Existing law requires the State Department of Public Health to maintain a program of maternal and child health, which may include, among other things, facilitating services directed toward reducing infant mortality and improving the health of mothers and children. Existing law requires the Office of Health Equity within the department to serve as a resource for ensuring that programs collect and keep data and information regarding ethnic and racial health statistics, and strategies and programs that address multicultural health issues, including, but not limited to, infant and maternal mortality. Existing law makes legislative findings relating to implicit bias and racial disparities in maternal mortality rates. Existing law requires a hospital that provides perinatal care, and an alternative birth center or a primary clinic that provides services as an alternative birth center, to implement an evidence-based implicit bias program, as specified, for all health care providers involved in perinatal care of patients within those facilities. Existing law requires the health care provider to complete initial basic training through the program and a refresher course every 2 years thereafter, or on a more frequent basis if deemed necessary by the facility. Existing law requires the facility to provide a certificate of training completion upon request, to accept certificates of completion from other facilities, and to offer training to physicians not directly employed by the facility. Existing law requires the department to track and publish data on pregnancy-related death and severe maternal morbidity, as specified. This bill would make a legislative finding that the Legislature recognizes all birthing people, including nonbinary persons and persons of transgender experience. The bill would extend the evidence-based implicit bias training requirements to specified health care providers at hospitals that provide perinatal care, alternative birth centers, or primary care clinics, as specified. The bill would require an implicit bias program to include recognition of intersecting identities and the potential associated biases. The bill would require initial basic training for the implicit bias program to be completed by June 1, 2025, for current health care providers, and within 6 months of their start date for new health care providers, unless exempted. The bill would require specified facilities to, by February 1 of each year, commencing in 2026, provide the Attorney General with proof of compliance with these provisions, as specified. The bill would authorize the Attorney General to pursue civil penalties for violations of these provisions, as specified. The bill would require that Attorney General be awarded all attorney's fees and costs in any civil action in which a court imposes any of those civil penalties. The bill would authorize the Attorney General to post on its internet website a list of facilities that did not timely submit proof of compliance or were assessed penalties under these provisions, as specified. The bill would authorize the Attorney General to post any other compliance data they deem necessary and would authorize the Attorney General to biennially publish a report outlining compliance data related to these provisions. The bill would make the provisions of the act severable.
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Existing law establishes the Medi-Cal program, which is administered by the State Department of Health Care Services and under which qualified low-income individuals receive health care services. The Medi-Cal program is, in part, governed and funded by federal Medicaid program provisions. Existing law requires the department to establish the Medically Tailored Meals Pilot Program and the Short-Term Medically Tailored Meals Intervention Services Program, to operate in specified counties and during limited periods for the purpose of providing medically tailored meal intervention services to eligible Medi-Cal beneficiaries with certain health conditions, including congestive heart failure, cancer, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or renal disease. Existing law, subject to implementation of the California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) initiative, authorizes a Medi-Cal managed care plan to elect to cover community supports approved by the department as cost effective and medically appropriate in a comprehensive risk contract that are in lieu of applicable Medi-Cal state plan services. Under existing law, community supports that the department is authorized to approve include, among other things, medically supportive food and nutrition services, including medically tailored meals. This bill would make medically supportive food and nutrition interventions a covered benefit under the Medi-Cal program, through both the fee-for-service and managed care delivery systems, no sooner than July 1, 2026, upon appropriation and subject to federal approval and the issuance of final guidance by the department. The bill would require those interventions to be covered if determined to be medically necessary by a health care provider or health care plan, as specified. The bill would require the provision of interventions for 12 weeks, or longer if deemed medically necessary. The bill would require the department to define the qualifying medical conditions for covered interventions and delineate the services included in the definition of a medically supportive food and nutrition intervention. The bill would require a health care provider, to the extent possible, to match the acuity of a patient's condition to the intensity and duration of the covered intervention and to include culturally appropriate foods. The bill would require the department, upon appropriation, to establish a medically supportive food and nutrition benefit stakeholder group, with a specified composition, to advise the department on certain related items, such as the scope of the benefit, among others.
