Existing law, the Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act of 1975, provides for licensure and regulation of health care service plans by the Department of Managed Health Care and makes a willful violation of that act a crime. Existing law also provides for the regulation of health insurers by the Department of Insurance. Existing law imposes certain requirements on health care service plans and health insurance policies that provide maternity coverage, including requiring those plans and policies to provide inpatient hospital care to a mother for no less than less than 48 hours following a normal vaginal delivery and no less than 96 hours following a delivery by caesarean section, except as specified. This bill would require a health care service plan or health insurance policy issued, amended, or renewed on or after January 1, 2022, that provides maternity coverage, to include coverage for a neonate medical wrap following a cesarean section delivery, and, if requested by the mother, to include coverage for a neonate medical wrap following a natural birth. Because a willful violation of the bill's requirement by a health care service plan would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. 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.
Sponsored bills
Existing law establishes the California Farmland Conservancy Program Act, to be administered generally by the Department of Conservation, and provides that it is the intent of the act to, among other things, encourage voluntary, long-term private stewardship of agricultural lands by offering landowners financial incentives, encourage local land use planning for orderly and efficient urban growth and conservation of agricultural land, and encourage improvements to enhance long-term sustainable agricultural uses. The act establishes the California Farmland Conservancy Program Fund and requires, except as provided, moneys in the fund, upon appropriation, to be used for the purposes of the California Farmland Conservancy Program, which include, among other things, the purchase of agricultural conservation easements, fee title acquisition grants, and land improvement and planning grants. This bill would establish the California Conservation Ranching Incentive Program as a separate component of the California Farmland Conservancy Program. The bill would authorize the Director of Conservation to, subject to appropriation, enter into contracts for an initial term of 3 years with nonpublic entities that are owners of record or lessees of productive rangelands, grazing lands, or grasslands that are determined by the director to be important for the conservation of grassland birds, soil health, and biodiversity. The bill would require these contracts to include an agreement by the owner and any lessee to restore, enhance, and protect the grassland habitat character of the land subject to the contract and to require the Department of Conservation to pay a specified amount to the owner or lessee for undertaking conservation obligations under the contract. The bill would create the California Conservation Ranching Incentive Program Account in the California Farmland Conservancy Program Fund and would make funds deposited in the account available for expenditure, upon appropriation, to the department for purposes of the program. The bill would authorize the department to use up to 30% of the funds to provide grants to nonprofit organizations, regional conservancies, or resource conservation districts for specified purposes relating to the program, including assisting owners or lessees with enrollment or implementation of the program or preparation of management plans, as specified.
The Personal Income Tax Law and the Corporation Tax Law allow various credits against the taxes imposed by those laws. This bill, for each taxable year beginning on or after January 1, 2021, and before January 1, 2025, would allow a credit against the taxes imposed under both laws to a qualified employer, as defined, in an amount equal to that allowed under the federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit, as modified. The bill would prohibit the credit from exceeding $2,400 per qualified employee per taxable year, and would require the Employment Development Department to issue certification of qualified individuals, as specified. By expanding the crime of perjury, this bill would create a state-mandated local program. Existing law requires any bill authorizing a new tax expenditure, defined to include tax credits, to contain, among other things, specific goals, purposes, and objectives the tax expenditure will achieve, detailed performance indicators, and data collection requirements. This bill would require the Employment Development Department to prepare a specified report in this regard. 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. This bill would take effect immediately as a tax levy.
Existing law requires the State Board of Education to adopt evaluation rubrics to, among other things, assist a school district, county office of education, or charter school in evaluating its strengths, weaknesses, and areas that require improvement. Existing law requires, as part of the evaluation rubrics, the state board to adopt state and local indicators to measure school district and individual schoolsite performance in regard to specified state priorities. Existing law requires the State Department of Education, in collaboration with, and subject to the approval of, the executive director of the state board, to develop and maintain the California School Dashboard, a Web-based system for publicly reporting performance data on the state and local indicators. Contingent upon an appropriation by the Legislature in the annual Budget Act or another statute for these purposes, this bill would require the department to administer a grant program to provide additional targeted assistance to 10 low-performing school districts with identified opportunity gaps among their pupils, including, but not limited to, opportunity gaps for pupils of color and pupils from low-income backgrounds, to help those school districts close their opportunity gaps. The bill would require those school districts to be competitively selected based on 2018–19 fiscal year data on the California School Dashboard. For the 2021–22, 2022–23, and 2023–24 fiscal years, the bill would require the department to allocate $1,250,000 to each of the 10 selected school districts to be used to hire and fund one distinguished educator with experience in improving pupil performance and outcomes and to implement a customized action plan to be created by the distinguished educator, as provided.
