, 2025.

Despite California’s ongoing water woes, even the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office had to give a thumbs down to the state’s proposal to limit urban water use, writes CalMatters’ Rachel Becker. 

In August, the California Water Resources Control Board unveiled a proposal for more than 400 cities and water suppliers serving about 95% of Californians to save water beginning in 2025. While the rules aren’t intended for individual people or businesses, they set conservation targets for urban water suppliers across the state.

But after looking over the new regulations, the analyst’s office reports that compliance is too complex and difficult to achieve, and that low-income customers will bear the brunt of the costs. An analysis from “a private consulting firm” also raises questions about the board’s calculations of the new rules’ cost and benefits.

• The analyst’s office report: “Moreover, even if benefits outweigh costs in the long run, whether they merit the amount of work and costs to implement the requirements as currently proposed is uncertain.”

The office recommended lawmakers to direct state regulators to revise the rules and make them less stringent. It also suggested managing state funding in a way to assist lower‑income customers and give suppliers longer deadlines to comply with rules.

The water board was mandated to draft these rules according to a package of 2018 laws. The rules are expected to be adopted by the board this summer and take effect in October. According to a water board spokesperson, a new draft of the rules will be released this spring.

For more on the new rules read Rachel’s story.