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After being placed in the suspense file, and everyone thinking it was dead, Assembly Bill 962 is moving through the state legislature again. It passed the state Assembly Wednesday and now moves to the state Senate. How it got this far is a mystery. In case you've forgotten, Los Angeles Assemblyman Kevin DeLeon's bill would: 1. Stop the sale of more than 50 rounds of handgun ammunition per month to individuals. Since "handgun" ammunition is not defined anywhere in the bill, it effectively means "all" ammunition, since you can buy handguns in just about any metallic cartridge today. It would...

What budget crisis? As California faces what one official this week called a complete meltdown of state government, some lawmakers have their minds on other matters. Like creating a blueberry commission. Or standing up for pomegranate juice. And, in what passes for health reform in the nation's most populous state, ensuring that the name tags of medical workers are in 18-point font. Those are among the hundreds of bills being debated in the California Legislature as the state faces a $24.3 billion deficit and the prospect of running out of cash by late July. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has urged lawmakers...

State workers, you're the face of California government – and for many outside of it, you're also the hired help.What really ticks off the "boss" is that their money pays your wages, but they feel powerless to dictate what you do or what you earn doing it.The complaints surface on The State Worker blog, in phone calls and e-mails. Here are a few, with numbers: • State workers make more than the "boss." California state employees' average base pay in 2008 was $63,815, according to a Bee analysis of state wage data that excluded the university systems. The median, the...

The Assembly today approved a union-backed bill that would prohibit cities and counties from filing for bankruptcy without state approval. ... Unions want the state to weigh in on bankruptcies because the filings could void union contracts cities and counties have with workers.

California voters freed the state's egg-laying hens last fall, but Proposition 2 left a big loophole: Supermarkets could still sell eggs laid by caged birds in other states. Now, animal-welfare advocates are backing legislation requiring every egg sold in California to be from a cage-free hen. Assembly Bill 1437 would greatly expand the scope of the state's ban on standard egg-laying cages, which is scheduled to take effect in 2015. Economists predict Proposition 2, on its own, will drive up imports of cheap, conventionally produced eggs, pushing many in-state farms out of business. If AB 1437 passes, though, it would...

Calif. bill would require Rx for cold pills Tuesday, June 2, 2009 A crime-fighting bill moving through the California Legislature would force patients to get a doctor's prescription to buy a common remedy for stuffy noses. The measure by Sen. Rod Wright, an Inglewood Democrat, would make it an infraction or misdemeanor to obtain ephedrine, pseudoephedrine or related drugs without a prescription. Those are common ingredients in cold medicines, but they're also used to make illegal methamphetamine. Wright says he wants to get them out of drug dealers' hands. But Sen. Sam Aanestad, an oral surgeon and Republican from Grass...

Already struggling to pay the state's current bills, California lawmakers took a sledgehammer Thursday to hundreds of proposals for new money-spending programs totaling billions of dollars. The message was simple: Coffers of the nation's largest state are bare. A torrent of legislation with a cumulative price tag of nearly $213.5 billion annually was reduced to a veritable trickle that would cost the state's general fund about $9.3 million annually if all bills ultimately become law. Victims included the most expensive legislative proposal of all, Senate Bill 810, which called for creation of a state-run system to provide health care to...

As the state's acute budget crisis shows, it is absolutely crucial for California to have a hospitable business climate. Without a healthy economy, there is not enough tax revenue to sustain even basic government programs. One would think this would have finally sunk in with the Democrats who control the Legislature, given the plunge in revenue over the past two years and the resulting budget carnage. One would be wrong. The California Chamber of Commerce's recently released list of “job-killer” bills now pending in Sacramento is like a greatest hits collection of anti-business legislation. There are the usual attempts to...

With encouragement from an Oscar-winning screenwriter, a state Senate committee approved legislation Wednesday that would designate a day honoring slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk. The Senate Education Committee voted 7-2 to send the bill by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, to the full Senate. It would designate each May 22 — Milk's birthday — as Harvey Milk Day. The "day of special significance" would recognize Milk's life and contributions to the state but would not be an official holiday, meaning there would be no cost to state government. It also would encourage public schools to conduct "suitable commemorative exercises"...

The state energy commission denies it wants to ban any kind of television sets. They claim that they just want to limit the market only to those models that provide better energy efficiency in order to save costs and cut down on emissions. The Orange County Register notes that the annual savings in energy costs between comparable plasma and LCD models amounts to a grand total of $30 per year.

