Legislative Session: 1997-98
Report Card Term: 1998 Final Revised

Dear Californians,

This is the final report on the 1997-98 California legislative session. This report includes legislators' grades on critical votes for children from the second year of the two-year session, their cumulative grades from our Interim Report (based on the first year of the session), and their final grades (an average of the two).

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 regular contact and complete cooperation among child advocates, constituents, and legislators can every California child be assured the opportunity to reach his or her full potential.

Sincerely,

Robert C. Fellmeth
Executive Director, Children's Advocacy Institute

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Adoption of the 1998-99 budget and its many accompanying policy changes was nearly a month and a half overdue as the Governor and Legislature disagreed on how to spend this year’s $4.4 billion surplus. Due to California’s now vibrant economy, the biggest issue of the year was how to spend the $4.4 billion unanticipated windfall – a golden opportunity to reinvest in California’s children, who have been repeatedly shortchanged for much of the past decade. During the early 1990s, government cuts were made to weather a serious and persistent recession, and the condition of children suffered as a result. But in recent years, when revenue was available to reinvest in children, lawmakers instead decided to spend loudly in raw numbers a little more on children and families, while often spending less in real numbers when properly adjusted for inflation and population increases. Real and substantial increases have been reserved for tax cuts to upper-middle class and wealthy Californians. This year was no different.

There has been a growing tendency over the years to make policy changes through the budget process, rather than through the usual legislative process. Prior to the early 1990s, the annual budget package consisted of one actual budget bill and roughly seven or eight "budget trailer bills," which included the direct policy changes funded by the budget bill. This year, the number of budget trailer bills ballooned to 44, with roughly 10 supplemental trailer bills to reinstate programs and funding vetoed by the Governor.

The reasons behind this budget activity are many and varied. Since the prolonged recession of the 1990s, lawmakers have made a concerted effort to make policy changes consistent with California’s economic realities. Governor Pete Wilson and legislative term limits (both ushered in by voters in 1990) have also contributed to the growing use of the state budget to enact policy changes. Unlike many of his predecessors, Wilson has been a proactive governor, not content to wait to consider what the Legislature sends him; he often promotes his initiatives, as articulated in his January State-of-the-State Address, through the budget process, where he maintains some control, particularly given his item veto power. Legislative term limits have increased the number of "lesser-knowns" clamoring for credit – something to take back to their constituents. As part of the budget agreement, local benefits stand a good chance of enactment.

As usual, the budget debate split lawmakers along partisan faults. Governor Wilson and most Republican legislators insisted that most of the windfall be sent back to taxpayers by reducing or eliminating the vehicle license fee (VLF), which provides substantial funds for local government. Democrats, who maintain a majority in both houses of the Legislature, insisted on reinvesting most of the windfall on education. Democratic leaders, Senate President Pro Tempore John Burton and Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, additionally insisted on a long-overdue small increase in the safety net for California’s poorest families with children, which had been slashed almost 50% in real spending power since 1989.

Several weeks of dueling op-eds and press conferences later, the inevitable compromise between the two parties was reached: a lesser tax cut package coupled with a lesser investment in education. This year’s budget package includes $1.4 billion in permanent tax cuts with up to $2.2 billion in additional VLF reductions tied to future state revenue collections. For education, there is an increase of roughly $250 per pupil in school spending for this fiscal year (which, unfortunately, still leaves California near the bottom of the nation in per capita public school investment). The extra money is earmarked to fund additional class size reduction, after school programs, updated library resources, books and instructional materials, college prep programs, extra help for low-performing students, and long-deferred school maintenance. California’s higher education system also received a modest boost in funding, with no student fee increases or decreases – however, at a level promising no substantial increase in the percentage of high school graduates able to receive needed higher education. The final resolution was far short of the $8.8 billion in new investment in children (most for education to assure job capability) recommended in the California Children’s Budget 1998-99.

