Asm. Richard Bloom

This measure would declare the month of May 2019 as Foster Care Month.

This measure would recognize June 19, 2019, as Juneteenth and would urge the people of California to join in celebrating Juneteenth as a day to honor and reflect on the significant role that African Americans have played in the history of the United States and how they have enriched society through their steadfast commitment to promoting unity and equality.

This measure would declare June 6, 2019, as Secure Your Load Day in California.

The federal Nutria Eradication and Control Act of 2003 authorizes the Secretary of the Interior, subject to the availability of appropriations, to provide financial assistance to the State of Maryland and the State of Louisiana for a program to implement measures to eradicate or control nutria and restore marshland damaged by nutria. Under the federal act, the federal share of the costs of the program is prohibited from exceeding 75% of the total costs of the program. This measure would urge the United States Congress to reauthorize and specifically add California to the Nutria Eradication and Control Act of 2003 and to authorize an appropriation of $4,000,000 to help the state implement a nutria eradication program.

This measure would urge the United States Department of Health and Human Services to rescind the new Title X regulations that will impede access to essential, time-sensitive health care for low-income individuals across California and the nation.

This measure would urge the 116th Congress of the United States to enact House Resolution 1708, which would, among other things, add 191,000 acres of the Rim of the Valley Corridor to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

This measure would designate the portion of Interstate 505 between the Interstate 80 interchange and the Vaca Valley Parkway in the County of Solano as the CHP Officer Kirk Griess Memorial Highway. The measure would request the Department of Transportation to determine the cost of appropriate signs showing this special designation and, upon receiving donations from nonstate sources covering that cost, to erect those signs.

Existing law requires each school district or county superintendent of schools maintaining kindergarten or any of grades 1 to 12, inclusive, and, commencing with the 2019–20 school year, each charter school, to provide for each needy pupil one nutritionally adequate free or reduced-price meal during each schoolday. Existing law sets the reimbursement rates for free or reduced-price meals served to needy pupils at specified amounts. This bill would establish within the State Department of Education the California School Plant-Based Food and Beverage Program. The bill would authorize a local educational agency, as defined, to apply for funding, upon appropriation by the Legislature, for reimbursement of up to $0.20 per meal for meals that include a plant-based food option, as defined, or up to $0.10 per meal for meals that include a plant-based milk option, as defined, or both. The bill would require the department to make additional one-time payments of up to $1,000, as specified, on a first-come-first-served basis to local educational agencies that receive meal reimbursement pursuant to the bill's provisions. The bill would also require the department, upon a one-time appropriation by the Legislature, to provide grants of up to $100,000 to local educational agencies for additional purposes relating to the program. The bill would authorize the department to accept funding from private sources for the purpose of providing reimbursements or grants pursuant to these provisions. The bill would require the department to adopt regulations to implement the program, establish guidelines for the evaluation of the program, report evaluation results to the Legislature, and conduct outreach.

This measure would urge Congress to swiftly enact House Resolution 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, to require background checks for all firearm sales.

(1) Existing federal law, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, regulates, among other things, the quality and packaging of foods introduced or delivered for introduction into interstate commerce and generally prohibits the misbranding of food. Existing federal law, the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990, governs state and local labeling requirements, including those that characterize the relationship of any nutrient specified in the labeling of food to a disease or health-related condition. Existing state law, the Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law, generally regulates misbranded food and provides that any food is misbranded if its labeling does not conform with the requirements for nutrient content or health claims as set forth in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the regulations adopted pursuant to that federal act. Existing law requires that a food facility, as defined, make prescribed disclosures and warnings to consumers. Existing law makes a violation of these requirements a crime. Existing state law, the Pupil Nutrition, Health, and Achievement Act of 2001, prohibits the sale of specified beverages to pupils at schools, except for vegetable-based drinks, drinking water with no added sweetener, milk, and in high schools, an electrolyte replacement beverage if those beverages meet certain nutritional requirements. This bill would establish the Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Safety Warning Act, which would prohibit a person from distributing, selling, or offering for sale a sugar-sweetened beverage in a sealed beverage container, a multipack of sugar-sweetened beverages, or a concentrate, as those terms are defined, in this state unless the sealed beverage container, multipack, or packaging of the concentrate bears a safety warning. The bill also would require every person who owns, leases, or otherwise legally controls the premises where a vending machine or beverage dispensing machine is located, or where a sugar-sweetened beverage is sold in an unsealed container, to place a specified safety warning in certain locations, including on the exterior of any vending machine that includes a sugar-sweetened beverage for sale. (2) Under existing law, the State Department of Public Health, upon the request of a health officer, as defined, may authorize the local health department of a city, county, city and county, or local health district to enforce the provisions of the Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law. Existing law authorizes the State Department of Public Health to assess a civil penalty against any person for a violation of that law in an amount not to exceed $1,000 per day, except as specified. Existing law authorizes the Attorney General or any district attorney, on behalf of the State Department of Public Health, to bring an action in a superior court to grant a temporary or permanent injunction restraining a person from violating the Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law. This bill, commencing July 1, 2021, would make the first violation of that law or regulations adopted pursuant to that law result in a notice of violation that would inform the recipient that they have an opportunity to remedy the violation without penalty, and a second or subsequent violation punishable by a civil penalty of not less than $50, but no greater than $500. This bill would also create the Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Safety Warning Fund for the receipt of all moneys collected for violations of those requirements, and would allocate moneys in this fund, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to the department for the purpose of enforcing those provisions. The bill would make legislative findings and declarations relating to the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, obesity, and dental disease.