Existing law establishes the Office of Planning and Research within the Governor's office to provide long-range planning and research and to serve as the comprehensive state planning agency. This bill would require the office, on or before January 1, 2026, to create and maintain, as specified, a permitting accountability transparency internet website (dashboard) . The bill would require the dashboard to include a display for each permit to be issued by specified state agencies for all covered projects. The bill would define various terms for these purposes. The bill would also require the dashboard to include, but not be limited to, information for each permit to be issued by a state agency that is required for the completion of the project, including, among other requirements, the permit application submission date. The bill would require each state agency with a responsibility for issuing a permit for a covered project to provide information in the appropriate time and manner as determined by the office. The bill would also make related findings and declarations.
Under existing law, the information obtained in the administration of the Unemployment Insurance Code is for the exclusive use and information of the Director of Employment Development in the discharge of the director's duties and is not open to the public. Existing law permits the use of the information for specified purposes, including enabling the California Workforce Development Board and other entities to access any relevant quarterly wage data necessary for the evaluation and reporting of specified workforce program performance outcomes. Existing law makes it a crime for any person to knowingly access, use, or disclose this confidential information without authorization. This bill would require the Employment Development Department to release an employee's wage information to a qualified third-party vendor if the employee has provided the department written permission for that release. The bill would require the department to allow, at the request of the employee, the electronic transmission of the employee's wage information directly to or through a qualified third-party vendor for permissible uses, as defined. The bill would require the department to enter into an agreement with a qualified third-party vendor to allow for electronic transmission of an employee's wage information for permissible uses. The bill would require a qualified third-party vendor to use the employee's wage information for a permissible use and to share the employee's wage information with a subscriber, subject to specified restrictions the bill would impose on the subscriber. The bill would provide that wage information is confidential, as specified. The bill would prohibit the department from expending any additional state funds to execute the terms of the agreement with a qualified third-party vendor. The bill would make any person who knowingly accesses, uses, or discloses any information made confidential by the bill's provisions without authorization, as provided, guilty of a misdemeanor. By creating a new crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The bill would define various terms for purposes of these provisions. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.
Existing law authorizes the Department of Motor Vehicles, under specified circumstances, to require the surrender of a person's driving privilege to operate a motor vehicle. Existing law requires a person's privilege to operate a motor vehicle to be suspended upon notification by a bank or financial institution that a check has been dishonored when that check was presented to the department for payment of specified fines or fees. Existing law authorizes the department to cancel a driver's license certificate or endorsement under specified circumstances, including when the holder has failed to meet any requirements for issuance or retention of the certificate or endorsement. With respect to a driver's license, existing law defines "cancellation" as the termination of a driver's license certificate without prejudice and requires the holder to surrender the certificate. Prior to canceling the privilege for a dishonored check, this bill would require the department to provide a 30-day notice to a person that their privilege to operate a motor vehicle will be canceled because of the dishonored check. The bill would require the notice to include the date on which the privilege will be suspended if the fees are unpaid. The bill would authorize the person to pay any fees due within the 30-day period to avoid the cancellation or surrender the driver's license.
Existing law, the Dixon-Zenovich-Maddy California Arts Act of 1975, establishes the Arts Council, consisting of 11 appointed members, and sets forth its powers and duties, including providing for the exhibition of art works in public buildings throughout California. Existing law establishes the Department of General Services within the Government Operations Agency and requires it to perform various functions and duties with respect to property within the state. Under existing law, these duties and functions include acquiring real property, entering into lease agreements, and contracting for design, construction, and related services with respect to offices, warehouses, monuments, and other state infrastructure projects. This bill would require the Department of General Services to establish a process to allow for 1% of state capital infrastructure improvement project budgets to be set aside for the commission, purchase, and installation of artworks throughout the state. The bill would require the department, as part of this process, to consult with the Arts Council, as necessary.
Existing law, including statutory provisions and orders of the Industrial Welfare Commission, as enforced by the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, regulates the wages, hours, and working conditions of employees. Existing law makes it a crime for an employer to require or cause any employee to work for longer hours than those fixed or under conditions of labor prohibited by an order of the commission or to violate or refuse or neglect to comply with specified statutes on wages, hours, and working conditions or any order or ruling of the commission. This bill would require a public or private employer to establish a workplace policy that provides employees the right to disconnect from communications from the employer during nonworking hours, except as specified. The bill would define the "right to disconnect" to mean that, except for an emergency or for scheduling, as defined, an employee has the right to ignore communications from the employer during nonworking hours. The bill would require nonworking hours to be established by written agreement between an employer and employee. The bill would authorize an employee to file a complaint of a pattern of violation of the bill's provisions with the Labor Commissioner, punishable by a specified civil penalty.