With respect to the safety net, this year’s state budget marked the first time since 1990 that the Legislature did not block a statutory cost-of-living increase (2.84%) in welfare (TANF) grants to poor families with children. Another boost for these families on aid: the "temporary" 4.9% cut in TANF grants, enacted to bridge a budget shortfall during the early 1990s, was left to expire in November 1998. That means a 7.7% total increase in grants beginning November 1, 1998. Other notable budget expenditures affecting children include:

• Expansion of the state food stamp program and SSI to all legal immigrants who lost aid due to federal welfare reform. These families still remain ineligible for basic TANF aid, even though they pay taxes when they are working.

• Partial restoration of the renters’ tax credit. This tax credit is now available only to single taxpayers with annual incomes of less than $25,000 and married taxpayers with combined annual incomes of less than $50,000. The tax credit is now "nonrefundable," which means that if a person does not pay more in taxes than he or she claims in the credit, the person is not eligible – making this credit unavailable to the poorest renters.

• Reduced child welfare caseloads for social workers to ensure monthly visits.

• A home visiting pilot program for families at risk.

• A significant expansion (50% over last year’s investment) in child care and early childhood education programs.

While these expenditures sound promising and certainly are good beginnings, they must be placed in proper context to gauge their impact. California continues to lead the nation in disparity between rich and poor, with one in four children living in families with incomes below the poverty level. California’s rents continue to be among the nation’s highest – with the lowest level of subsidized housing among the 50 states. And California’s children remain in trouble in a number of other areas: drug and alcohol abuse, youth unemployment, child abuse, large class sizes in most grades, very low test scores, unwed births, youth violence, and juvenile crime.

Had the Governor and Legislature agreed to invest the entire $4.4 billion surplus in education and other children’s programs, decimated by the cuts of the past decade, it would have constituted only one half of the public investment in children required to get California back to pre-1989 levels.

Still, California legislators should be credited for many modest gains for children included in the budget and a number of other bills designed to improve outcomes for children. In this Report Card, we celebrate those victories and the legislators who authored and supported them.

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Child abuse and neglect continue to be intractable problems in California. Child abuse report rates remain higher in California than in any other state – 50% higher than New York, the state with the next highest rate. Not only does this abuse occur in families prior to the removal of the children, but in the foster care system charged with these children’s protection. Several recent high-profile media series focused the public’s attention and outrage on the continued abuse and neglect of children in foster care – at group homes, out-of-state "boot camps," and other foster placements. In response to the charges made in the news articles, the Legislature held multiple hearings on various aspects of the child welfare system. Ultimately, the Joint Legislative Budget Committee members appointed a task force of child advocates, foster care providers from various settings, law enforcement, and county and state representatives to recommend comprehensive legislative action. SB 933 (Thompson) and SB 2030 (Costa), which are described in this Report Card, include many of the task force’s recommendations. Also included are two measures to encourage adoptions of children, permanently removing them from the foster system.

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With well over two million child support cases, California has the highest caseload in the nation. Statewide, just 17% of the children dependent on the system receive some of the support to which they are entitled. In stark contrast to California’s performance, nine states collect support for over 30% of their caseload, and two of those states collect over 40%. Regular child support payments make a huge difference for children in single parent households – often making the difference between a family income above the poverty level and one far below. Particularly now that parents with children face five-year lifetime limits on welfare and one in four California children already lives in poverty, improvement of our child support system deserves high priority. Four of the most significant bills to improve California’s child support system are included in this Report Card.

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California is home to more uninsured children (1.78 million) and has one of the nation’s highest rates of uninsured children (18%). Last year, Congress allocated $24 billion in State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) block grants over the next five years to fund health insurance for the children of working poor families. Although California was eligible for $859 million in SCHIP block grants on a 65% federal/35% state matching basis, California applied for less than half that amount to begin a new low-cost health insurance program: "Healthy Families." This new program covers children in families that have too much income to qualify for Medi-Cal, but whose income is less than 200% of the federal poverty level. The new program, which began July 1, 1998, is off to a very slow start, with only 20,609 of the revised estimate of 400,000 children it could serve, enrolled as of September 26, 1998. The Legislature considered several bills this year, but passed only two (included in the Report Card) to improve outreach and expand the number of children and family members that could be served by "Healthy Families." The balance of bills graded in this section would promote children’s health or ensure delivery or coverage for other important children’s health care services.

