Legislative Update

2023-24 State Budget Update

In last week’s ACCCA Update, we provided links to the education actions taken by the Assembly and Senate budget committees for their respective versions of the 2023-24 State Budget, but there is nothing new to report this week on the negotiations between the two houses.

While we continue to hear rumors that the Legislature wants to forgo the formal conference committee process, whereby both houses approve their own version of the State Budget and then form a committee to reconcile the differences, there has yet to be a deal announced by the two sides. When the parties do come to an agreement, we expect they will provide a joint press release highlighting the key points of their 2023-24 State Budget. From there, they will hold budget committee hearings and floor sessions to approve the State Budget before the June 15 constitutional deadline.

However, even if the Legislature is able to reconcile their differences, they will still need to work with the Administration to compromise on the State Budget prior to the start of the 2023-24 fiscal year.

To position ourselves in these negotiations, ACCCA submitted a letter to the Legislature detailing our priorities and positions on the 2023-24 State Budget. You can find that letter here.

House of Origin Deadline

The Assembly and Senate both conducted lengthy floor sessions this week in order to consider bills before the June 2 house of origin deadline. Since both houses were able to complete their work yesterday, they are in their home districts today. Below are some of the noteworthy bills that cleared this deadline and are now in the second house: 

• Assembly Bill (AB) 91 (Alvarez, D-San Diego) would create a program to temporarily exempt certain residents of Mexico from nonresident tuition fees for certain courses at a San Diego and Imperial Counties Community Colleges Association college
  
  
• AB 247 (Muratsuchi, D-Torrance) would place a $14 billion transitional kindergarten through community college school bond on the 2024 statewide ballot in an unspecified election, which would replenish funding under the School Facilities Program
  
  
• AB 299 (Holden, D-Pasadena) would establish civil liability for an educational institution if the institution has direct involvement in, or knew or should have known of, hazing practices of an organization and the organization involved in the hazing is affiliated with the educational institution at the time of the alleged incident
  
  
  • ACCCA opposes this bill

• AB 358 (Addis, D-Morro Bay) would exempt community college district (CCD) student housing architectural plans from requiring approval from the Division of the State Architect
  
  
  • ACCCA supports this bill

• AB 610 (Holden) would authorize a transit agency to submit a grant application in partnership with one or more educational institutions and would also authorize grant funds to be used to maintain, subsidize, or expand an existing fare-free program
  
  
  • ACCCA supports this bill
    
    
• AB 634 (Ward, D-San Diego) would require the Board of Governors to adopt regulations by May 31, 2024, requiring the accounting, for purposes of state funding of community colleges, of students enrolled in certain types of courses to be conducted by positive attendance count or on a census date basis
  
  
• AB 811 (Fong, D-Alhambra) would require CCDs to establish policies permitting students retaking certain courses and establishes reporting requirements associated with these policies
  
  
• AB 1370 (Ta, R-Westminster) would make various changes to several provisions of the California Community Colleges (CCC) Economic and Workforce Development Program, including repealing the sunset on the current program and repealing the Job Development Incentive Training Program portion of the program
  
  
• AB 1699 (McCarty, D-Sacramento) would require classified full- or part-time vacancies to be prioritized for current employees before the vacancy may be posted publicly
  
  
  • ACCCA opposes this bill
    
    
• AB 1749 (McCarty) would, beginning in the 2025-26 academic year, require the University of California to guarantee admission to CCC students who earn an associate degree for transfer from a CCC
  
  
• Senate Bill (SB) 28 (Glazer, D-Orinda) would place a $15 billion preschool through higher education bond before voters on the March 2024 primary election ballot
  
  
• SB 234 (Portantino, D-Burbank) would require each community college to maintain unexpired doses of an opioid antagonist on its school site at all times and to ensure that at least two employees are aware of the location of the opioid antagonist
  
  
• SB 433 (Cortese, D-San Jose) would, in non-merit districts, remove the authority of a school or community college board to subject a permanent classified employee to disciplinary action for due cause, and the authority would instead be delegated to a third-party official, agreed upon by both the district and the employee organization
  
  
• SB 532 (Weiner, D-San Francisco) would exempt fiscal disclosure requirements for local tiered tax and bond measures from the 75-word cap on local ballot labels

While most bills being considered will clear the house of origin deadline, it is much harder to get out of the second house than the first for various reasons: policy committee members expect the kinks of a bill to be substantially worked out by this point in the process and are not as forgiving as when a bill was just a few weeks old—as is the case during the first round of policy committee hearings; additionally, the priorities of one house may not align with the priorities of the other, making certain measures more difficult to pass.