What’s left to negotiate + Catch up with LGBT Caucus leader + Drug treatment facility bill

Good morning, and welcome to the A.M. Alert!

IT’S STILL NOT A BUDGET DEAL: Sure, the $262 billion budget framework is awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature, but what’s holding him up from calling it a final spending deal?

Legislative leaders and Newsom are expected to announce a so-called three-party agreement among Newsom, Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon in the coming days when they’ve reached a deal on key parts of the budget, even as negotiations on various details of the spending plan continue later into the year.

In the meantime, differences remain over funding for child care providers, how to spend transportation money and what to do with Newsom’s “climate resiliency” plan. Newsom’s $4.2 billion ask for high-speed rail didn’t make it into the budget, either.

The Bee’s Sophia Bollag breaks down the negotiating lines in this report today.

CATCHING UP WITH LGBT CAUCUS LEADER

We spent day with California LGBT Legislative Caucus leader Assemblyman Evan Low last week. He’s been in this news since Attorney General Rob Bonta cut off tax-payer funded travel to five states that recently adopted policies California leaders view as discriminatory against transgender people. Low wrote the California that gave Bonta that power.

Here’s what he has to say about the caucus priorities this year:

“There’s still much work to be done in ensuring that those who are not seen are getting support, and that is specifically with our trans community and making sure we do everything we possibly can. The rates that we see the trans community impacted by homelessness, on the issue of housing, access to health care, criminal justice, those who are incarcerated, how do we make sure we support them as much as possible? We cannot lose sight of the T in LGBT.”

Check out our report by The Bee’s Katherine Swartz here.

GROUPS OPPOSE DRUG TREATMENT FACILITY BILL

California lawmakers on the Senate Public Safety Committee appeared set to reluctantly approve a bill creating a secure drug treatment facility pilot program in Yolo County, over the opposition of dozens of groups, including ACLU California Action, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office and the Drug Policy Alliance.

Why would those groups oppose a program that offers a person who commits a drug-related felony offense an alternative to prison or jail?

For starters, because it’s coercive, they argue.

“We have learned and seen time and time again that forced and coerced treatment just isn’t effective,” said Danica Rodarmel, state policy director for the SF Public Defender’s Office.

Rodarmel said that a choice between drug treatment and jail or prison is no choice at all, and so that makes it a coerced decision point.

The groups united in opposition to AB 1542, authored by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, and sponsored by the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office, also argued that a secure facility, where people are not free to leave, is incarceration even if it isn’t jail or prison, and such an environment is not conducive to effective drug addiction treatment.

McCarty opened his testimony acknowledging that his bill is contentious, but reiterated that the pilot program would be completely voluntary, and that participants who choose to leave treatment would be free to do so, though they would then finish the rest of their sentence in jail or prison instead.

He added that once the treatment is completed, the participant’s felony conviction would be expunged and they would be free to move on with their lives.

Several of the Democratic senators on the Public Safety Committee voiced concerns about the bill, with Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, saying that he believes the bill needs more work.

However, Wiener praised McCarty’s progressive criminal justice bonafides, and he ultimately voted to pass the bill through to the next committee, along with other present members of the committee.

NEWSOM SIGNS POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY BILL INTO LAW

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed Sen. Sydney Kamlager’s AB 127 (authored when Kamlager was still an assemblywoman) into law.

The new law gives prosecutors the ability to go straight to a judge to ask for an arrest warrant for a police officer involved in misconduct or a shooting, rather than having to rely on a (possibly unwilling) peace officer to seek that arrest warrant on their behalf.

“We can’t let a ‘snitches get stitches’ policy strong-arm our criminal legal system. AB 127 fights against this practice and will dramatically help in holding police officers accountable in California,” Kamlager said in a statement.

The bill was sponsored by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, and is aimed at reducing barriers to police accountability.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Statewide elections for dummies: No one getting into a statewide election just a few months before Election Day is even remotely serious. Running statewide isn’t running for dog catcher.”

- Former California GOP Chairman Ron Nehring, via Twitter.

Best of the Bee:

• The conspicuous absence of money for high-speed rail in the $262.6 billion budget bill approved Monday by state legislators in Sacramento could have major consequences for construction work of the bullet-train line in Fresno County and the San Joaquin Valley, via Tim Sheehan.

• California recall ballots later this year may not list Gov. Gavin Newsom as a Democrat after what his campaign describes as a filing error that omitted his party preference, via Sophia Bollag.

• Three days before it was set to expire, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday extended an eviction moratorium until the end of September and boosted funding for a rent relief program, despite opposition from landlords and realtors who argued the protections have created more problems than they’ve solved, via Hannah Wiley.