A final flurry in Sacramento

The biggest news out of Sacramento last week was the housing legislation package. After years of an agonizing housing crisis that has displaced families, impoverished residents, and limited the state’s economic growth, state legislators finally passed a p

The Legislature’s strong action on housing is a positive step for the whole state. But it’s also passed hundreds of other important bills in the past several weeks. This end-ofsession crunch means that some new legislation won’t receive the attention it deserves.

Let’s start with the positive news. Despite retrenchments on the national level, the Legislature passed a number of bills to expand rights and protections for California’s diverse population.

SB179, by state Sens. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Scott Wiener, DSan Francisco, will create a third gender option — “nonbinary” — on driver’s licenses and birth certificates, beginning in 2019. It will also allow parents of a transgender young person to apply to change the gender listed on a child’s birth certificate.

Most people will be unaffected by SB179, but it will make an enormous difference to nonbinary and transgender Californians.

Another bill, AB1209, will require large companies to report their mean and median salary data by classification and gender to the Secretary of State, who will post the data online. Transparency is a well-proven method for reducing pay inequities based on gender, an issue that remains frustratingly alive in California and states beyond.

Following an uproar over the matter of untested rape kits — there’s a backlog of more than 9,000 in California alone — the Legislature passed AB41, from state Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco. For the first time, law enforcement agencies will be required to report annual data on kit collection and testing.

Finally, AB90 from state Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, advances an important reform for California’s troubled gang database. A 2016 audit found that the database was riddled with erroneous entries and had no organized oversight — potentially putting many innocent young people at risk for legal action and even deportation. AB90 gives the state’s Justice Department control over the database — and requires law enforcement agencies to develop rules for its use and maintenance.

On campaign reform, lawmakers signed off on AB249, by Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, which requires ads for ballot measures or independent expenditures for or against candidates to more fully disclose the source of their funding. This would close a significant gap in campaign disclosure law.

Gov. Jerry Brown should sign all of these bills. Now for the bad news. The telecom industry muscled SB649 through the Legislature, a bad bill that will allow the companies to install obtrusive antennas and equipment on almost any street light or traffic signal without the input of local communities.

Brown should veto it.