Dear Californians, This is an interim report based on the first year of the two-year California legislative session. A number of bills have passed or failed, but others have not yet completed the process. We will issue a final report card during October 1998, after the conclusion of the two-year session and the period for the Governor to sign or veto bills. This report is intended to educate and inform you of your legislators' progress on improving the status and outcomes for children in this state. We cannot tell you all there is to know about your legislators in this report card. Therefore, we urge you to communicate frequently with them so they know your expectations for California's children. Only through complete cooperation among child advocates, constituents, and their legislators can every California child be assured the opportunity to reach his or her full potential. Sincerely, Robert C. Fellmeth How the California Legislature Performed in
1997 The first half of the 1997-98 California legislative session was one of the most active legislative years in recent history. The context included a rebounding economy, reduction of the safety net for children, and new federal block grants. The Legislature revamped the welfare system, softening somewhat harsh impacts proposed by the administration; implemented a new federally funded children's health program; addressed some child support collection problems; expanded class size reduction as proposed by the Governor; increased child care subsidies; added funds for juvenile crime prevention; and created a limited state food stamp program for legal immigrant children who are cut off from federal assistance. These and other victories for children celebrated in this Report Card must be viewed in full context. Under most indicators, California's children remain in trouble: high poverty rate, unwed births, drug use, child abuse reports, lower test scores, large class sizes in most grades, youth unemployment, juvenile crime, and others. Some indices have shown recent improvement, but the degree of turnaround is generally small compared to historical levels. Notwithstanding concern over the large-scale infusion of newly-elected freshman legislators (partly as a result of term limits) and the inherent weakness of child advocacy in the Capitol in terms of votes, contributions, and lobbyists, the Legislature can take credit for a number of measures benefitting children. Some of these efforts have not so much advanced the interests of children as ameliorated more severe harm threatened by other proposals. But a significant number of bills have moved children forward by a half-step. And given the regrettable degree of child neglect by individuals and their concomitant abandonment by government over the past decade, every victory for children warrants celebration. In this Report Card, we applaud them and the legislators who authored and supported them. Welfare Reform The first major undertaking of the 1997 legislative year was state implementation of federal welfare reform. The 1996 federal welfare reform law repealed "Aid to Families with Dependent Children" (AFDC) as an entitlement program and replaced it with "Temporary Assistance to Needy Families" (TANF). TANF allows states to design their own aid programs, but requires states to meet performance goals in moving a set percentage of recipients from welfare to work. Maintaining the safety net for children became a top priority for child advocates because children constitute 30.5% of California's population, but comprise 47% of the state's poor (compared to 40% nationally). Almost 70% of California welfare recipients are children. California's legislative leadership opted for a special joint conference committee process to develop the state's plan. After four months of meetings, the conference committee produced a version of welfare reform designed to move recipients into work without eliminating benefits for those who were playing by the rules. The plan borrowed heavily from SB 1232 (Watson), sponsored by the Children's Advocates' Roundtable, an affiliation of over 100 statewide and regional children's policy organizations. Prior to floor votes in either the Assembly or Senate, the conference committee members extensively revised their report to toughen time limits by generally eliminating aid to parents after 60 months. The plan passed both legislative houses, but Governor Wilson vetoed it. As part of the state budget negotiations, the Governor and leadership of the Assembly and Senate, with assistance from a smaller group of four conference committee members, crafted another welfare reform plan. Dubbed "CalWORKs" (California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids), this plan eliminates aid to parents after 60 months with very few exceptions and restricts parents who are trying to complete their education. It passed by lopsided margins in both houses (33-5 in the Senate and 66-11 in the Assembly) and was signed by the Governor. CalWORKs contains many provisions that will assist families with children in moving from welfare to work, including child care assistance and more individualized social services. But the new law also contains provisions which could plunge more children into poverty and homelessness if a sufficient number of jobs are not created and currently not enough jobs exist. Such a mix of good and bad provisions, complicated by the unusual process by which this new law evolved, makes it difficult to hold legislators individually responsible for their votes on the final product. Therefore, this Report Card does not include California's welfare reform legislation in rating lawmakers. Health Insurance Also in 1997, California's lawmakers and Governor Wilson launched a new program in the last three weeks of the legislative session to finance health insurance for up to 580,000 of California's 1.6 million uninsured children. Their action followed the August adoption of the federal balanced budget act, in which Congress allocated $24 billion over the next five years to fund health insurance for the children of working poor families in the United States. Money will flow to the states through block grants, on a 65% federal - 