Sen. Bill Dodd

This measure would encourage the State Department of Health Care Services, the State Department of Public Health, and other state entities to partner with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) stakeholders to improve education regarding COPD in the course of implementing a specified COPD statewide strategic plan. This measure would also designate November 2015 as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Awareness Month in California and encourage public officials and the citizens of California to increase awareness of the symptoms of, and the methods of preventing, COPD.

Existing law provides for the establishment of apprenticeship programs in various trades, to be approved by the Chief of the Division of Apprenticeship Standards within the Department of Industrial Relations in any trade in the state or in a city or trade area whenever the apprentice training needs justify the establishment. Under existing law, the apprentice training needs in the building and construction trades are required to be deemed to justify a new apprentice program only if one or more specified conditions are met. Existing law also authorizes the California Apprenticeship Council to approve a new apprenticeship program if special circumstances, as established by regulation, justify the establishment of the program. The California Apprenticeship Council has not established any regulations to approve a new apprenticeship program justified by special circumstances. This bill would revise conditions for when the apprentice training needs in the building and construction trades justify a new apprentice program. This bill would also remove the authority of the California Apprenticeship Council to approve a new apprenticeship program justified by special circumstances by regulation.

This measure would proclaim and acknowledge the month of June 2015 and June of every year thereafter as Elder and Vulnerable Adult Abuse Awareness Month.

This measure would urge Congress and the President of the United States to expand the Humanitarian Resettlement Program to allow disabled veteran officers of the South Vietnamese Army currently living in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to enter the United States.

The measure would express the intent and commitment of the state to enter into a sister state relationship with the Province of Santa Fe, Argentina.

This measure would urge the President of the United States and Congress to permanently safeguard the currently unprotected North Fork of the Smith River watershed in Oregon from any mining activities that would have the potential impacts on water supplies, economies, or the environment in California's portion of the Smith River watershed.

This measure would commemorate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.

This measure would designate the Waldo Tunnel on State Highway Route 101 between postmile 0.885 and postmile 1.074 in the County of Marin as the Robin Williams Tunnel. The measure would request the Department of Transportation to determine the cost for appropriate signs showing this special designation and, upon receiving donations from nonstate sources covering that cost, to erect those signs.