The Los Angeles times is reporting that the California state senate has passed a bevy of bills that will increase the cost of doing business. First, they passed a bill, SB 789, to allow the state equivalent of federal “card check,” allowing farmworkers unions to form without a secret ballot. According to the LA Times, “Instead of holding an election with secret ballots, workers could submit cards, signed by a majority of the workers asking for representation, to state labor authorities.” This is bad policy – and more than that, it encourages bullying tactics from union thugs. How many people...

Nobody can sell any ammunition after June 30, 2009. It has already started: 'Ammunition Accountability' Legislation. Remember how Obama said that he wasn't going to take your guns? Well, it seems that his allies in the anti-gun world have no problem with taking your ammo! The bill that is being pushed in 18 states (including Illinois and Indiana) requires all ammunition to be encoded by the manufacturer, a data base of all ammunition sales. So, they will know how much you buy and what calibers. Nobody can sell any ammunition after June 30, 2009 unless the ammunition is coded. Any...

California gun laws could get tighter On the tenth anniversary of the deadly high school shootings in Columbine, Colo., California lawmakers announced new efforts to keep guns and ammunition away from people who are barred from possessing those items. Assemblyman Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, is backing a bill to require people who sell handgun ammunition to be licensed. It would also require sellers to conduct business face-to-face, bar Internet or mail order sales and require a thumbprint and other identifying information of people who buy ammunition. That information would be given to state officials who could check it against...

DALY CITY — Every other minute, the Cow Palace marquee flashes, "Gun Show Coming, Gun Show Coming." That's a message that must stop, state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said Friday in a news conference announcing the reintroduction of a bill intended to end gun shows at the venue. "It's astounding a state-owned property is being used to promote weapons of death," Leno said. "We know they're used legally, but in a neighborhood that experiences unconscionable rates of gun violence, it's just maddening." Crossroads of the West Gun Show is scheduled to take place at the Cow Palace on May...

A measure that would require utilities to receive one-third of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020 passed off the Senate floor Tuesday with the bare minimum of 21 votes. The bill, SB 14 by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-San Jose, has been tagged as a top priority for Senate leader Darrel Steinberg. The bill’s passage was the first major policy decision in which Steinberg muscled a proposal out of his house, despite reservations from many within his own party. When Steinberg took the leadership gavel in December, he noted three top legislative priorities that could give the Legislature “a...

. The author of California’s landmark law to curb greenhouse gas emissions has launched a two-year effort to expand the law’s reach into other operations, including logging, and shape the market place governing potentially billions of dollars worth of emissions credits. As the Legislature turns its focus from the state budget to legislation, dozens of ambitious new environmental proposals are emerging. But a bill by Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, could be among the biggest pieces of environmental legislation this year. Pavley is best known as the author of AB 32, California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Pavley, who...

Reporting from Sacramento -- Close to half a million jobless Californians are in line to get $3 billion in extended unemployment benefits from new legislation that could be signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as early as Friday. The money, part of President Obama's economic stimulus program, will be an immediate help to 76,000 people, whose current benefits were scheduled to run out on April 11. They'll now get an additional 20 weeks of assistance, increasing the total number available to a maximum of 79 weeks. Weekly unemployment benefits range between $65 and $475, depending on a person's earnings...

Here it is, AB 859 now in transportation committe in california. this would require yearly smog testing of cars 15 years and older with 1975 cut off. See below link listing teh proposed law, and the list of committee members with contact info: http://www.semasan.com/main/main.aspx?id=62541 Slowly but surely they have been increasing smog laws, registration fees and now this, yearly smog testing, which can coat nearly $100 for advanced enhanced area dyno tests. This will effect many classic cars, cars that may not be driven much at all (my 1980 Triumph will now require yearly smog testing, it is only used...

We are about to cripple California’s trucking and construction industries for absolutely no good reason. If I really believed the California Air Resources Board’s draconian new diesel emissions standards would save thousands of lives a year, I might say, sorry guys, you gotta suck it up for the greater good. But when you scratch the surface of the alleged science used by CARB to justify these rules, there’s just no “there” there. Our air is NOT killing us, despite what the “environmental alarmist complex” would have us believe.

A bevy of bipartisan California legislators vowed Monday to be better parents to the state's foster youth, pledging to extend their life-sustaining benefits through age 21 rather than casting them off as teenagers. Currently, most youth "aging out" of foster care are bounced off state support at 18, a tender age for a vulnerable population that often has nowhere to go and no one to rely on. But an assembly bill written by Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Jim Beall, D-San Jose, would draw on newly available federal funds to support relative caregivers and transitional living programs through...