Are SB 50 changes good enough? + Police sex assault records + Changes to intersex bill

Happy Wednesday, alerters. Thanks for starting your morning with the AM Alert!

ENOUGH AFFORDABLE HOUSING?

Ok, so not everybody likes Senate Bill 50, 2.0.

During a press conference on Tuesday in Oakland, state Sen. Scott Wiener and his entourage of local and state lawmakers who’ve endorsed the legislation were regularly interrupted while promoting the proposal’s renovation.

Wiener was about half a second into his speech touting amendments to his pro-construction legislation when a coalition of affordable housing advocates interrupted with a message of their own.

“What do we want?”

Affordable housing!”

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

Back it up — SB 50 was halted last year in its chamber’s Appropriations after local leaders raised concerns that the legislation would lead to the end of single-family neighborhoods and strip cities of authority over zoning regulations. Wiener decided to turn the bill into a two-year proposal, buying time for him to revise the language while still requiring housing near jobs- and transit-rich areas.

SB 50 was officially changed on Monday to allow local governments more authority in their housing construction plans. The bill would still require they create blueprints to spur development within two years of the proposal’s passage, but it would give city officials a greater voice in how they’re going to build more units. It would also allocate up to 25 percent of units in larger projects for low-income tenants.

Christina Livingston, statewide executive director for Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, said her group was “disappointed” that Wiener hadn’t adequately addressed its affordable housing and displacement concerns.

“SB 50, with its amendments, still puts many poor and working class communities in the firing line of real estate developers who are building the housing that makes them millions, not the housing that communities need,” Livingston said.

Despite the push back, Wiener’s supporters include a diverse crew of liberals, Republicans, advocacy groups, real estate representatives, mayors and business associations.

“It’s actually not that often that some of our colleagues and I find ourselves at the same press conference,” Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, said during the press conference. “But there are some times when there’s a problem so severe and a solution so obvious that it leaves no room for partisan differences.”

Wiener has pledged his commitment to SB 50 and said this draft is the best yet to speed up construction in California.

“We have a terrible housing crisis here in California. And we see the results everyday,” Wiener said during the presser. “We need more affordable housing, we need more housing of every variety. And Senate Bill 50 will help us do that.”

MORE RECORDS

It’s every news organization’s dream: more records!

One of the few Republicans that backed the landmark police transparency law wants to strengthen it.

Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham, R-San Luis Obispo County, wrote Assembly Bill 1599 to close a “loophole” in the 2018 law that makes police misconduct investigations public record by forcing departments to also make releasable incomplete investigations into sexual assault allegations.

Details into sexual assault probes right now can remain confidential if an officer quits in the middle of the probe. Cunningham’s bill would instead require greater transparency by making those records releasable despite the resignation.

“California’s peace officers have a very difficult job. As a former prosecutor, I know that the vast majority of them do their job with dignity and honor,” Cunningham said in a press release. “However, sunshine is the best disinfectant and the only way to restore trust. Bad actors should not be able to exploit a loophole to evade responsibility.”

To read my full report, please click here.

A MAJOR MEDICAL QUESTION

Speaking of controversial Wiener bills...

The San Francisco Democrat is pushing another two-year bill that is sure to be a showdown.

Senate Bill 201 would limit a doctor’s medical ability to assign an intersex child specific sex characteristics, instead requiring the minor to have had bit of say in a sex assignment preference before any surgery is performed.

The bill failed to make it out of its first committee hearing last year due to extreme opposition by medical groups that raised concerns over a violation of the “patient-parent-physician relationship and the practice of medicine.”

The American Civil Liberties Union and Equality California supported the legislation as a “human rights” bill, saying that intersex individuals should have autonomy over their bodies.

The legislation faces another round of hearings next week, and was amended to address some of the concerns by the medical community:

• The definition of intersex was instead expanded to “a person born with variations in their physical sex characteristics.”
• Medical intervention can kick in once a child reaches the age of six. That’s an expansion from the “informed consent” provision that applied to a general minor.
• Limits on medical intervention for a certain condition called “hypospadias” were more concretely narrowed to “proximal hypospadias.” It’s the most severe form of a condition concerning a boy’s urethra, according to the Boston Children’s Hospital.

SB 201 is scheduled to be heard in the Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development at noon on Monday, and then the Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear the legislation, should it pass its first hearing, at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

NOTABLE NEWS

• A Republican bill that would have rolled back the automatic voter registration at California DMVs failed on Tuesday.

“Given that the Secretary of State’s office and the DMV have underplayed well-documented problems with automatic registration, today’s outcome was not a surprise,” said Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel. “The decision to register to vote should be made by the individual – not the state.”

• The Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee is meeting today for an oversight hearing on telecommunications outages during the wildfires last fall. Committee Chair Ben Hueso, D-San Diego, will lead the hearing into effects of the outages and ways to “explore areas that merit additional attention, policy or regulatory oversight to ensure more resilient telecommunications networks.” The hearing is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. in room 112, according to the agenda.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Given that the criteria in the latest amendments create a nearly impossible threshold for cities to meet, the amendments seem like more theater than an implementable plan to truly engender broad support.”

- Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, to the San Francisco Chronicle regarding changes to SB 50. Portantino chairs the Appropriations Committee, which tanked the legislation last year.

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