Existing law requires a person that owns, controls, operates, or maintains any electrical transmission or distribution line upon any mountainous land or forest-covered land, brush-covered land, or grass-covered land to maintain around and adjacent to any pole or tower that supports a switch, fuse, transformer, lightning arrester, line junction, or dead-end or corner pole a firebreak, as specified. Existing law requires a person that owns, controls, operates, or maintains any electrical transmission or distribution line upon any mountainous land or in forest-covered land, brush-covered land, or grass-covered land to maintain a clearance between all vegetation and all conductors that are carrying electric current, as specified. This bill would impose a civil penalty of up to $100,000 for each violation of the above-described provisions after the person that owns, controls, operates, or maintains any electrical transmission or distribution line is offered a reasonable opportunity to cure. The bill would impose an additional civil penalty of up to $1,000 for each acre burned by a fire resulting from a violation of the above-described provisions after the person that owns, controls, operates, or maintains any electrical transmission or distribution line is offered a reasonable opportunity to cure. The bill would require 50% of the penalties collected to be deposited into the Utility Accountability and Wildfire Prevention Fund, which the bill would establish in the State Treasury, and would distributed the remaining 50%, as provided. The bill would provide that the moneys in the Utility Accountability and Wildfire Prevention Fund, upon appropriation by the Legislature, are available for purposes of enhancing forest management, fire planning, wildfire prevention and suppression, and fire-related enforcement activities. The bill would require the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to develop regulations to define what a reasonable opportunity to cure means for the above-described purposes.
Existing law, the Mental Health Services Act, an initiative statute enacted by the voters as Proposition 63 at the November 2, 2004, statewide general election, funds a system of county mental health plans for the provision of mental health services, as specified. Existing law establishes the continuously appropriated Mental Health Services Fund. Existing law requires the Controller, prior to distributing the balance of the funds to the counties, as specified, to reserve up to 5% of the total annual revenues of the fund for the costs for the State Department of Health Care Services, the California Behavioral Health Planning Council, the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission, the State Department of Public Health, and any other state agency to implement all duties pursuant to the programs set forth in the act. This bill would amend Proposition 63 by appropriating $20,000,000 annually from the administrative account of the Mental Health Services Fund to the University of California, if the University of California chooses to accept the moneys, the California State University, and the California Community Colleges, as specified, to implement the College Mental Health Services Program. The bill would require those funds to be used for the purpose of funding programs to increase campus student mental health services and mental health-related education and training. The bill would require campuses that participate in the program to report on the use of those grant funds, as specified, and to post that information on their internet websites.
Existing law authorizes a school district, county superintendent of schools, child development program, local agency, private school, parochial school, or any other agency that qualifies for federal aid under specified federal school meal programs, to apply to the State Department of Education for all available federal and state funds so that a nutritionally adequate breakfast or lunch, or both, may be provided to pupils each schoolday at each school, as provided. Existing law describes a nutritionally adequate breakfast or lunch for this purpose as one that qualifies for reimbursement under the most current meal pattern for the federal School Breakfast Program or the federal National School Lunch Program. This bill would revise the sodium and sugar requirements for a nutritionally adequate breakfast or lunch to be more stringent than federal requirements, as provided. The bill would require the sodium requirements, commencing with the 2031–32 school year, to be determined by the department in alignment with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Dietary Reference Intakes for Sodium and Potassium. The bill, commencing with the 2025–26 school year, would require that a breakfast or lunch meet, on average over the school week, requirements that the department develops that are consistent with the quantitative recommendations for limiting added sugars established pursuant to specified federal dietary guidelines.
