California Assembly Member Mike Eng
Capitol Office:
State Capitol
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0049
Tel: (916) 319-2049
Fax: (916) 319-2149
Capitol Staff
District Office:
9420 Telstar Avenue, Suite 103
El Monte, CA 91731
Tel: (626) 450-6116
Fax: (626) 450-6117
District Staff
2007 Legislative Summary
Chaptered
AB 1126 – Taking Discovery in a Landlord-Tenant Case. This bill revises provisions of the Civil Discovery Act to clarify and improve the procedures for taking discovery in a landlord-tenant case (unlawful detainer). By preventing disputes over procedural ambiguities and establishing sensible procedures, the bill would benefit landlords, tenants, the courts, and the public generally. This bill was drafted by the California Law Revision Commission, as part of an ongoing study of civil discovery. The Commission found that numerous provisions in the Civil Discovery Act are ambiguous because language specifying a special time limit for an unlawful detainer case is mixed with language specifying the time limit for other types of cases.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 1264 – Reduction in Unnecessary Court Appearances. This bill would ensure that plaintiffs will be given the opportunity to properly address their grievances by being given sufficient opportunity to identify the persons or parties to whom the suit is directed. This bill would allow the plaintiff to use information gathered during discovery or during the introduction of evidence at trial to ascertain the identity of previously unknown defendants. The newly discovered defendants could then be properly named in the court action and ensure due process for all.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 1698 – Truancy Mandate Conformity. This bill would require the Commission on State Mandates to amend the parameters and guidelines regarding the notification of truancy mandate program to conform to a statute that defines truancy as three full days of absences. In addition, this bill will require COSM to conform the content of the notification of truancy to content specified in state statute.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
Enrolled
AB 249 – Prohibition of “Gag Clauses” By Healthcare Professionals. This bill will prohibit the use of regulatory "gag clauses" in the settlement of lawsuits against healthcare professionals licensed by a Department of Consumer Affairs. Gag clauses prevent injured or cheated people from filing complaints or cooperating with state regulatory agencies that have a responsibility to investigate the misconduct of licensed professionals under their jurisdiction. These gag clauses harm unsuspecting consumers by allowing them to be exposed to unscrupulous and/or incompetent healthcare licensees because the licensee’s regulator cannot take appropriate disciplinary action against them.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 253 – Restructuring of the Medical Board of California. This bill reduces the membership of the Medical Board of California from 21 members to 15 members, and increases the public member representation on the board, in an effort to streamline the governance structure of the MBC in a manner that will make it more responsive and its operations more transparent.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 269 – Dentist Data Collection. This bill aids efforts to collect data in the dental industry in order to address the growing disparities of access to care for underserved communities. Specifically, AB 269 allows the California Dental Board and the Committee on Dental Auxiliaries to collect data on their licensees’ ethnic background and language proficiency based on the zip code of primary practice. The data would be reported annually and made publicly available for use by policymakers, researchers, health officials and the general public.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 843 – Data Collection and Transfers of Property. This bill would greatly improve the efficiency by which County Assessors throughout California collect information from taxpayers by means of the Preliminary Change in Ownership Report (PCOR) and the Change of Ownership Statement (COS). Specifically, this legislation would do the following: (1) Increase the penalty cap for not responding to a COS request by a County Assessor from $2,500 to $10,000, unless the property is eligible for the homeowner’s exemption; and (2) transfer to the BOE the jurisdiction to prescribe the PCOR.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 969 – California Use Tax Compliance (JM). This measure will raise public awareness of the California use tax and increase compliance among the growing number of California consumers that are turning to electronic commerce.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 986 – Board of Optometry. This bill is a consumer protection measure that will ensure that the California Board of Optometry has the resources necessary to fulfill its mission to appropriately license and regulate optometrists, will make certain that patient records are maintained, and facilitate the delivery of optometric services in temporary locations such as nursing homes and prisons.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
In Committee / On Floor
AB 231 – Protecting the State 911 Emergency System. This bill will ensure that every Californian will continue to have access to our 911 emergency response systems. Since its inception in 1975, the state has been collecting a small surcharge from each telephone consumer in order to pay for the 911 emergency telecommunications system we depend on for emergency response and public safety services, such as fire, police and paramedics. However, in June 2006, the Internal Revenue Service and federal courts overturned a federal excise tax on communications services that is similar to the California surcharge that funds the 911 system. AB 231 will ensure that this federal action will not jeopardize the state's existing 911 system funding mechanism.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 234 – Marriage and Family Therapists and Licensed Educational Psychologists. This bill makes a number of clarifying changes and updates to the Marriage and Family Therapy licensing law, including limiting the amount of experience that may be earned while providing personal psychotherapy services via telemedicine. Additionally this bill makes a number of changes to Licensed Educational Psychologists licensing law relating to the required number of hours of experience for licensure, continuing education, and degree eligibility.