Legislative Update

View the legislative bills report here.

June 18, 2018

2018-19 State Budget Approved by the Legislature

On Thursday, June 14, 2018, the Legislature approved the 2018-19 State Budget Bill (Senate Bill [SB] 840) and several accompanying trailer bills, on a mostly party-line vote for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2018. SB 840 makes California history as the first $200-billion spending plan.

On Wednesday, June 13, 2018, the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review considered and approved more than a dozen Budget trailer bills, the implementing language of the State Budget Bill, in advance of Thursday’s vote. On the other side of the statehouse, the Assembly Budget Committee held an informational hearing on many of the Budget trailer bills, but will not take action on several of those measures until next week. Once passed by the Budget Committees, these bills move forward to the full Senate and Assembly floors for approval.

The higher education trailer bill Assembly Bill (AB) 1809, which contains the Online College and Student-Focused Funding Formula, was not in print long enough to be voted on by the Legislature this week, nor was the employment budget trailer bill, AB 1832, which will also have a direct impact on community colleges.

AB 1832 would enact the following provisions, among others:

• Shift the responsibility for the administration of payroll deductions for membership in employee organizations from the employer to the employee organization.
   
• Make the content of “mass communications” concerning the right of public employees to join or support an employee organization—with “mass communications” defined as a “written document, or script for an oral or recorded presentation or message, that is intended for delivery to multiple public employees”—subject to collective bargaining.  Under these provisions, if no agreement is reached and the employer sends out a mass communication, the employee organization would have the right to send out its own mass communication.
   
• Amend current law that requires public employers to provide employee organizations mandatory access to new employee orientations to further require that the date, time, and place of new employee orientations be confidential and not shared with anyone other than employees, the employee organization which represents them, or a vendor that has been contracted to provide a service for the purposes of the orientation.

ACCCA has joined a coalition of K-14 employers in opposing AB 1832. The language in AB 1832 is along the lines of last year’s employee orientation bill and other legislative proposals of the current legislative session in that it appears to be prompted by the impending Supreme Court decision on Janus v. Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees, which is expected to rule agency fees unconstitutional and may spur some members to leave union membership. View the coalition letter here.

Once Governor Jerry Brown officially receives SB 840 and other trailer bills, he will have 12 days to approve the bill outright, approve the bill with specific line item reductions, or veto the bill and send it back to the Legislature.