As is the case every year at roughly this time, Gov. Gavin Newsom faces a deadline to sign or veto legislation that lawmakers have passed out of the state Assembly and Senate. This year, the deadline day is Friday; and, no surprise, bills focusing on everything from cybersecurity to transportation to prescriptions have already received the highly sought-after autograph. Here are recently signed bills of interest:
- Assembly Bill 2355, from Assemblymember Rudy Salas (D-Bakersfield), requires a “school district, county office of education or charter school” to report any cyber attack, “as defined,” that impacts more than 500 pupils or personnel to the California Cyber Security Integration Center (Cal-CSIC). The bill also requires Cal-CSIC to stand up a database tracking “reports of cyber attacks submitted by local educational agencies”; and yearly, by Jan. 1, to report to the governor and to the Legislature’s “relevant policy committees” with “specified information related to cyber attacks or data breaches of local educational agencies.” The bill sunsets Jan. 1. 2027.
- State Senate Bill 844, from state Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine), requires Cal-CSIC to do more on documenting expenses. Specifically, the act would require the center to create “four reports, to be delivered to the Legislature, as specified, for the 2021–22, 2022–23, 2023–24, and 2024–25 fiscal years that describe all expenditures made by the state within a single fiscal year” pursuant to the “federal, State and Local Cybersecurity Improvement Act.”
- AB 1037, from Assemblymember Tim Grayson (D-Concord), requires the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to create an “implementation plan for the use and integration of digital construction management technologies, as defined, for use on transportation infrastructure projects.” That plan must have “specified milestone goals,” including that Caltrans start using “digital construction management technologies through construction” by July 1, 2029. A report to the Legislature is due on this by Dec. 1, 2029.
- AB 2057 from Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, (D-Los Angeles), would require Caltrans to create a page on its website with “links to existing registries and databases related to drayage trucks from certain sources.” Ports with annual cargo volumes “greater than 1,000,000 20-foot equivalent units” would be required to survey trucking companies anonymously every other year on the numbers of “independent contractor” versus employee drivers; to post that data on their websites and “to transmit a link to the data collected to the department.”
- AB 852, from Assemblymember Jim Wood (D-Santa Rosa), adds regulations around electronic prescriptions. Potentially most of interest to IT vendors, it prohibits a “pharmacy, pharmacist or other practitioner” that can provide a prescription from refusing to dispense an electronic prescription “solely because the prescription was not submitted via, or is not compatible with, their proprietary software.”
- SB 929, from Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), would require the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to collect and publish yearly a report with “quantitative information” on the operation of provisions around “community mental health services, including the number of persons admitted for evaluation and treatment for certain periods,” transferred to mental health facilities, and for whom “certain conservatorships are established ... .” The report must be made publicly available on the department’s website. The bill also requires DHCS to collect data quarterly and publish annually by May 1 “a report including quantitative, deidentified information relating to ... the number of persons in designated and approved facilities admitted or detained for 72-hour evaluation and treatment,” outcomes, waiting periods before receiving evaluations or treatment, and demographic data on those receiving care. It specifies the information “be from each county for some of those data.” The bill also requires the Judicial Council to provide DHCS yearly by Oct. 1 data from superior courts for the report – including, by May 1, 2025, progress on implementing prior recommendations.
