Environmental justice.

(1) Existing law gives the responsibility and authority to a deputy to the Secretary for Environmental Protection to, in consultation with the Attorney General, establish a cross-media enforcement unit to assist a board, department, office, or other agency that implements a law or regulation within the jurisdiction of the California Environmental Protection Agency. Existing law requires the agency to identify disadvantaged communities for investment opportunities under the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. This bill would require the secretary to ensure that the unit give priority to enforcement actions for a violation occurring in those disadvantaged communities. (2) The Ralph M. Brown Act requires a local legislative body to provide an opportunity for members of the public to directly address the body concerning any item described in a notice of meeting. The act authorizes the legislative body to adopt reasonable regulations limiting the total amount of time allocated for public testimony for each individual speaker. This bill would prohibit, if a local legislative body limits the time for public comment, the body from counting the time used by a translator to translate comments from a non-English speaker in determining whether the speaker has exceeded his or her time limit unless simultaneous translation equipment is used to allow the body to hear the translated public testimony simultaneously. This bill would raise the grant cap to $50,000. (3) This bill would require the California Environmental Protection Agency to maintain an agencywide public database of certain information related to entities regulated by each board, department, and office of the agency. (4) The bill would declare that the provisions of the bill are severable. (5) This bill would incorporate additional changes to Section 54954.3 of the Government Code proposed by AB 194 that would become operative if this bill and AB 194 are both chaptered and this bill is chaptered last.