Existing law requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to establish procedures within the State Department of Education to, among other things, annually identify the critical needs for which effective educational programs and practices are to be identified, developed, and disseminated to public schools. This bill would require the Superintendent, in consultation with the State Board of Education, to convene a working group, composed as provided, for specific purposes related to artificial intelligence in public schools, as specified. The bill would require, among other things, the working group to develop, on or before January 1, 2026, guidance for local educational agencies and charter schools on the safe use of artificial intelligence in education, and to, on or before July 1, 2026, develop a model policy for local educational agencies and charter schools regarding the safe and effective use of artificial intelligence in ways that benefit, and do not harm, pupils and educators, as provided. The bill would require the working group to, on or before September 1, 2026, report its findings and recommendations to the appropriate policy and fiscal committees of the Legislature, the Legislative Analyst's Office, the state board, and the Department of Finance, as provided. The bill would make implementation of these provisions contingent upon an appropriation by the Legislature, as provided.
Existing law prescribes the time after the commission of a crime in which a criminal action is required to be commenced, referred to as a statute of limitations. Existing law provides that prosecution for unauthorized use of personal identifying information shall be commenced within 3 years after the commission of the offense. Existing law provides that prosecution for offenses, including grand theft and insurance fraud, shall be commenced within 4 years after discovery of the offense, or within 4 years after completion of the offense, whichever is later. For offenses involving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance fraud through the Employment Development Department, this bill would extend the statute of limitations for each of the above-described prosecutions to 12 years.
Existing law requires the State Air Resources Board to complete, approve, and implement a comprehensive strategy to reduce emissions of short-lived climate pollutants in the state to reduce the statewide methane emissions by 40% below 2013 levels by 2030. Existing law requires methane emissions reduction goals to include specified targets to reduce the landfill disposal of organics. Existing law requires the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, in consultation with the state board, to adopt regulations that achieve those targets for reducing organic waste in landfills, and include in those regulations, among other things, requirements intended to meet the goal that not less than 20% of edible food that is currently disposed of is recovered for human consumption by 2025. This bill would require the department to include in those recovered edible food requirements, product labeling requirements that reduce food waste.
Existing law, the California Building Standards Law, establishes the California Building Standards Commission within the Department of General Services and sets forth its powers and duties, including approval and adoption of building standards and codification of those standards into the California Building Standards Code, which includes the California Green Building Standards Code. Existing law requires the commission to publish, or cause to be published, editions of the California Building Standards Code in its entirety once every 3 years. Existing law establishes the Building Standards Administration Special Revolving Fund, and makes the moneys in the fund available, upon appropriation, to state entities to carry out various related provisions, as specified. Existing law requires the Department of Housing and Community Development to propose the adoption, amendment, or repeal of building standards to the California Building Standards Commission, and the department to adopt, amend, and repeal other rules and regulations for the protection of the public health, safety, and general welfare of the occupant and the public governing the erection, construction, enlargement, conversion, alteration, repair, moving, removal, demolition, occupancy, use, height, court, area, sanitation, ventilation, and maintenance of all hotels, motels, lodging houses, apartment houses, and dwellings, and buildings and structures accessory thereto, as specified. Existing law authorizes those standards to include voluntary best practice and mandatory requirements related to environmentally preferable water using devices and measures. Existing law requires the department and the commission to research, develop, and propose building standards to reduce potable water use in new residential and nonresidential buildings, including consideration of requiring installation of water reuse systems and consideration of requiring preplumbing of buildings to allow future use of recycled water, onsite treated graywater, or other alternative water sources. This bill would enact the California Multiunit Residential Structure and Mixed-Use Residential and Commercial Structure Water Conservation Act. The bill would state findings and declarations of the Legislature relating to wasted water due to plumbing leaks. The bill would require the department to investigate whether additional water conservation and efficiency measures are warranted for existing and new multifamily residential construction and mixed use commercial structures, including, but not limited to, point-of-use systems, as defined. The bill would authorize the department, if it determines that changes to the California Green Building Standards are warranted, to develop voluntary or mandatory proposals to be submitted to the commission for consideration. The bill would, upon appropriation by the Legislature, authorize the department to expend funds from the Building Standards Administration Special Revolving Fund in developing and proposing these building standards.
