February 16, 2023
Golden State Republican Women
Janet Price, President
Submitted by the GSRW Legislative Analyst Committee
Karen Contreras, Lou Ann Flaherty and Elaine Freeman,
There is a legislative schedule that establishes when bills must be submitted to Legislative Counsel for legal drafting. The deadline for 2023 was January 20th. There were in excess of 2000 bill requests and 80% of those were “spot bills”.
A spot bill is a place holder until the full language of the bill can be drafted. Here are a few that were submitted with content:
AB 37, (Bonta). Political Reform Act of 1974: campaign funds: security expenses.
The Political Reform Act of 1974 regulates the use of campaign funds held by candidates for elective office, elected officers, and campaign committees. The act authorizes a candidate or elected officer to use campaign funds to pay or reimburse the state for the costs of installing and monitoring a home or office electronic security system if specified conditions are met.
These conditions include that the candidate or elected officer has received threats to physical safety that have been verified by law enforcement, that no more than $5,000 in campaign funds be used for this purpose, and that the candidate or elected officer report the expenditure of campaign funds to the Fair Political Practices Commission.
This bill would eliminate those conditions. The bill would instead authorize a candidate or elected officer to use campaign funds to pay or reimburse the state for the reasonable costs of installing and monitoring a home or office electronic security system, and for the reasonable costs of providing personal security to a candidate, elected officer, or the immediate family and staff of a candidate or elected officer, if those costs are reasonably related to the candidate or elected officer’s status as a candidate or elected officer.
AB 63, (Cervantes). Elections: candidate’s residence.
Under the California Constitution, a person is ineligible to serve as a State Assembly Member or State Senator if they have not been a resident of their legislative district for one year. Existing statutory law also requires a Member of the State Board of Equalization to be and remain an inhabitant of the district in which they are elected to serve, or else a vacancy occurs.
This bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that imposes certain consequences, including the ineligibility to serve in office, upon a candidate for any of the above offices if the candidate files an affidavit of voter registration that changes their residency, after being certified as a candidate but before the certification of election results.
SB 268, (Alvarado-Gil). Crimes: serious and violent felonies.
Existing law classifies certain criminal offenses as a “violent felony” for the purposes of various provisions of the Penal Code, including sentencing enhancements for prior convictions, as well as numerous other provisions.
Existing law includes among the list of violent felonies rape accomplished against a person’s will by means of force, violence, duress, menace, or fear, or rape accomplished against the victim’s will by threat of violent retaliation, but does not include rape of a person unable to give consent due to disability, intoxication, or unconsciousness, rape under false pretenses, or rape accomplished by threat of incarceration, arrest, or deportation.
This bill would include all rape violations in the list of violent felonies.
To contact your U.S. Representatives, call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121
Legislative Portal links- Express your support or opposition to a bill or directly to the Legislative committee currently reviewing it (as an individual, not as a member of GSRW)– click here, or the bill’s author- click here, enter your bill # and look for tab at top of the bill page labeled “Comments to Author.”
