LAWMAKERS RETURN TO WORK AMID VIRUS SURGE
Assembly session held in NBA arena to allow for distancing
California lawmakers convened a legislative session like never before on Monday, swearing in some newly elected lawmakers remotely while substituting the regal state Capitol with a cavernous NBA arena on a day the government ordered more than 33 million people to stay home because of a pandemic threatening to overwhelm hospitals.
State health officials on Monday ordered all of Southern California, a large swath of the Central Valley agricultural region and five counties around the San Francisco Bay Area to stay home because of dwindling capacities in hospital intensive care units.
But the state Constitution requires lawmakers to meet on the first Monday of December in even-numbered years to organize themselves for the upcoming session. Lawmakers gathered in person and indoors — something state officials have been telling people not to do. But their gatherings had the blessing of public health officials in Sacramento County, where the latest stay-at-home rules do not apply.
The state Senate met in the Capitol as usual, where 17 lawmakers were sworn in, including two who participated via video. Three others will be sworn in at a later date. The Assembly met in the Golden 1 Center, home of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings, to give members room to spread out.
Lawmakers re-elected Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, to new terms in their respective leadership positions, with both Democrats pledging to pass legislation addressing the state’s housing crisis while expanding high-speed Internet access to more disadvantaged communities during the pandemic.
Earlier this year, the Legislature passed a law banning evictions for people who have been unable to pay their rent since the pandemic began in March — but only if they can pay 25 percent of the rent they owe since September. Those protections expire Jan. 31.
Nearly 240,000 Californians are behind on their rent and will owe their landlords a combined $1.7 billion by the end of the year, according to a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. If California lets its protections expire in January, those bills will come due.
Assemblyman David Chiu, a Democrat from San Francisco, introduced a bill on Monday that would extend those protections through at least the end of 2021. In the state Senate, Sen. Anna Caballero’s bill would extend the protections through the end of March.
While the protections would keep renters from being evicted, it wouldn’t forgive their debt. Chiu introduced another bill that aims to help renters pay off that debt, potentially with the help of a $26 billion one-time windfall lawmakers expect to have this year.
California Republicans focused their attention Monday on the state’s unemployment benefits crisis. Assemblywoman Marie Waldron, the Republican leader, said she will author a bill that puts a deadline on the state Employment Development Department to process new claims.
Monday was the first day lawmakers could introduce new bills. Democratic leaders, who enjoy super majorities in both chambers, said they would continue to emphasize the same themes.
“Housing will be back, emergency preparedness and wildfire response will be back, efforts to end the harm of 400 years of systemic racism will be back,” Atkins told her colleagues during a f loor speech.
Several bills that failed to pass last session have returned, including high-profile measures from state Sen. Nancy Skinner to make some disciplinary records for police officers available to the public and from Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez to ban police from using projectiles, chemical agents or tear gas to break up peaceful protests.