Existing law establishes the California Emergency Solutions and Housing Program, under the administration of the Department of Housing and Community Development and requires the department to, among other things, provide rental assistance and housing relocation and stabilization services to ensure housing affordability to people who are experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of homelessness. This bill would require the department, subject to an appropriation in the annual Budget Act, to develop and administer a program to award grants to qualified homeless shelters, as described, for the provision of shelter, food, and basic veterinary services for pets owned by people experiencing homelessness. The bill would authorize the department to use up to 5% of the funds appropriated in the annual Budget Act for those purposes for its costs in administering the program.
Sponsored bills
Existing law prohibits manufacturers and contract testing facilities from using traditional animal test methods within the state for which an appropriate alternative test method has been scientifically validated and recommended by the Inter-Agency Coordinating Committee for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) and adopted, as specified. Existing law exempts certain animal tests from these provisions, including animal tests performed for the purpose of medical research. Existing law provides that the exclusive remedy for a violation of these provisions is a civil action for injunctive relief brought by, among others, the Attorney General and makes a violation of these provisions punishable by a specified civil penalty. This bill would prohibit a testing facility, as defined, from conducting a canine or feline toxicological experiment, as defined, unless the experiment is conducted for specified purposes, including medical research, as described, to comply with federal requirements pertaining to the approval or maintenance of a medical device, or to develop, manufacture, or market certain types of products. The bill would authorize the Attorney General, the district attorney of the county in which the violation is alleged to have occurred, or the city attorney in certain instances to bring a civil action for a violation of these provisions, punishable by a civil penalty not to exceed $5,000 for each day that each dog or cat is used in a canine or feline toxicological experiment. The bill would define various terms for purposes of carrying out these provisions.
Existing law requires the State Department of Education to incorporate age-appropriate materials relating to, among other things, genocide and the Holocaust into publications that provide examples of curriculum resources for teacher use, consistent with the subject frameworks on history and social science. Under existing law, the Legislature encourages the incorporation of survivor, rescuer, liberator, and witness oral testimony into the teaching of genocide and the Holocaust. This bill would establish a 15-member Governor's Council on Genocide and Holocaust Education to, among other things, establish best practices for, and promote implementation of, education on genocide, including the Holocaust, and submit an annual report to the Legislature, as specified. The bill would provide that the Governor, the Speaker of the Assembly, and the Senate Committee on Rules would each appoint 5 members of the council, who would be required to be individuals with particular interest in, or expertise on, genocide, including the Holocaust. The bill would make an appropriation by authorizing the department to use funds donated by private individuals or entities for the purpose of reimbursing members of the council for their actual and necessary expenses incurred in the performance of their official duties as members of the council. The bill would strongly encourage local educational agencies, as defined to include school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools, with pupils in grades 4 to 12, inclusive, to integrate the best practices into instruction on genocide, including the Holocaust, that meets existing academic content standards and the history-social science curriculum framework for these pupils. The bill would authorize the department to issue grants to local educational agencies for professional development, and would specify that the grant funds would either be appropriated through the annual Budget Act or another statute, or provided through donations to the department from private individuals or entities. To the extent that the bill would authorize the department to make grants with these donated funds, it would make an appropriation. The bill would require the department to conduct a study on the manner in which the instruction is offered to assess the impact of the instruction.
Existing law establishes and requires the State Department of Social Services to administer the CalFood Program to provide food and funding to food banks whose primary function is to facilitate the distribution of food to low-income households, as specified. This bill would require the department to provide a food assistance benefit to low-income California residents, regardless of immigration status, by contracting with nonprofit entities, as defined, to issue the food assistance benefit in the form of prepaid cards. The bill would require the department to procure the prepaid cards to administer the food assistance benefit and to ensure the availability of those prepaid cards to nonprofit entities, as specified. The bill would require participating nonprofit entities to maintain specified records. The bill would require the department and nonprofit entities to distribute all of the food assistance benefits by July 1, 2023. The bill would authorize the department to implement, interpret, or make specific these provisions without taking regulatory action. The bill would exempt contracts awarded pursuant to these provisions from personal services contracting requirements, the Public Contract Code, and the State Contracting Manual, and the contracts would not be subject to the approval of the Department of General Services. The bill would make these provisions operative upon appropriation. The bill would require the department, in consultation with a workgroup, to author a report to provide recommendations and solutions for a permanent food assistance program for low-income California residents experiencing food insecurity, to complete that report by January 1, 2023, and to submit a copy of that report to the Legislature, as specified. This bill would repeal its provisions on January 1, 2025. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.