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Responding to a groundswell of public opinion naming education the top priority issue this year, lawmakers delivered a package of education reform bills to the Governor and put the largest-ever school construction bond on the November ballot. Unfortunately, the $9.2 billion school bond measure includes very controversial reforms in the amount of school construction fees that local school districts can charge developers for their new developments, and other related changes sought by developers. These provisions are opposed by many education groups and, thus, may hamper the chances of the school bond’s passage. Few, however, dispute the need for the bond money to build additional classrooms to accommodate smaller class sizes, burgeoning enrollments, and modernization of crumbling schools. In addition, bills to lengthen the instructional year, make schools more accountable, end "social promotion," and require parenting education in the schools round out the education portion of this Report Card.

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A key component in California’s welfare reform experiment is a commitment to provide quality child care to parents who are training or transitioning from welfare to work. Our challenge is to meet this need without displacing the working poor who currently depend on state-subsidized child care to stay in the work force. Child care, particularly for infants or for more than one child, can be cost-prohibitive for workers making low to median wages. Recent findings on the importance of early brain development to the ultimate success of a child elevate the need to ensure a quality child care experience for all children. In addition to the generous infusion of new child care dollars in this year’s state budget, the Legislature passed other important bills designed to increase the quality and stock of professional child care providers and allow working parents to use employer-provided "sick time" to stay home with their sick children.

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Despite the fact that juvenile crime levels are dropping at an even higher rate than adult crime, Governor Wilson proposed a sweeping juvenile justice measure this year that would have further blurred the distinction between the juvenile and adult systems of justice (rehabilitation vs. punishment). AB 1735 (Pacheco) and SB 1455 (Rainey), both sponsored by Governor Wilson, would have sent more youthful defendants to the adult courts and corrections system at the discretion of the prosecutor, instead of the judge, as in current law. The bills also would have compromised the ability of judges to evaluate cases and individualize sentences to maximize human potential, and added gang-related homicides to the list of special circumstances subject to the death penalty. Child advocates worked hard to defeat these measures early in the process and instead supported increased investment in prevention and early intervention efforts. Action on a number of proactive bills to steer youth clear of trouble, rather than accelerate the incarceration of our children, is also included in this Report Card.

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Now that gunfire has surpassed vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death for California children, child advocates are increasingly vocal in their support of state and local laws to restrict children’s access to guns. A bill to ban the sale and manufacture of so-called "Saturday night specials" is included in this Report Card.

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ABUSE PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

SB 933 (Thompson) – Child welfare system and group home reform
This bill makes several significant reforms to California’s foster care system, based on the recommendations of a task force assembled by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. The task force was convened in response to high profile media criticism of the foster care system, particularly the state’s regulation of group homes and out-of-state placements. This bill appropriates $65.5 million to fund annual audits of group homes, perform background checks on group home employees, improve staff training, expand support services for foster children, expand the Independent Living Program, increase monitoring of foster placements, and other programmatic changes. Another $50 million is appropriated to give group home and foster family agency operators a 6% increase in the rates paid by the state.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

SB 2030 (Costa) – Child welfare social worker caseload reduction
This bill requires the Department of Social Services to contract with an independent and qualified entity to conduct a study to determine appropriate caseload per child welfare social worker and best practices within the child welfare field that will adequately protect children. The Department must report the findings of this study no later than January 30, 2000. A related item: The state Budget Act includes a $40 million emergency augmentation to reduce caseloads in the interim, which when combined with federal matching funds, could reduce social worker caseloads by 20%.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

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ADOPTION

AB 1654 (Aroner) – Adoption Assistance Program
This bill would have expanded the Adoption Assistance Program eligibility criteria, increasing the likelihood that many more difficult-to-place children (e.g., siblings or children with special needs) would be adopted.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "The fact that a foster family has adopted a child does not mean that the family should be awarded an annuity by the State. … [S]tatutory changes should await the [Adoption Initiative-Adoption Advisory] Council’s recommendations."

