CAPITOL UPDATE #13 March 25, 2021

 

AB 1510 – UNAUTHORIZED WORKERS; ESSENTIAL WORKER AND ECONOMIC STABILITY ACT OF 2021– Current federal law regulates immigration. Current STATE law establishes the Employment Development Department (EDD), which is vested with duties; one being job creation and unemployment compensation. This bill would require the EDD to determine the extent of labor shortages in the state’s essential critical infrastructure workforce, pass that information on to the federal government. This bill would require EDD to address the issues relating to a work permit program for the UNAUTHORIZED persons who are considered essential critical employees to work and live in the state. The EDD will serve as liaison to the United States Department of Homeland Security and the United States Department of Justice to ensure the state department is not taking on responsibilities in matters dealing with the immigration policy that are the jurisdiction of the federal government. Please note- This is the same EDD that just a few months ago was discovered to have sent as much as $1 Billion in fraudulent unemployment claim benefits as well as fraudulent COVID relief claims to California inmates because they have inadequate infrastructure, inadequate computer system, and an inadequate number of internal investigators to track potential fraud! Now we want to trust them to create a program reliant on federal funding to distribute work visas to “unauthorized workers”? Also, are there seriously not enough actual California citizens to help fill those jobs? This bill is currently in Committee. No hearing date set yet.

PLANNING AND ZONING: HOUSING DEVELOPMENT: DENSITYSB 10 –

 Would, notwithstanding any local restriction on adopting zoning ordinances, authorize a local government to pass an ordinance to zone any parcel for up to 10 units of residential density per parcel, at a height specified in the ordinance, if the parcel is in a transit-rich area, a jobs-rich area, or an urban infill site, as those terms are defined.  The bill would require the Dept. of Housing and Community Development, in consultation with the Office of Planning and Research, to determine job-rich areas and publish a map of those areas every 5 years, commencing January 1, 2023 based on specified criteria.  The bill would specify that an ordinance adopted under these provisions and any resolutions adopted to amend the jurisdiction’s General Plan to be consistent with that ordinance, is NOT a project for purposes of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  NO EIR required.  Apparently environmental impacts do not matter if it is in the name of high-density housing!CRIMINAl SENTENCING

AB 333 – PARTICIPATION IN A CRIMINAL STREET GANG: ENHANCED SENTENCE. –  Existing law makes it a crime to actively participate in a criminal street gang with knowledge that its members engage in, or have engaged in, a pattern of criminal gang activity and to actively promote, further, or assist in felonious criminal conduct by members of that gang. Existing law provides for an enhanced sentence for a person who is convicted of a crime committed for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with, a criminal street gang with the specific intent to promote, further, or assist in criminal conduct by the gang members.  This bill would remove burglary, looting, felony vandalism, and specified personal identity fraud violations from the crimes that define a pattern of criminal gang activity. The bill would prohibit the use of the currently charged crime to prove the pattern of criminal gang activity. The bill would require that an organization, association, or group of three or more persons have an established hierarchy to meet the definition of a criminal street gang. The bill would require that a charge for active participation in a criminal street gang be tried separately from all other counts that do not otherwise require gang evidence as an element of the crime. Why are our lawmakers trying to make it difficult to prosecute gang members???  A hearing for this bill is scheduled for April 06, 2021.

 

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