Affirmative action up for a vote + Landlords fight eviction ban + Nursing homes on the hot seat

Good morning and happy Wednesday! It’s a big day at the Capitol, let’s get right into it.

RETHINKING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

State lawmakers have responded in recent weeks to national protests against police brutality with promises for legislative change to the way police do their jobs in California.

They’ve pledged an end to police chokeholds and limitations on tear gas and rubber bullets. They’ve called the death of George Floyd — an unarmed black man who died while in custody of Minneapolis police — murder, a travesty, an injustice.

Yesterday, they take a knee during a ceremony yesterday to honor Floyd’s death. Today they’ll start voting on tough bills that supporters characterize as part of their response to systemic racism.

Today, the Assembly is scheduled to vote on Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5, which would repeal elements of Proposition 209, the ballot measure that banned affirmative action.

Opponents have argued that reinstating affirmative action would disadvantage qualified job and college applicants. That was the argument that won the day in 1996, when former University of California Regent Ward Connerly campaigned to end racial and gender hiring preferences.

Advocates for the amendment say that in the two decades since California voters approved the law, state demographics have changed and so should policy.

“We can’t tinker around the edges any more. We have to do something dramatic and important,” the proposal’s author, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, told The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board last week. “We’re a state that’s majority ethnic, and it should be reflected in everything we do...We need affirmative action in California again to give people hope.”

When asked whether bill had enough votes to get the amendment off the floor, Weber spokesman Joe Kocurek responded with an emoji showing hands clasped in prayer.

COMMERCIAL EVICTION BAN ON SUSPENSE

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday heard testimony on Senate Bill 939, which places a temporary moratorium on commercial tenant evictions, gives them a year to make up missed rental payments, and allows certain businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as restaurants and bars, to renegotiate or terminate their leases “that were based on pre-COVID-19 expectations,” according to a Senate Judiciary Committee summary of the bill.

Sen. Scott Wiener, the bill’s author, warned that smalls businesses and nonprofits, unable to pay rent as a result of the COVID-19 emergency, could be driven from their locations because they are unable to pay the rent.

“You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip. These businesses are just going to close down,” Wiener said in testimony Tuesday.

The bill is sponsored by the Bay Area Hospitality Coalition, which wrote in a statement of support for the bill, “Many of us made the painful decision to completely shutter our businesses, uncertain as to whether our closure will be temporary or permanent. Without addressing the ongoing fixed and often expensive cost, rent, many independent small businesses will shutter permanently.”

Among the groups opposed to the bill is the Greater Sacramento Economic Council.

“No landlord is interested in evicting any business that can possibly survive and return. Small businesses are their clients and there aren’t enough businesses in the market to go around,” said Barry Broome, president and CEO of that group. “Landlords will be doing everything possible to save the small businesses that are their clients. This bill will send shockwaves to the capital markets and further hurt the development of affordable housing by hurting small banks and local developers.”

Mark Friedman, founder and president of Fulcrum Properties, which has properties in midtown and downtown, with close to 1,000 tenants in its portfolio, warned that SB 939 would “fundamentally disrupt the relationship between landlords and tenants.”

Friedman said that SB 939 is based on the “flawed premise” that landlords are out to squeeze their tenants dry.

“Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “Every responsible landlord that I know has been working with their tenants to figure out how to keep them in business so they can survive this crisis.”

SB 939 has been placed in the Appropriations Committee suspense file.

LAWMAKERS LOOK AT NURSING HOMES AND COVID-19

A group of California lawmakers are set to hear from experts on the impact of COVID-19 on skilled nursing facilities, or nursing homes.

The Special Committee on Pandemic Emergency Response, chaired by Sen. Lena Gonzalez, will hold the informational hearing at 9 a.m. in the Senate Chamber.

Among the experts expected to testify to the committee are Heidi Steinecker, deputy director for the Center for Health Care Quality at the California Department of Public Health; Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, chief medical officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health; Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County health officer; Craig Cornett, president of the California Association of Health Facilities; and Tony Chicotel, staff attorney for the California Association for Nursing Home Reform.

Nursing homes have been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released data on June 4 that at least 31,782 residents of nursing homes have died from COVID-19 in the United States, with at least 95,515 having contracted the disease and an additional 58,288 suspected of having contracted the disease, according to a background paper prepared for the committee. One in five facilities nationwide have reported a COVID-19 death.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Everybody has a right to protest without being intimidated, without being arrested, without being interfered. Period. Full stop. We want to standardize that policing across the state. I don’t want to see the bean bags. I don’t want to see the tear gas. I don’t want to see the rubber bullets. I don’t want to see those things in the United States. I don’t want to see them in the State of California.”

- Gov. Gavin Newsom, in an interview with Nick Cannon. You can see a clip of the interview on Twitter here.

Best of the Bee:

• Rep. Tom McClintock is siding with some of Congress’ most outspoken liberals in an effort to overturn the “qualified immunity” that can protect police and other state and local officials from civil lawsuits, via David Lightman.

• An independent media organization that has produced widely viewed livestreams of recent protest demonstrations in Sacramento had its Facebook page disabled for several hours Tuesday, stirring outrage and confusion from its owners and viewers, via Michael McGough.

• A new study by Stanford University political scientists found that vote-by-mail does not change turnout for political parties or the share of votes Republicans and Democrats would win in the election, at least, they say, if this was a normal year, via Charles Duncan.