35% state matching basis. California is entitled to a very large share of the new federal money $859 million in the first year alone, due to the state's large number of uninsured children and high child poverty rates. Although several bills to expand the current Medi-Cal system to provide health insurance for the children of California's working poor were pending in the Legislature, Governor Wilson opted to develop a new program using private insurers. California's program, called "Healthy Families" (AB 1126, Villaraigosa), plans to begin enrolling children effective July 1, 1998. Unfortunately, it will only use about one-half of the money available to California from the federal government. Action on AB 1126 and a related bill, SB 903 (Lee), is included in this Report Card. Child Support California ranks at or near the bottom of the fifty states in almost every category for child support collection. California collects at least some support for only 14% of the families that depend on the state's child support collection system. Regular child support payments make a huge difference for children in single-parent households the difference between a mean family income above the poverty level and one far below. For many families, regular child support payments are critical in keeping the family off welfare. Child advocates supported a number of bills to improve California's child support collection system. Action on those bills is included in this Report Card. Other Key Issues Some bills which do not mention children directly still profoundly affect their lives. Such is the case with bills governing hours and wages in California, because the condition of children is inextricably tied to their parents' income. Therefore, two bills to restore daily overtime pay after eight hours of work, SB 680 (Solis) and AB 15 (Knox), are included in this Report Card. Education bills have an obvious impact on children. California's rebounding economy and Proposition 98's constitutional requirement to spend most of the windfall on education allowed the Legislature and Governor to deliver on the popular class size reduction program, which was expanded to fully fund class sizes no larger than 20 students in kindergarten through third grade (SB 804, O'Connell). But California's current class size reduction achievement only inches the state upward from 51st (including the District of Columbia) to 50th in the nation. To approach the national average of teacher-student ratios, California must remain committed to reducing class sizes in the remaining fourth through twelfth grades, at a cost of about three times what we currently spend on that effort. This does not include the billions of dollars needed to construct new school buildings to accommodate class-size reduction and the burgeoning school-age population. The balance of bills included in the Report Card represents key votes on some of the most important issues affecting children: abuse prevention and intervention, health care, education, income maintenance, foster care, juvenile justice, and injury prevention. Subjects Graded ABUSE PREVENTION and INTERVENTION SB 1092 (Lockyer) Child Victims of Crime Programs SB 121 (Alpert) Minors seeking services at domestic violence
shelters
HEALTH CARE AB 1126 (Villaraigosa) "Healthy Families" child health insurance
program SB 903 (Lee) Expansion of Medi-Cal health insurance AB 112 (Escutia) Expansion of Medi-Cal health insurance AB 278 (Escutia) Children's environmental health AB 221 (Goldsmith) Finger-stick blood glucose testing AB 1053 (Thomson) HMO reimbursement for immunizations CHILD SUPPORT AB 573 (Kuehl), AB 1395 (Escutia), SB 247 (Lockyer) Expansion of FTB
collection of overdue child support SB 936 (Burton) Child support collection data and incentives
AB 702 (Villaraigosa) FTB child support collection from
non-interest-bearing accounts EDUCATION SCA 12 (O'Connell) Majority vote for school bonds SB 804 (O'Connell) Class size reduction INCOME MAINTENANCE SB 680 (Solis) Daily overtime pay FOSTER CARE AB 1065 (Goldsmith) Criminal background checks for relative foster
parents AB 1391 (Goldsmith) Foster parent rate increase AB 1544 (Assembly Human Services Committee) "Kinship adoption" for
foster children JUVENILE JUSTICE SB 668 (Vasconcellos) Mission of the juvenile justice
system AB 963 (Keeley) Statewide gang prevention program INJURY PREVENTION SB 500 (Polanco) "Saturday Night Special" ban AB 491 (Keeley) Expands negligent firearm storage law SB 1329 (Leslie) Graduated Driver's License AB 1055 (Villaraigosa) Playground Safety and Recycling Act of
1997 How Legislators Were Graded
All the bills included in this Report Card would improve current law for children based on the criteria outlined herein. An "AYE" vote on these measures represents a vote for children and is indicated by a "H". "NO" votes and abstentions are noted with a "", indicating the legislator was "not there" for children. Abstentions hurt a legislator's score because there are many opportunities for a legislator to add his or her vote later, if for any reason the legislator misses a vote during the course of a floor session. Thus, a legislator who fails to vote, without an excused absence, effectively votes "NO." In cases where a legislator had an excused absence when the floor vote was taken (for illness, legislative business, etc.), the vote will be noted with a "X" and does not affect the overall score. Vacancies in a legislative seat are noted with a "V." The 1997 Children's Legislative Report Card evaluates only floor votes on selected key bills affecting children. When bills were amended in the second house, the concurrence vote in the house of origin was used to compute those legislators' scores, so that comparing Senate and Assembly votes on the same bills will reflect votes on the same version of the bill. Not all of the bills tracked made it through both houses, so the scoring of assemblymembers compared with the scoring of senators, in some instances, is based on different bills. Legislators' overall scores indicate the percentage of votes cast FOR children, with a possible score of 100%. Votes were tallied from the Assembly and Senate Daily Journals and the California State Senate Web Page.
|