Existing law provides for various public social services programs administered by the State Department of Social Services, State Department of Health Care Services, and counties, including, among others, the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program, under which each county provides cash assistance and other benefits to qualified low-income families and individuals, CalFresh, under which supplemental nutrition assistance benefits allocated to the state by the federal government are distributed to eligible individuals by each county, and the Medi-Cal program, under which qualified low-income individuals receive health care service. Existing law imposes various reporting and verification requirements on applicants and recipients of these public social services programs relating to identity, income, and assets, among other things. This bill would, to the extent permitted under federal law, require state and county agencies to accept the reporting by an applicant or recipient of public social services of any lawfully required information, changes, and verification required by law that affect eligibility and benefit amounts, reported in person, by telephone, through facsimile, or by secure electronic means, as specified. The bill would require a state or county agency that receives information in an unsecure manner to immediately inform the applicant or recipient of the privacy concern and provide a reasonable alternative method for resubmitting the information. The bill would require the State Department of Social Services and the State Department of Health Care Services to implement these provisions through all-county letters, provider bulletins or notices, policy letters, or similar instructions from the director of each department issued no later than July 1, 2025. To the extent this bill expands eligibility for county administered programs and by imposing additional duties on counties, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. Existing law continuously appropriates moneys from the General Fund to defray a portion of county costs under the CalWORKs program. This bill would instead provide that the continuous appropriation would not be made for purposes of implementing the bill. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that with regard to certain mandates no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason. With regard to any other mandates, this bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs so mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.
Existing law establishes the Natural Resources Agency, which consists of various departments, including the Department of Parks and Recreation. Existing law requires the Director of Parks and Recreation to establish the Outdoor Equity Grants Program to increase the ability of underserved and at-risk populations to participate in outdoor environmental educational experiences at state parks and other public lands where outdoor environmental education programs take place. This bill would establish the Swimming Lesson Voucher Program and require the department to administer the program, for the purpose of increasing water safety in this state by offering vouchers for swimming lessons at no cost to children 4 years of age or younger whose families have an income of no more than 200% of the federal poverty level. The bill would require the department to contract with, and establish a network of, swimming lesson vendors that accept swimming lesson vouchers offered by the program in exchange for providing swimming lessons, to verify those vendors have adequate and appropriate training to provide swimming lessons, to establish the application method and eligibility criteria for swimming lesson vouchers, as provided, to issue swimming lesson vouchers for eligible children, and to adopt rules and regulations necessary to administer the program. The bill would make implementation of these provisions contingent upon an appropriation for these purposes in the annual Budget Act or another statute.
(1) Existing law prohibits the state from seeking a criminal conviction or sentence on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin. Existing law authorizes a defendant to file a motion in the trial court or, if judgment has been imposed, to file a petition for writ of habeas corpus to allege a violation of this prohibition or to allege a violation on appeal. Existing law requires all public records to be made available for inspection to the public, except as specifically exempted. Existing law exempts from disclosure certain records of law enforcement agencies. This bill would require the disclosure of specified arrest records and data and specified probation reports to a licensed attorney that has submitted a request for such records and declared, under penalty of perjury, that the records are being requested for the purpose of investigating a claim or potential claim under the California Racial Justice Act of 2020, as specified. By requiring additional duties of local agencies, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. By expanding the crime of perjury, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. (2) Existing law requires the Judicial Council to collect data on criminal cases statewide relating to the disposition of those cases according to the race and ethnicity of the defendant, and report annually to the Legislature. Existing law additionally requires the Department of Justice to compile specified crime statistics and make that information available to the public, as specified. This bill would require the Judicial Council to include additional data in their annual report to the Legislature, and to make the data available to the public in a machine-readable format. The bill would also require the Department of Justice to include additional data in their crime statistics and make those data available to the public in a machine-readable format. The bill would additionally require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to annually publish specified inmate data and to make those data available to the public in a machine-readable format. (3) The California Constitution requires local agencies, for the purpose of ensuring public access to the meetings of public bodies and the writings of public officials and agencies, to comply with a statutory enactment that amends or enacts laws relating to public records or open meetings and contains findings demonstrating that the enactment furthers the constitutional requirements relating to this purpose. This bill would make legislative findings to that effect. (4) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.
