Upon their return, members of the state Assembly and Senate will have to move quickly; fiscal committees like the Appropriations Committee in each house will have about three weeks to report out bills. Then, following the Labor Day holiday, legislators will have just under two weeks to pass bills before adjourning Sept. 14. Here’s what Newsom signed:
- Assembly Bill 569, from Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, which Newsom signed July 27, creates the Cybersecurity Regional Alliances and Multistakeholder Partnerships Pilot Program to generate cybersecurity workers and close the cybersecurity workforce gap with regional pipeline programs in the California State University system. The bill builds on existing law; AB 183, a higher-education trailer bill, established the program last June. The programs at CSU campuses were already required to set goals and metrics and report, and the CSU chancellor had to report annually on each campus pilot. AB 569 requires the chancellor’s office to report to the Legislature by July 1, 2028, more globally, with enrollment data from the pilot and recommendations on improving it and on improving veteran participation.
- Senate Bill 566 by Sen. Brian W. Jones, R-San Diego, on the geodetic datums and spatial reference network, offers clarification on mapping. Newsom signed it July 21. The bill expands the network that can be used for surveying and mapping in California — which already included the North American Datum of 1983 and the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 — authorizing the use of more modern systems and references. The bill authorizes the use of the North American Terrestrial Reference Frame of 2022, the Pacific Terrestrial Reference Frame of 2022, the California Coordinate System of 2022, and the North American-Pacific Geopotential Datum of 2022 for surveying and mapping.
- AB 72 from Assemblymember Tasha Boerner, D-Encinitas, expands the work but extends the deadline on developing a coastal cliff landslide and erosion early warning system. Newsom signed it July 21. The bill expands existing law requiring the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego to research coastal cliff landslides and erosion in San Diego County, do real-time measurements of land deformation to find and examine the conditions that precede catastrophic bluff failure, and report to the Legislature on developing an early warning system. Specifically, the bill expands the work from two specified sites to three and extends the deadline to do research one year to Jan. 1, 2026, and to report to the Legislature one year to March 30, 2026.
- AB 1754, from the state Assembly Committee on Judiciary, is its yearly maintenance of state codes bill. Newsom signed it July 27. Among other things, it affirms the mission of the California Cybersecurity Integration Center and affirms the validity and usability of electronic signatures in aspects of lower education — but, per the bill, it makes no changes to existing law and will have no fiscal impact.
