State Capitol Updates

In its rush to Friday's deadline, the California legislature managed to pull off a win with the passage of its leaders' signature climate change bill, even if S.B. 350 had been scaled back in the days leading to the final vote. The other main climate change bill, S.B. 32, was held over until next year because it could not muster enough votes to pass. Both bills were held up by demands from Assembly Democrats that the authority of the California Air Resources Board be reduced, subjecting its every action to legislative approval. The governor and Senate leaders refused to give on that point.

Governor Jerry Brown, Senate President Pro-Tem Kevin de Leon, and Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins met with reporters late yesterday to announce that they would amend their signature climate change bill to eliminate the goal of reducing petroleum use. With only two days remaining before the legislative session ends, they say they don't have the votes to pass S.B. 350, the so-called “50-50-50” bill, with that provision.

Amid the swirling madness that is the final few weeks of the California legislative session—all bills must be voted on by September 11, or wait until next year—the question of how to raise, and spend, money on transportation is still very much up in the air. Increasingly, it looks like major decisions will be made behind closed doors and out of the public eye.

The legislature came back from its summer break on Monday, and has only a month to resolve some big goals before the session ends on September 11. Over 600 bills are pending in both the Senate and the Assembly, plus there are behind-the-scenes negotiations on leftover budget issues and two concurrent special sessions aimed at forging agreements on priorities and funding for transportation and health care.

The California legislature has departed for summer break, so for the next few weeks all will be quiet in Sacramento, at least on the surface. Following are a few highlights on bills that moved through before the policy committee deadline, which was Friday.

In Sacramento, bills are beginning to move more quickly through the committee process as this week's policy committee deadline approaches. Below are highlights on some of the bills pertaining to sustainable streets issues.

Last week, the California legislature put off making a decision on how to spend the portion of cap-and-trade revenue that hasn't already been allocated. Meanwhile Senator Jim Beall (D-San Jose) is shepherding through a bill, S.B. 9, that seeks to limit funds from one of the existing cap-and-trade programs to large, expensive transit projects.

This week the California legislature was mostly focused on the budget, since the Assembly and the Senate must by law present a budget bill to the governor by midnight on Monday, June 15. The joint Budget Conference Committee succeeded in producing an agreement [PDF] well before the deadline; their budget bill, A.B. 93, should be available later today, ready to be voted on in both houses on Monday.

This week Sacramento saw long hearings in the Senate and Assembly, as both houses pushed to meet their deadline to pass bills. Any bill that doesn't pass its house of origin by the end of this week is dead--for this year at least.