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 306 – Labor Compliance Programs. This bill adds specific responsibilities to Labor Compliance Programs (LCP’s) to further enhance their enforcement standards and accountability for funds received for monitoring publicly funded construction projects. AB 306 includes administrative procedures for LCP’s to promote increased access to information of public works projects. LCP’s will provide greater oversight by maintaining a list of contractors and subcontractors, frequently visiting job-sites, and performing audits of payroll records. In addition, this bill outlines the process for an employee or other party to demonstrate violations and/or file a complaint with the Department of Industrial Relations regarding the performance of these duties by an LCP entity.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 609 – Green Building Equipment. This bill will allow the state to make green building purchases if the life-cycle costs for the equipment are comparable or less than the life-cycle costs of similar equipment without the green building enhancements. Under current law, the state is unable to purchase green building equipment unless the costs to the state will be less or comparable to non-green building equipment on a year by year comparison. This year by year cost formula establishes a barrier that prevents state agencies from acquiring green building equipment since initial costs of green building equipment will generally be more than equipment without green building enhancements.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 614 – Ensure Voting Rights for All. AB 614 will assist counties to improve their planning in order to mitigate barriers in providing assistance to limited English-proficient voters on Election Day.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 1610 – Transparency in Oil Refinery Operations. This bill provides more transparency into the process by which oil refineries schedule and conduct routine maintenance. Specifically, AB 1610 increases requirements for state oil refineries to report on planned maintenance schedules, how often oil refinery facilities go offline, and why these facilities are offline. This measure is co-authored with Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
Two-Year Bill
AB 20 – Transit Oriented Developent – This bill Allows redevelopment agencies to amend a redevelopment plan to extend redevelopment financing time limits and debt limits to support infrastructure improvements in support of a transit oriented development in a redevelopment area.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 240 – Sales of State Surplus Personal Property. This bill implements one of the recommendations in the California Performance Review by directing the Department of General Services (DGS) to pursue innovative techniques for the sale of state surplus property, including the use of the Internet, to broaden its customer base beyond its traditional warehouse sales in an effort to increase revenues from surplus property sales and reduce transaction and warehousing costs.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 675 – Tolerance Education Pilot Program. This bill establishes a pilot project grant program to help integrate inter-group relations and tolerance instruction in the existing History and Social Science curriculum. Specifically, AB 675 authorizes the California Department of Education to award 10 grants to applicable schools to ensure that they have the tools to respond to the increase of bias-motivated incidents that occur in our K-12 campuses.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 704 – Environmental Commissions. This bill would provide local governments with the option to establish Resident Advisory Commissions on the Environment to assist cities and counties with issues relating to environmental awareness, education, and preservation of community natural resources. The commissions would also address issues relating to recycling and waste reduction, sustainable development, practices for water and energy conservation, storm drain issues, and air quality. Each local community has different environmental issues, and local Environmental Commissions would establish local strategies to address these problems which are generally unique to that community.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 906 – Community College Audits. This bill will direct the California Community College Chancellor’s Office to conduct annual random audits of five Community College Districts to check compliance with the Fifty Percent Law. By ensuring compliance with the Fifty Percent Law, the State will promote the law’s original intention of reducing class sizes and increasing the effectiveness of classroom instruction.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 1284 – Clean Water for Disadvantaged Communities. This bill will require applications for state bond funds administered by the Department of Water Resources regarding groundwater programs to promote integrated regional water management planning to include information on disadvantaged communities in their groundwater plan boundaries. Preference will be given to proposals that actively engage disadvantaged communities in the planning and implementation of water management activities.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
Held-in Committee / Held on Floor
AB 1114 – The San Gabriel Basin Water Restoration Fund. This measure will establish the San Gabriel Basin Water Restoration Fund in the State Treasury. The money in the fund will be dedicated solely for clean up in the Main San Gabriel Basin. The groundwater in this basin is the primary source of drinking water for over 1 million residents of the San Gabriel Valley.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 1137 – State Board of Chiropractic Examiners. This bill places a legislative proposition on the statewide ballot for approval by the voters to amend the Chiropractic Initiative Act of California in order to subject the Board of Chiropractic Examiners to the same legislative and executive branch oversight and supervision that apply to other agencies that regulate health care professionals.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 1463 – Joint Power Authorities. Current Joint Power Agencies (JPA) in the education field employ individuals to do substantially similar tasks as those in regular public schools. There is no reason why JPA employees should be treated differently than regular public school employees. AB 1463 will expand the definition of “public school employer” under the Educational Employee Relations Act to include JPAs for the purposes of collective bargaining.
Bill text, analyses, status, and votes
AB 1693 – Helping California Families Save. According to the Pew Research Center, personal savings in the United States fell into negative territory for the first time in history. Every year, however, eight million California families receive an average of $800 in their state income tax refund. These tax windfalls present one of their best opportunities to save. AB 1693 will amend the tax forms to provide the option for California tax refund recipients to invest all or some of their tax refunds into a U.S. Savings Bond.
