By Lynn La : calmatters – excerpt
Just in time to go home for Memorial Day weekend, legislators bulldozed their way through a bunch of bills at the end of this week to beat the even bigger deluge next week, when there’s a Friday deadline to pass remaining bills through the house where they were introduced.
Some of the bills that passed include:…
Fentanyl crisis: After a marathon 5-hour committee meeting on Wednesday about the fentanyl crisis, the Assembly on Thursday passed several fentanyl-related bills, including legislation that would create a fentanyl task force, prioritize cooperation between state and local law enforcement to crack down on trafficking, increase fines for dealers and expand Narcan accessibility…
Decriminalize psychedelics: Despite the California District Attorneys Association arguing that psychedelics have “no federally accepted medical use and have a high probability of misuse,” the Senate approved a bill to decriminalize certain hallucinogenic substances, which are known to be used by some veterans to treat PTSD, anxiety and depression…
Healthcare minimum wage: Healthcare workers who are advocating for a pay hike are supporting Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles, and her bill to boost their minimum hourly wage to $25, starting in January (the current minimum wage is $15.50). But the bill has been tweaked to increase pay to $21 an hour by June 2024 and to $25 by June 2025…
Dems Clap Back at Newsom on CEQA
Despite Gov. Newsom’s urging to pass his series of reforms on the California Environmental Quality Act in Richmond on Thursday, just hours later a key Senate budget committee said “no,” report CalMatters’ Marisa Kendall and Julie Cart.
Related Story: Is CA’s New Way of Taking Out the Trash a Failure?…
Newsom’s bills could return as budget trailer bills, however, or he could re-introduce them through policy committees, though that process takes much longer…(more)