AB 2286 (Scott) – Foster parent and "kinship" adoptions
This bill expedites adoption of children by their foster parent(s) or relative caregiver(s), by eliminating some duplicate assessments and background checks common to foster care and adoption that have already been completed on these applicants.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

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HEALTH CARE

AB 278 (Escutia) – Children’s environmental health This bill would have required the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) to assess the exposure patterns and special susceptibility of infants and children to air pollutants and toxic air contaminants. Further, the bill would have required state air quality standards and air toxic control measures to be reconsidered and, if necessary, revised to specifically protect children. Currently, standards are assessed and control measures determined according to the risk posed to the average 180-lb. male.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "Despite the rhetoric surrounding this bill, rarely do children and infants fit [the] … definition [of sensitive populations]."

AB 1053 (Thomson) – HMO reimbursement for immunizations
This bill would have required HMOs and other managed care plans to pay for all medically-indicated childhood immunizations as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the most current version of the U.S. Recommended Childhood Immunization Schedule. The bill would have prohibited passing any portion of the costs of vaccines on to the attending physicians.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "This bill is really about how physicians are paid. These matters are best left to the contracting parties."

AB 1621 (Figueroa) – Reconstructive surgery coverage by health plans
This bill requires HMOs and other managed care plans to cover the cost of "reconstructive surgery" to create or recreate a normal appearance as defined and differentiated from "cosmetic surgery." The bill was introduced to address the growing problem of HMO denials of physician-recommended reconstructive surgery for children to repair birth defects or other physical deformities caused by infection, illness, tumors, or injury.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

AB 2079 (Villaraigosa) – Healthy Families child health insurance program copays
This bill would have specified that the $250 annual limit on copayments in the new Healthy Families program applies to copayments paid for health, vision, and dental services combined. Specifically, this bill would have capped copayments at $200 per family for health care, $25 per family for vision care, and $25 per family for dental care.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "It is premature to change the fundamental structure of the program before the existing program can be evaluated."

AB 2171 (Villaraigosa) – Healthy Families legal immigrant eligibility
This bill would have clarified that all legal immigrant children who are otherwise eligible for the Healthy Families program may enroll, regardless of their date of entry into the United States.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "… it is premature to expand this new program until after completion of the startup of the program as originally enacted."

SB 34 (Vasconcellos) – Prenatal care for immigrant women
This bill would have reinstated the law prior to enactment of federal welfare reform requiring Medi-Cal funding of prenatal care for immigrant women, both undocumented as well as documented immigrants who do not qualify for various reasons. Numerous studies have shown the cost-effectiveness of such a policy, saving an estimated $3 to $10 in future health care costs for every $1 spent.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "[I]t is wrong for California … to be compelled to provide care to illegal aliens when it is the duty of another government to do so …"

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CHILD SUPPORT

AB 1630 (Sweeney) – New Employee Registry: independent state contractors
This bill would have required the addition to the New Employee Registry (NER) of all persons or entities who derive financial benefit from the state of California in the form of contractual business agreements, state grants or loans – assisting district attorneys in locating child support obligors and their assets. This bill is designed to include in the NER independent contractors, their subcontractors, and the self-employed – populations that district attorneys report are quite often able to pay, but difficult to reach for child support collection purposes.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "… because the NER is so new there is insufficient data to determine whether further expansions of the NER would be cost effective in increasing child support, … further study is required."