Existing law establishes, until January 1, 2030, the Racial Equity Commission within the Office of Planning and Research and requires the commission to develop resources, best practices, and tools for advancing racial equity by, among other things, developing a statewide Racial Equity Framework that includes methodologies and tools that can be employed to advance racial equity and address structural racism in California. This bill would require the Office of Legal Affairs, which would be established within the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency as provided by SB 1403 of the 2023–24 Regular Session, to, upon appropriation by the Legislature, review, investigate, and make certain determinations regarding applications from persons who claim they are the dispossessed owner, as defined, of property taken as a result of racially motivated eminent domain. The bill would define "racially motivated eminent domain" to mean when the state, county, city, city and county, district, or other political subdivision of the state acquires private property for public use and does not distribute just compensation to the owner at the time of the taking, and the taking, or the failure to provide just compensation, was due, in whole or in part, to the owner's ethnicity or race. Upon a determination that providing property or just compensation is warranted, as provided, the bill would require the Office of Legal Affairs to certify that the dispossessed owner is entitled to the return of the taken property, as specified, or other publicly held property, as defined, of equal value, or financial compensation, as specified. Upon a determination that the dispossessed owner is entitled to other publicly held property of equal value, the bill would require the Office of Legal Affairs to solicit and select, as specified, a list of recommendations of publicly held properties that are suitable as compensation, as provided. Upon a rejection of the determination of the Office of Legal Affairs by the state or local agency that took property by racially motivated eminent domain, the bill would authorize the dispossessed owner, as specified, to bring an action to challenge the taking or the amount of compensation, as provided. Upon a determination that an applicant is not a dispossessed owner or issuing property or just compensation is not warranted, the bill would require the Office of Legal Affairs to notify the applicant of its finding and provide an appeal process, as specified. The bill would make every finding, decision, determination, or other official act of the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency subject to judicial review. Existing law generally prohibits state agencies from employing in-house counsel to act on behalf of the agency or its employees in judicial or administrative adjudicative proceedings, but exempts specified agencies from this provision. This bill would exempt the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency from that provision. This bill would make related findings and declarations, including those related to a gift of public funds.
Under existing law, the Department of Justice is responsible for carrying out several functions related to the sale, delivery, and transfer of firearms, including maintaining a centralized list of all persons licensed to sell firearms and inspecting firearms. The California Constitution establishes the Attorney General as the chief law officer of the state and makes it the duty of the Attorney General to see that the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced. This bill would establish, within the Department of Justice, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention. The bill would require the office to advise the Attorney General on, among other things, gun violence prevention-related matters and the effectiveness of certain gun violence prevention laws and programs. The bill would require the office to consult with specified stakeholders and, on or before July 1, 2026, issue a public report on achieving sustained gun violence reduction, including addressing new legislation and improvements to statutory implementation. The bill would require the office to make its report publicly available and transmit copies to the public safety committees of both houses of the Legislature and the Governor's office, within 60 days of the report's completion.
