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2009-10 Legislative Session Recap | Summary of Health Key Bills Under Consideration
[Please note, as of November 1, 2009, all Advocacy Alerts will be reserved for CSRHA members only. If you find value in this update we encourage you to become a member of CSRHA. For more information please click here.]
Governor Signs and Vetoes Many Bills – Water, Prisons and State Budget/Tax Reform Issues Still Unresolved
Water issues and vetoes make for strange bed fellows
At the end of the first year of the 2009 -10 legislative session on September 13, 2009, the Legislature had sent the Governor more than 700 pieces of legislation for his consideration. The Governor had thirty days to act on these end of the session bills. He could sign, veto or let the bills become law without his signature. He had threatened to veto all of the measures, because the Legislature failed to resolve several major water issues that were among his top priorities for 2009.
At the end of a weeklong standoff between the Governor and Legislative leaders the Governor partially backed down and chose to sign 428 of the bills, but did veto 211 of the measures. Now it’s the Legislator’s turn.
On October 13 the Legislators returned to Sacramento to meet in a special session to try and find agreement to water and prison issues. While they are in Sacramento they will also mull over how to confront the large number of bills the Governor had vetoed. It is not clear whether or not the Legislators will succeed in addressing either issue. It is clear the working relationship between the Governor and Legislative leadership is pretty strained, and that will weigh heavy on all of the other issues they will be confronted with in the second year of the 2009-10 session, which will begin the first of January 2010. What will be especially difficult will be the work required to address the persistent state budget deficit situation.
Where are the revenues? Where are the reforms?
What does not seem to be on the Legislature’s table this fall is the special session focused on overhauling the state’s tax and revenue system. The un-addressed tax and revenue issue is important because once again the state is facing an estimated $8 billion to $15 billion deficit.
At the end of September a blue ribbon commission, “Commission on the 21st Century Economy” (http://www.cotce.ca.gov/ ), released a long anticipated report on recommendations for updating and reforming California’s tax and revenue systems.
The report met with a flurry of opposition in the Legislature, and the public and private sectors. Non-profit health and human service groups and California’s business community have expressed opposition to the proposed changes. The Governor shrugged off the criticism of the Commission’s recommendations and called for a special Legislative session to address the recommendations in the report.
The word on the street in Sacramento is that the revenue and tax special session will not be convened anytime soon, because there is so much disagreement over the recommendations of the Commission.
Why this is important for the issue of rural health?
The size of the estimated state budget deficit will require new and deeper health and social service program cuts or increases in revenues. After the last several years of program and funding cuts no one is quite sure where else the Legislature and Administration can go to resolve the ever flowing tide of red ink. The hope was the Commission would have some great wisdom on how to deal with the revenue side of this issue, through tax system reform, but the medicine they brought to help cure the problem was – so far - rejected.
Vetoed legislation and the rise of new interest in the two thirds vote –
One of the many big issues perplexing the Legislature’s leadership concerns the large number of recently vetoed bills. The question is what to do if anything about the bills. It takes a two thirds vote to override a veto and piecing together such a bipartisan override of the Governor is unlikely. So far in 2009 Governor Schwarzenegger has signed 632 bills, the lowest number of bills signed by a Governor in many years. He has signed fewer bills than any of the previous six Governor’s - Davis, Wilson, Deukmejian, Brown, Reagan and Brown. The Legislature is thinking through whether trying to get a two-thirds vote override on any of these vetoed measures is worth the effort or should they simply accept the defeat on some of their efforts and try to move on in the second year of the 2009-10 session.
This brings us to another two thirds vote dilemma facing the Legislature and California. Our state is one of just three states in the United States that requires a two thirds vote to pass the state budget. Many believe the state budget will continue to be a mess until that vote requirement is changed, to allow for a majority vote to pass the budget and to deal with an outdated revenue system.
There will be a lot of time and energy spent around the Capitol this next year exploring how to address this supermajority vote issue, but the voters of California do not seem to be ready to endorse change. The Field Poll released this week still show a majority of voters or 52% are against changing the two thirds vote requirement regarding the state budget, and any effort to address this issue would face a tall uphill battle to succeed. No matter what happens in the near future on this issue, one truth is evident the Legislature will need to garner two thirds vote when it addresses the 2010-11 state budget and the expected large deficit predicted for next year. More health and human service cuts are likely on the horizon.
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Health Legislation Update
CSRHA monitors legislation that impacts health and healthcare delivery in California's rural areas. Click here for a status update of some of the health related bills introduced during the 2009-10 legislative session that has been highlighted and tracked on CSRHA’s web site.
Of the more than 24 bills CSRHA tracked this last year, ten were passed by the Legislature and signed into law by the Governor, and one item was vetoed – AB 657 (Hernandez), which would have established a Commission to develop a health care workforce master plan.
The rest of the bills may be heard during the second year of the 2009-10 Legislative Session. Many of the bills that are still in play for the second year of the session have been held in the Assembly and State Senate Appropriation Committees’ “suspense files.” The suspense file is where bills that would create new costs for the state are banished until the Legislature is convinced the state can pay for the new program.
Again, for a list of some of the key health bills that were introduced in 2009, and what has happened to them to date, click here.
[Note – Newly passed and signed laws go into effect on January 1 of the following year, unless the new law explicitly identifies a different date for enactment or the measure was passed with a two thirds vote as an urgency measure. Urgency bills go into effect 60 days after the date of the Governor’s signature.]
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