Stacks Of Bills Abandoned After COVID-19, But Protest-Prompted Criminal Justice Bills Remain On The Table
August 19, 2020
Right now, California legislators are working at record speed to push a COVID-reduced pile of bills through the Senate and Assembly committees before the August 31 deadline to send bills to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. The roster includes a number of fresh bills introduced in response to months of protests over racism, fatal police encounters and other instances brutality in policing, and in response to police agencies’ handling of the protests.
Most of these bills are sitting in the suspense files of the legislative houses’ Appropriations Committees, where they await a mass decision-making day on August 20, in which lawmakers will either let the bills die quietly or send them to the house floors for a vote.