The Planning and Zoning Law requires each county and city to adopt a comprehensive, long-term general plan for its physical development, and the development of certain lands outside its boundaries, that includes, among other mandatory elements, a land use element and a conservation element. Existing law also permits variances to be granted from the parking requirements of a zoning ordinance for nonresidential development if the variance will be an incentive to the development and the variance will facilitate access to the development by patrons of public transit facilities. This bill would prohibit a public agency in a county with a population of 600,000 or more from imposing a minimum automobile parking requirement, or enforcing a minimum automobile parking requirement, on residential, commercial, or other development if the development is located on a parcel that is within12 mile, as specified, of public transit, as defined. The bill would prohibit a public agency in a city with of 75,000 or more located in a county with a population of less than 600,000 from imposing a minimum automobile parking requirement, or enforcing a minimum automobile parking requirement, on residential, commercial, or other development if the project is located within 14 mile, as specified, of public transit, as defined. The bill would create authorizations in this regard for a city or a county to which these prohibitions do not apply. The bill, when a project provides parking voluntarily, would authorize a public agency to impose specified requirements on the voluntary parking. The bill would prohibit these provisions from reducing, eliminating, or precluding the enforcement of any requirement imposed on a new multifamily or nonresidential development to provide electric vehicle supply equipment installed parking spaces or parking spaces that are accessible to persons with disabilities, as specified. The bill would exempt certain commercial parking requirements from these provisions if the requirements of the bill conflict with an existing contractual agreement of the public agency that was executed before January 1, 2022, as specified. This bill would prohibit a public agency from imposing any new minimum parking requirement on a project to remodel, renovate, or add to a single-family residence, provided that any addition to the single-family residence does not cause the single-family residence to exceed any floor-to-area ratio restriction imposed by the public agency. By changing the duties of local planning officials, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The bill would include findings that changes proposed by this bill address a matter of statewide concern rather than a municipal affair and, therefore, apply to all cities, including charter cities. 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 requires the State Department of Social Services, after setting aside state administrative funds, to allocate federal funds for refugee social services programs to eligible counties and, in certain circumstances, to nonprofit organizations. Existing law requires a county administering refugee social services to designate an agency that is responsible for developing and implementing a plan for the refugee social services. Existing law requires the plan to provide services to refugees that lead to their successful self-sufficiency and social integration. This bill would establish the Enhanced Services Program for Asylees to provide resettlement services for persons granted political asylum to live in the state by the United States Attorney General. The bill would authorize an agency that has been designated by a county to implement social services for refugees, as described above, to provide social services for persons granted asylum. The bill would require the program to provide culturally specific and responsive case management services, as specified, for persons newly granted asylum for up to 90 days. The bill would require the program to aim to have similar reintegration success rates for persons granted asylum as for refugees receiving social services. The bill would require an agency providing services under the program to notify the department each time a person applies for services and would require the department to provide funding to the agency for services for that person at the time the person is admitted to the program. Under the bill, the program would be implemented only to the extent that funds are appropriated for the program in the Budget Act of 2021.
Existing law requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Department of Motor Vehicles to ensure that all eligible inmates released from state prison have valid identification cards. Existing law also establishes requirements for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for persons in state prison who are exonerated, including transitional services and financial support, as specified. Existing law establishes an $8 fee for a replacement identification card issued to an eligible inmate upon release from a state or federal correctional facility or a county jail, as specified. This bill would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to make all reasonable efforts to ensure that all inmates released from state prison are released with a valid California identification card or a duplicate or renewal driver's license, unless an inmate willfully chooses to not obtain a California identification card or driver's license. The bill would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, where a valid California identification card or driver's license is not obtained before release, to provide the inmate with a photo prison identification card. The bill would require, among other things, that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation obtain Department of Motor Vehicles-approved cameras, determine the documentation inmates require for California identification cards and driver's licenses and provide inmates with the opportunity and means to obtain those documents, provide inmates with the opportunity and means to work with the Department of Motor Vehicles to obtain a California identification card or driver's license, and to make licensing examinations available to inmates. The bill would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to prepare an annual report for the Legislature regarding this program that includes information about the number of inmates assisted, the number of facilities providing services, and impediments to program implementation. This bill would extend the $8 fee to an original or duplicate identification card as well as to an original, duplicate, or renewal driver's license issued to an inmate upon release, as specified. This bill would make technical, nonsubstantive changes to the law pertaining to exonerated persons.
Existing law, the Mello-Granlund Older Californians Act, establishes the California Department of Aging and sets forth its mission to provide leadership to the area agencies on aging in developing systems of home- and community-based services that maintain individuals in their own homes or least restrictive homelike environments. Existing law requires the department, in allocating specified state and federal funding to area agencies on aging, to ensure that priority consideration is given to criteria that reflect the state's intent to target services to those in greatest economic or social need. Existing law defines "greatest social need" to mean the need caused by noneconomic factors, including physical and mental disabilities, that restrict an individual's ability to perform normal daily tasks or that threaten the individual's capacity to live independently. This bill would revise this definition to include human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status as a specified noneconomic factor.
This measure would recognize June 21, 2021, as the 2021 International Day of Yoga in California.