Lobby Days Victories!

By Rebecca Gonzales, Director of Government Relations and Political Affairs

 Summer has arrived and so has the annual legislative recess. During the month of July, legislators have returned to their districts to meet with their constituents and to attend local events. At this point in the legislative process, bills that are still moving have moved out of their first house, either the Assembly or the State Senate, and are in the fiscal committee of the second house. When the legislature reconvenes in August, they will have a month to hear and vote on bills in the fiscal committees before the bills are heard before the entire Senate or Assembly. The Governor will then sign or veto bills that reach his desk.

Since our successful Lobby Days in April, the Legislature sent a budget to the Governor that repealed the Maximum Family Grant in CalWORKs, a policy change we supported during Lobby Days through SB 23 (Mitchell). This policy, which dates back to the Pete Wilson era, denies additional aid for children born when a woman is already receiving a CalWORKs grant. This racist and sexist policy stems from the belief that women on aid have babies to collect bigger welfare checks (about $130 a month) when in reality, this policy just punishes children by pushing their families deeper into poverty. The policy also asks women about their private reproductive choices because it assumes that the only unintentional pregnancies are from women who were sterilized, on the IUD, or who were raped. This repeal was a major victory for poor women and their families.

Our second Lobby days issue was to restore grant cuts to the SSI/SSP program and to reinstate the annual Cost of Living Increase (COLA). We have worked on this issue for several years with multiple coalition partners. In previous budgets, our efforts did not result in any increases but this year, ongoing advocacy resulted in the Governor proposing a modest increase to the grants in his annual budget. We still advocated for higher grants and a restoration of the COLA, but in the end the budget only included the Governor’s modest increase. Besides the budget increase, we have also advocated for the passage of AB 1584 (Brown & Thurmond), which reinstates the annual COLA and increases the grants more aggressively. This bill is still alive to the surprise of many. We are still working with advocates in our SSI/SSP coalition to get this bill to the finish line. We assume that further compromises must be made, but we have not given up!

Lastly, our third Lobby Days bill, AB 2590 (Weber) provides that the purpose of sentencing is public safety achieved through accountability, rehabilitation, and restorative justice rather than the purpose of incarceration being punishment. While in some sense this could be seen as a small step toward the use of restorative justice in our correctional system, it is a major step in how we think about crime and justice. This bill has passed the State Assembly and is now in the fiscal committee in the State Senate.

In the last few lobby days, we have contributed to several major policy victories. Besides the repeal of the maximum family grant in CalWORKs, in 2015 we lobbied to increase the minimum wage which is now set to increase to $15 an hour by 2022. In 2014 and 2015 we lobbied to provide healthcare to undocumented immigrants. In last year’s budget, the Governor included money to provide healthcare for undocumented, Medi-Cal eligible children. This was a huge victory for us and for our coalition partners. This year, we have also supported SB 4 (Lara), which directs the state to obtain a waiver so that undocumented adults can be under Covered California but without financial subsidies. The Governor signed this bill and the state is currently working on the waiver application. Obviously, there is more work to be done but getting children covered and some adults is a big step in the right direction.

Thank you once again to all our lobby days participants. We could not have done this without you!