BACKGROUND
Government relations staff will continue to review, monitor, and update the list of bills introduced by the Legislature and will develop master and priority lists of tracked legislation. Staff will develop and advance the advocacy positions articulated by City departments on specific bills within the lists. The City's master and priority lists will continue to be refined as the legislative session moves through the legislative calendar and deadlines.
Staff continues to focus on identifying bills that would impact local control, would have implications to both land use and housing, and that would require the City to provide a service or benefit without appropriate and full funding, which ultimately would negatively impact City revenues including the General Fund, enterprise funds, and sales or property taxes.
The following bills introduced this year represent the kinds of issues of specific concern to various City departments:
Housing
• SB 5 (Beall) - Local-State Sustainable Investment Incentive Program (Watch) - This bill would establish in state government the Local-State Sustainable Investment Incentive Program, which would be administered by the Sustainable Investment Incentive Committee. The bill would authorize a city, county, city and county, joint powers agency, enhanced infrastructure financing district, affordable housing authority, community revitalization and investment authority, or transit village development district to apply to participate in the program and would authorize the committee to approve or deny applications for projects meeting specific criteria.
Staff Comments: The City is watching this bill for the potential new resources, tools and programs that may become available to local governments for the purposes of building affordable housing, constructing infrastructure programs, and building transit-oriented housing development projects. This bill could provide opportunities to introduce a redevelopment type program for the first time since redevelopment was eliminated in the state nearly 10 years ago.
• AB 36 (Bloom) Affordable Housing: Rental (Watch) - The bill would state the findings and declarations of the Legislature that, among other things, affordable housing has reached a crisis stage that threatens the quality of life of millions of Californians as well as the state economic outlook. This bill also would express the Legislature's intent to enact legislation in order to stabilize rental prices and increase the availability of affordable rental housing.
Staff Comments: The City is tracking this bill to understand how the author intends to accomplish the stated purpose of the bill and what, if any, implications it would have on Roseville. A rent-control initiative on the statewide 2018 ballot failed, but was very controversial and generated a tremendous level of debate in communities.
• AB 14 (Rivas) Multifamily Housing Program: Homeless Youths & Families Act (Watch) – This bill would appropriate an unspecified sum from the General Fund into the Housing Rehabilitation Loan Fund to be expended under the Multifamily Housing Program to fund housing for homeless youths and homeless families in accordance with certain requirements, including that the department prioritize loans to housing projects in disadvantaged communities, as defined, and that unspecified amounts be set aside for both certain homeless youths and certain homeless families. This bill would exclude expenditures under its provisions from the total assistance calculation described above. This bill also would authorize the department to monitor the expenditures and activities of loan recipients and request the repayment of funds from a recipient of a loan for failure to comply with program requirements.
Staff Comments: The City is watching this bill to understand what additional resources it would provide in developing housing for homeless youths and homeless families in the state. Staff is also interested in understanding what the results would be of the new authority to the Department of Housing and Community Development to monitor the expenditures and activities of loan recipients and requests the repayment of funds from a recipient of a loan for failure to comply with program requirements.
Workforce Development
• AB 23 (23) Economic Development Strategic Action Plan (Watch) - This bill states the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation to incentivize systems that better facilitate communication and partnerships between businesses, labor advocates, and educational institutions for the purpose of creating tailored workforce training programs that both increase worker participation and further the attainment of increased skills. The bill would make related legislative findings and declarations.
Staff Comment: The City is watching this intent bill to understand how it would develop and incentivize systems to increase the effectiveness of statewide economic development and what new tools and resources may become available to local governments for the purposes of economic development within the city, region and state.
Other Areas
• AB 510 (Cooley) Video Monitoring Retention (Watch) – This bill would exempt the head of a department of a county or city, or the head of a special district from these recording retention requirements if the county, city, or special district adopts a records retention policy governing recordings of routine video monitoring and recordings of telephone and radio communications.
Staff Comments: The City is watching this bill to understand what impacts it would have to the ever increasing costs video retention has on the budgets of specific departments within the City. Over the past several years, new requirements placed on public agencies regarding video retention have added significant costs to the budgets of many local governments and public organizations. This bill may provide some relief from these growing costs while still providing a reasonable level of retention of video files.
• AB 392 (Weber) Police Officers: Deadly Force (Watch) - This bill would redefine the circumstances under which a homicide by a peace officer is deemed justifiable to include when the killing is in self-defense or the defense of another, consistent with the existing legal standard for self-defense, or when the killing is necessary to prevent the escape of a fleeing felon whose immediate apprehension is necessary to prevent death or serious injury.
The bill would additionally bar the use of this defense if the peace officer acted in a criminally negligent manner that caused the death, including if the officer's criminally negligent actions created the necessity for the use of deadly force.
Staff Comments: The City is watching this bill to ensure it understands the full scope of this bill and what implications it would have on the City’s police officers, their training, and how they conduct their day-to-day operations. A similar bill was introduced in 2018, which ultimately failed, but created a tremendous amount of discussion and debate within the Legislature and communities throughout the state. This bill will likely generate equal levels of discussion and concern.
Conclusion
Government relations staff will continue to review all new bills introduced by the Legislature and will develop an active list of priority bills from those introduced bills. The priority list of bills will establish the City’s initial legislative advocacy efforts for 2019. Staff will continue to refine the list of bills during the legislative session and will update the L&R Committee each month on most critical bills on the list. Staff will also remain actively engaged in informing the City’s state and federal representatives regarding the City’s positions as the bills move through the legislative process.