AB 1682 (Oritz) – New Employee Registry: independent local contractors
This bill would have required all persons who contract with a county, city, special district, or other political subdivision, or who receive a loan or grant from one of these local entities, to be included in the NER for child support collection purposes. All public employees would have been required to verify compliance with court-ordered child support obligations as a condition of their employment.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "… because the NER is so new there is insufficient data to determine whether further expansions of the NER would be cost effective in increasing child support, … further study is required."

AB 1961 (Aroner) – Child support consumer complaint resolution process
This bill would have established a child support consumer complaint resolution process, outside of the more expensive and time-consuming superior court process, to ensure the accountability of district attorneys in the child support collection process. This fair hearing process before an administrative law judge would have been limited to issues of child support accounting and would have been available to both custodial and non-custodial parents.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "A state hearing process for child support collections would create a heavy additional burden on the State and counties. …"

SB 1410 (Burton) – Performance-based child support incentives
This bill implements a new performance-based child support incentive structure to fund county child support programs as proposed by the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) in its 1998-99 Analysis of the Governor’s Proposed Budget. Better-performing counties would receive a little more incentive money and the lower-performing counties would receive a little less, but with assistance to improve their performance. LAO was required to analyze the previous flat-rate incentive system and recommend a performance-based formula for apportioning child support incentive monies pursuant to last year’s SB 936 (Burton).
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

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EDUCATION

SB 50 (Greene) – Class Size Reduction Kindergarten-University Public Facilities Bond Act of 1998
This bond act, if approved by voters, would provide $6.7 billion for K-12 school facilities construction and improvements and $2.5 billion for state higher education facilities. This is the largest school bond ever to be placed before voters. The controversy surrounding this bill stems not from the amount of the bond – few dispute the need – but because of significant reforms in the amount of school construction fees that developers can be charged for their new developments. The bond act also includes a provision that would prohibit local agencies from denying new development projects based on the inadequacy of school facilities to accommodate the new population growth.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson. (It will be placed before voters on the November 1998 ballot.)

SB 1193 (Peace) – Longer school year
This bill repeals the current authority of public schools to substitute staff development days for instructional days, thus ensuring a school year of 180 instructional days. The bill also provides financial incentives to fund three staff development (training) days for teachers and one staff development day for classroom instructional employees, all to take place outside of instructional days.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

SB 1561 (Leslie) – Public School Accountability Act of 1998
This bill, the Public School Accountability Act of 1998, would have established a $50 million voluntary improvement program for the state’s 250 lowest-performing schools. The bill would have created an independent evaluator position to identify problems at individual schools and to review and comment on schools’ action plans. The bill would have required mandatory collaboration of all affected parties in designing action plans, setting measurable goals for improvement. This program was intended to lay the groundwork for a future mandatory school accountability program.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "There are no teeth in this proposal … . I envisioned … that we would … require results and apply sanctions if results were not forthcoming."

SB 1370 (Polanco) – "Social Promotion"
This bill, part of a package of bills aimed at ending "social promotion," appropriates $105 million to fund remedial summer programs as proposed in AB 1639 (Sweeney) and additional instructional resources as proposed in AB 1626 (Wayne).
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

AB 1639 (Sweeney) – "Social Promotion"
This bill, part of a package of bills aimed at ending "social promotion," requires school districts to offer summer school instructional programs to pupils who have been retained in grades 2 through 9. The bill authorizes school boards to offer supplemental instruction to students in grades 2 through 6 with low mathematics, reading, or written expression scores. This supplemental instruction may be scheduled during summer, after school, on Saturdays, during intercession, or a combination of these times.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

AB 1626 (Wayne) – "Social Promotion"
This bill, part of a package of bills aimed at ending "social promotion," requires all public schools to adopt specific retention and promotion policies for students in grades 2 through 9 who fail to meet specific standards, based on their grades or scores on the new statewide performance test.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

SB 2138 (Vasconcellos) – Parenting education
This bill would have required all pupils in grades 9 through 12 to receive parenting education and required the development of a statewide master plan for parenting education in non-school settings.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "SB 2138 requires parental notification – but not consent. It … should offer to those parents and pupils who desire it, the option to satisfy the curricular requirement by alternative parenting instruction offered in some non-school setting which could include church-based or home-teaching."

