From Sacramento and Your Neighborhood

Greetings Neighbors!

With the closing days of summer fast approaching, I hope you have taken full advantage of the many activities San Francisco has to offer this season, such as Sunday afternoon concerts at the Stern Grove festival, regional and city parades, or simply taking a walk in your own neighborhood.

While the summer winds down here, in Sacramento the weather and the legislature will be heating up. With the just over a month to go, the Assembly and Senate will reconvene for the final stretch of a two-year session. While we have made significant accomplishments this year, much of the work remains to be completed. I would like to take this opportunity to share with you some successes we have had in this year’s budget negotiations, as well as some of the issues I will be working on in August.

This year is the first since 2000 that the state budget was approved before the fiscal year deadline. The end product is balanced, responsible and compassionate. Schools are fully funded, foster children will get more of the resources they need, our parks will get badly needed maintenance, and our most vulnerable citizens won’t see their benefits cut. Assembly Democrats were fiscally prudent and insisted on using one-time income for one-time expenditures.

On the educational front, local community college fees will decrease from $26 per unit to $20 per unit, allowing more people to take advantage of the broad array of educational and job training opportunities these institutions have to offer. City College of San Francisco just celebrated its 70th year and we are blessed to have such a terrific learning institution in our midst. For more information about classes, financial assistance, and other programs at City College, visit their website at http://www.ccsf.edu or call (415) 239-3000.

In the final days of budget negotiations, I helped secure $14.3 million to fund the California High Speed Rail Authority’s work on a high-speed train system that will eventually allow travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in just 2.5 hours.  The budget funding will allow for the final stages of planning to be completed and secure crucial rights-of-way currently threatened by other development. California’s high speed rail system will connect our major cities with clean, electric-powered trains that will carry 68 million passengers annually by 2020, reduce highway and airport congestion, and prevent the release of 10.4 billion pounds of greenhouse gases per year.  You can find more information at http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov.

I am particularly proud of the large investment the budget makes in our foster care system, which was long overdue for reforms and investment. This year’s state budget includes funding for key provisions of my Assembly Bill 2489, which will provide foster youth with the academic preparation, financial assistance and the campus-based support they need to complete their college education. The budget allocates $5.7 million for higher education scholarships and over $8 million for the expansion of the Foster Youth Services education program.

Prison reform will surely receive a lot of attention in the special legislative session recently called by the Governor. As Chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, I will be working on the Assembly’s plan to improve our prison system. California incarcerates more people than any other jurisdiction in the world. Our rapidly growing prisons also have the highest failure rate in the nation: two out of three California parolees end up back in prison on parole violations. Unfortunately, the Governor’s response to this meltdown merely skims the surface and doesn’t address the complex problems our prison system faces. Our public safety depends on doing a better job of preparing inmates for their eventual release and creating community partnerships for “aftercare” to help paroles become productive citizens.

Furthermore, I will be working to pass a number of other important measures. As more private companies pursue the lucrative business of collecting child support debt, more parents, especially low-income single mothers, are complaining about some unfair business practices within the industry. Assembly Bill 2781 will improve the way the state regulates private child support collection agencies to avoid unfair treatment.

Additionally, AB 2946 is my comprehensive approach to reforming California’s initiative process. It prohibits paying an individual on a per-signature basis for gathering signatures for an initiative, which invites fraud and puts our initiative process in the hands of the wealthy few. It also holds signature-gathering firms and initiative proponents liable for violations of provisions of elections law pertaining to the initiative, referendum, and recall process. The time has come for California to embrace these reforms, which will result in a more transparent system, a more sound electoral process, and a more engaged public.

There is much at stake in Sacramento this year. It is my pleasure to work on all of these issues and keep you informed on their impact on San Francisco and the state as a whole. If you would like more information, please feel free to contact me at (415) 557-3013, on the web at http://www.assembly.ca.gov/Leno, or by e-mailing me at Assemblymember.Leno@asm.ca.gov.