Existing law establishes the Office of Small Business Advocate within the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development for the purpose of advocating for the causes of small business and to provide small businesses with the information they need to survive in the marketplace. This bill, the Keep California Working Act, would establish the Keep California Working Grant Program. The act would require the Small Business Advocate to administer the program and award grants, as specified, to small businesses and nonprofit entities that meet specified criteria, including that the entity has experienced economic hardship resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The act would specify that grant money awarded pursuant to the program may be used only for specified purposes, including payroll costs, health care benefits, paid sick, medical, or family leave, and insurance premiums. The act would appropriate $2.6 billion dollars to the Office of Small Business Advocate for those purposes. The Personal Income Tax Law and the Corporation Tax Law, in conformity with federal income tax law, generally define "gross income" as income from whatever source derived, except as specifically excluded, and provide various exclusions from gross income. This bill would exclude from gross income, for state income tax purposes, the amount of a grant awarded pursuant to the Keep California Working Grant Program. Existing law requires a bill authorizing a new tax expenditure to contain, among other things, specific goals, purposes, and objectives that the tax expenditure will achieve, detailed performance indicators, and data collection requirements. The bill also would include additional information required for a bill authorizing a new tax expenditure. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.
The Child Care and Development Services Act, administered by the State Department of Social Services, requires the department to administer childcare and development programs that offer a full range of services to eligible children from infancy to 13 years of age, inclusive. The Early Education Act requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to, among other things, provide an inclusive and cost-effective preschool program. Both acts require that families meet specified requirements to be eligible for federal- and state-subsidized childcare and development services and preschool programs, including, among other requirements, that the family needs childcare services or full-day preschool because, among other reasons, the family is homeless, the child's parents are seeking employment or permanent housing, or the child's parents are employed. The acts require, upon establishing eligibility for services, a family to be considered to meet all eligibility and need requirements for services and to receive those services without being required to report income or other changes for at least 12 months, except as specified. This bill would extend eligibility for childcare and development programs and the preschool program to families in which a member of the family has been certified as eligible to receive benefits from certain means-tested government programs, including Medi-Cal and CalFresh, as specified, and would require those families to submit a self-certification of income for the purposes of prioritizing enrollment and calculating family fees. The bill would, if a family is eligible for services on the basis that they are homeless or that the parents are seeking employment or permanent housing, limit eligibility for services to no more than full-time service and, if the family is eligible for services on the basis that the parent is employed and the parent works a variable schedule, require the contracting agency to use simplifying assumptions to authorize the maximum certified hours of care based on need for care. The bill would also extend the time a family is to be considered to meet all eligibility and need requirements for services to 24 months, and would require the State Department of Social Services and the State Department of Education to implement that requirement through management bulletins or similar letters of instruction on or before October 1, 2022, and until regulations are adopted. Existing law requires the Superintendent to administer age and developmentally appropriate programs designed to facilitate the transition to kindergarten for 3- and 4-year-old children in educational development, health services, social services, nutritional services, parent education and parent participation, evaluation, and staff development. This bill would also make a child who is less than 3 years of age, but who is at least 18 months of age, eligible to enroll in the California state preschool program as long as the child meets all other eligibility requirements. The bill would, subject to an appropriation in the annual budget act for this purpose, require the State Department of Education, by November 1, 2025, to submit a report to the Legislature and the Department of Finance, regarding the implementation of this expansion of the California state preschool program. This bill would repeal these provisions on January 1, 2028.
Existing law requires the Governor to appoint every office whose mode of appointment is not prescribed by law. Existing law also prescribes the manner of the Governor's appointment of those officers. This bill would require the office of the Governor to convene, on or before June 1, 2022, a working group to discuss and make recommendations on the most effective way to ensure the state's leadership on boards and commissions reflects the diversity in age, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, disability status, region, veteran status, and sexual orientation, among other things, that are representative of the state. The bill would require these recommendations to be completed and published on the Governor's internet website no later than March 1, 2023, and contain specified recommendations. The bill would set forth selection and qualification requirements for members of the working group. The bill would also require the working group to hold its first meeting no later than September 1, 2022, and to determine a schedule, at that first meeting, to have 5 additional meetings completed no later than February 1, 2023. The bill would terminate the working group on January 1, 2024. This bill would require the office of the Governor, on or before December 1, 2022, and on or before every December 1 thereafter, to create and deliver to the Legislature a report containing specified information relating to the demographic information, as defined, of individuals appointed by the office of the Governor and relating to information on every state board and commission. The bill would also require, on or before December 1, 2022, and on or before every December 1 thereafter, a portion of that report relating to the boards and commissions of the state to be published on the internet website of the office of the Governor. The bill would also make related findings and declarations.