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CHILD POVERTY/INCOME MAINTENANCE

AB 2779 (Aroner) – Social services state budget bill
This bill preserves current law requiring restoration of the temporary 4.9% cut to welfare grants accomplished in 1995. It provides a 2.84% cost-of-living increase, effective November 1, 1998, and continued in the next fiscal year (1999-2000). This bill also expands the state’s food stamps program for legal immigrant children and elderly to include able-bodied adults who lost federal food stamps benefits due to federal welfare reform. The bill also includes many other state budget social services provisions, many of which do not pertain to children’s services.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

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CHILD CARE

AB 15 (Knox) – Sick leave
This bill would have required all public or private employers to allow their employees to use up to one-half of their allotted "sick leave" to care for their ill children.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "… this bill would discourage employers, not currently offering sick leave benefits, from doing so in the future," despite considerable testimony that this has not been the experience in states where such laws already have been enacted.

AB 2025 (Aroner) – Child Care Training and Compensation Program
This bill would have encouraged additional training and provided enhanced compensation rates for child care workers as a means of retaining employees in this most important field.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "… I do not believe it is appropriate for the State of California to provide wage subsidies or otherwise interfere in the private child care market." He also noted that he already vetoed a provision in the 1998 Budget Act that would have made $5 million in federal funds available to fund this bill.

SB 2177 (C. Wright) – CalWORKs child care expansion
This bill would have required child care to be provided to CalWORKs (California welfare) recipients whose children are 12 years of age or younger. Last year’s welfare reform law only guaranteed child care for children aged 10 and younger.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "This bill … would create an entitlement program by requiring that 11 and 12 years old [sic] be provided CalWORKs child care services."

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JUVENILE JUSTICE

SB 822 (Lockyer) – California Youth Violence Prevention Authority
This bill would have created the California Youth Violence Prevention Authority within the Attorney General’s office, which would be authorized to establish and administer a community youth violence prevention competitive grant program.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. ln his veto message, the Governor said: "… the state funds violence prevention programs among ten or more state agencies. By creating a new entity in state government, however, this bill is less likely to replace those ten agencies with one than it is to expand from ten agencies to eleven agencies."

AB 2796 (R. Wright) – Juvenile and Youth Violence Prevention Act of 1998
This bill appropriates $25 million from the state’s general fund to fund construction of neighborhood youth centers and another $100 million for construction, renovation, replacement, or completion of county juvenile facilities.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

AB 2284 (Torlakson), AB 1428 (Ortiz), and SB 1756 (Lockyer) – After school programs
These three identical bills provide $50 million to match local efforts to establish after-school programs (until 6:00 p.m. every school day) at elementary, middle, and junior high schools. These programs would provide a safe environment with homework assistance, tutoring, and recreational activities for children – many of whom have no guidance or supervision between the end of the school day and when their parents arrive home from work.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Wilson.

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INJURY PREVENTION

SB 1500 (Polanco) – "Saturday Night Special" ban This bill would have prohibited the sale or manufacture of the easily-concealable, inexpensive, and low-quality handguns commonly referred to as "Saturday Night Specials" – the handgun of choice for juveniles who carry guns.
    STATUS: Passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Wilson. In his veto message, the Governor said: "It makes little sense for the law to deny weapons to people who need them … when they are arguably in far greater danger from certifiably unsafe thugs than from uncertified handguns."

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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 1998 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. This 1998 Final Report Card includes the average score of each legislator on 1997 bills (as stated in the Children's Legislative Report Card, 1997 Interim Report), an average score on the 1998 bills described in this card, and a Final Grade which is an average of the two years' scores.

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.

View the Final 1998 Grades of California Legislators
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