Legislative Session Ends Soon: FFCA’s Hot List of Key Bills

Fossil Free California is heading to Sacramento on August 26 and 27 to join allies in advocating for bills that we have been following all year. The end of the Legislature’s recess on August 12 started a new wave of advocacy to legislators and their staffers, who are now involved in countless meetings to help determine the fate of bills making their way toward a final floor vote.  Things will be changing rapidly as bills go through Appropriations—for example, SB 127 (Weiner, the complete streets bill that increases focus on bicycles and pedestrians) is meeting opposition from CalTrans and from the Department of Finance. 

All bills must clear the hurdle of the Appropriations commitees by August 30th and then be voted on before the Legislative session ends on September 13th.  By October 13th, all bills forwarded to Governor Newsom for signature must be either signed or vetoed.

In a recent letter to all 120 legislators, Fossil Free California highlighted five Senate bills (now in the Assembly) and five Assembly bills (now in the Senate), noting our support or opposition.  Our Assembly Floor priority list includes SB 210 (Leyva: smog checks for diesel trucks) and SB 1 (Atkins, Portantino, and Stern: making current Federal climate, clean water, worker safety and endangered species laws enforceable under state law regardless of federal actions).

For the Assembly bills now in the Senate, Fossil Free California supports the public banking bill, AB 857 (see our letter of support) and will join the California Public Banking Alliance on Monday, August 26, to continue to advocate for this bill. We also support AB 342, prohibiting new oil and gas infrastructure on state lands that would service oil and gas infrastructure on currently protected federal lands.

Although we tracked the progress of dozens of bills, our final list is limited to those bills that are now coming to their final votes.  Bills that became “two year bills” may be revived in January, and monitoring will continue.

Fossil Free California is a statewide organization with over 7500 online members. We support legislation based on our mission to end financial support for climate-damaging fossil fuels and promote a just transition to a low carbon economy.