(1) Existing law makes it a criminal offense to commit mortgage fraud. This includes filing or causing to be filed with the county recorder in connection with a mortgage loan transaction any document that the person knows to contain a deliberate misstatement, misrepresentation, or omission, and with the intent to defraud. This bill would prohibit the filing of any document with the recorder of any county that the person knows to contain, instead, a material misstatement, misrepresentation, or omission. This bill would also provide that a mortgage broker or person who originates a loan commits mortgage fraud if, with the intent to defraud, the person takes specified actions relating to instructing or deliberately causing a borrower to sign documents reflecting certain loan terms with knowledge that the borrower intends to use the loan proceeds for other uses. By expanding the scope of a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. (2) Existing law generally regulates the provision of covered loans, including by prohibiting a person who originates a covered loan from avoiding, or attempting to avoid, the application of that law by, among other things, structuring a loan transaction as an open-end credit plan for the purpose of evading that law if the loan would have been a covered loan if the loan had been structured as a closed end loan. Existing law defines "covered loan" to mean a consumer loan in which the original principal balance of the loan does not exceed the most current conforming loan limit for a single-family first mortgage loan established by the Federal National Mortgage Association in the case of a mortgage or deed of trust, as specified. Existing law also prohibits a person who originates a covered loan from acting in a manner that constitutes fraud. This bill would additionally prohibit a person who originates a covered loan from avoiding, or attempting to avoid, the application of the law regulating the provision of covered loans by committing mortgage fraud. (3) 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, commencing with the 2023–24 fiscal year, appropriates $300,000,000 each fiscal year from the General Fund to the Superintendent of Public Instruction for allocation for the Local Control Funding Formula Equity Multiplier apportionment, as provided. Existing law requires the funding to be allocated to eligible local educational agencies that generate a specified local control funding formula entitlement based on, among other things, the percentage of unduplicated pupils served. Existing law establishes the Strong Workforce Program to provide funding to career technical education regional consortia made up of community college districts and local educational agencies, as specified. Existing law also establishes a K–12 component of the Strong Workforce Program. Existing law provides that, commencing with the 2018–19 fiscal year, the amount appropriated in the annual Budget Act for the K–12 component of the program is used to create, support, or expand high-quality career technical education programs at the K–12 level that are aligned with the workforce development efforts occurring through the program. Existing law requires each consortium to form a K–12 Selection Committee, as specified, for purposes of awarding grants under the K–12 component of the program and requires that applicants with certain characteristics be given positive consideration, as specified. This bill would require positive consideration for purposes of awarding grants under the K–12 component of the program to also be given to applicants that serve pupils enrolled at local educational agencies receiving Local Control Funding Formula Equity Multiplier funding.
This measure would, among other things, urge the United States Congress and President Joseph R. Biden to fully fund the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Comprehensive Infrastructure Solution for the Tijuana River due to the ongoing impacts to public health, the environment, and the local economy caused by cross-border pollution and would urge President Joseph R. Biden to declare a national emergency due to those ongoing impacts.
Existing law requires the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to establish a certification program for specified peace officers, including officers of the Department of the California Highway Patrol. Existing law requires the commission to establish, among others, basic certificates for the purpose of fostering the education and experience necessary to perform general police service duties. Existing law requires certificates to be awarded on the basis of a combination of training, education, experience, and other prerequisites, as determined by the commission. Existing law requires the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, in consultation with specified entities, to develop a modern policing degree program and to prepare and submit a report to the Legislature by no later than June 1, 2023, outlining a plan to implement the program. Existing law requires peace officers in this state to meet specified minimum standards, including age and education requirements. This bill would require a peace officer who is hired on or after January 1, 2029, to attain a modern policing degree, as specified, or a bachelor's or other advanced degree from an accredited college or university within 36 months of commencing their employment as a peace officer. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.
Former law, until July 1, 2023, established the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, with a Special Consideration for African Americans Who are Descendants of Persons Enslaved in the United States (Task Force) . Former law required the Task Force, among other things, to identify, compile, and synthesize the relevant corpus of evidentiary documentation of the institution of slavery that existed within the United States and the colonies, as specified, and to recommend the form of compensation that should be awarded, the instrumentalities through which it should be awarded, and who should be eligible for this compensation. This bill would establish the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency in state government, under the control of the secretary, who would be appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate. The bill would require the agency to implement the recommendations of the Task Force, as approved by the Legislature and the Governor. The bill would require the agency, as part of its duties, to determine how an individual's status as a descendant would be confirmed. The bill would also require proof of an individual's descendant status to be a qualifying criterion for benefits authorized by the state for descendants. To accomplish these goals, the bill would require the agency to be comprised of a Genealogy Office and an Office of Legal Affairs. The bill would further require the agency to oversee and monitor existing state agencies and departments tasked with engaging in direct implementation of the policies that fall within the scope of the existing state agencies' and departments' authority, including policies related to reparations. Existing law prohibits a state agency, with certain exceptions, from employing any in-house counsel to act on behalf of the state agency or its employees in any judicial or administrative adjudicative proceeding in which the agency is interested, or is a party as a result of office or official duties, or contracting with outside counsel for any purpose. This bill would exempt the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency from the above-described prohibition.
This measure would urge the Congress of the United States to repeal the state and local tax deduction limitation so that residents of California and married taxpayers are no longer penalized by the federal tax code.