Lawmakers will not be voting these next final few weeks of California’s legislative session on a number of bills deemed too costly, including efforts to develop a statewide water information system, mandate a tracking system to log and track rape kits and create a statewide bonding program.
The Appropriations committees last week wrapped up their work for the year, approving hundreds of bills but also keeping back others that carried a price tag lawmakers were unwilling to pay.
AB 1755 by Assemblymember Bill Dodd, D-Napa, would have required development of a statewide water information system and required the data be posted on a public website. Supporters argued a database would help make the state's water transfer market more efficient.
The Department of Finance had estimated the measure would cost as much as $3.8 million to implement. The Senate Appropriations Committee moved the bill to the suspense file in early August.
Meanwhile, legislation by Assemblymember Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, to expand a statewide contractor bonding program also failed to win the approval of Senate appropriators. It came with a big price tag.
The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) estimated it would cost $1.1 million a year to administer a program offering surety bonds to small businesses, and least $10 million to guarantee them.
The idea behind AB 2270 was to provide contractors surety bonds if they can’t obtain them through commercial channels. The GO-Biz office would have acted as guarantor for surety bonds on contracts with state agencies and provided specified technical assistance to contractors.
Another bill, AB 1848 by Assemblymember David Chiu, D-San Francisco, would have required all local law enforcement agencies to log and track rape kits collected from victims of sexual assault.
The California Department of Justice last year created the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Tracking (SAFE-T) database, at the recommendation of the state auditor, to track the status of all sexual assault evidence kits collected in the state. But participation is voluntary.
Chiu’s bill also would have required law enforcement across California’s 482 cities and 58 counties to submit any reason why a rape kit was not tested — a resource-intensive process where costs could range widely, according to the latest bill analysis.
Separately, lawmakers quietly killed legislation earlier this summer that sought to raise the dollar amount of a contract awarded without a competitive bid. Lawmakers in June amended AB 2358 in a process known as a “gut and amend” procedure to authorize a tribal gaming contract between the State of California and the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians.
The bill by Assemblymembers Frank Bigelow, R-O'Neals, and Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, would have allowed a state agency to award a contract up to $300,000 for goods, services or information technology without complying with some competitive bidding requirements.
Current rules allow a state agency to award such a contract with an estimated value of between $5,000 and $250,000 to a certified small business, including a microbusiness, or to a disabled veteran business enterprise.
