Top issues to watch at California’s state Capitol

State lawmakers rushed to suggest lots of of recent payments forward of a key legislative deadline earlier this month.

• When the mud settled, senators and assemblymembers submitted 2,632 payments to be thought-about this yr — essentially the most up to now decade.

Why it issues: Laws that state lawmakers focus on in Sacramento can ultimately develop into legal guidelines that straight impression our day-to-day lives on points like housing, well being care and employees’ rights.

By the numbers: Of the two,000 payments proposed final yr, CalMatters reviews that 1,200 handed and practically 1,000 turned legislation with approval from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Be sensible: Extra payments are normally proposed in odd-numbered years — like 2023 — since they’re the primary yr of California’s two-year legislative periods, CalMatters notes.

• Senators and assemblymembers are additionally restricted to introducing 40 payments per two-year session.

What we’re watching: This is some laws proposed by San Francisco’s state lawmakers that stood out to us.

Housing

S.B. 4: Sen. Scott Wiener desires to permit the constructing of reasonably priced housing on land owned by spiritual establishments or nonprofit schools, no matter native zoning legal guidelines.

• Known as YIGBY, or “Sure in God’s Yard,” the purpose of the measure is to assist flip extra land, like outsized church parking heaps, into areas that may assist California attain its bold housing targets.

A.B. 1114: Assemblymember Matt Haney proposes eliminating building-permit appeals after a challenge has been totally accredited by a planning division.

• Notably, the change would apply solely to San Francisco because it’s the one metropolis in California that permits for such a course of to happen.
• “We’re actually the one metropolis within the state that permits anybody to face up and object and cease a challenge even after it has acquired all its approvals. It is insane,” Haney advised the San Francisco Chronicle.

Medicine

S.B. 58: Wiener desires to decriminalize the possession and private use of sure psychedelic medicine, together with psilocybin and dimethyltryptamine (DMT), in an effort to deal with circumstances like melancholy, anxiousness and PTSD.

• The statewide decriminalization push follows profitable native efforts in San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Cruz.

Atmosphere

S.B. 253: In what Wiener’s workplace says can be a “first-in-the-nation measure,” S.B. 253 would require all massive companies doing enterprise in California to publicly disclose their greenhouse fuel emissions.

• This invoice — centered on corporations doing over $1 million in annual income — handed the Senate final yr however got here up one vote quick within the Meeting.

Legal Justice

A.B. 881: Assemblymember Phil Ting desires to boost the each day pay for low- to moderate-income jurors from $15 to $100 to extend the racial and financial range of juries in felony instances.

• “No particular person needs to be dissuaded from serving on a jury simply due to monetary hardship,” Ting advised the Chronicle.