Legislative update – April 2022
SB 1360 (California Legislation) – Update
Per last month’s update, this bill would require initiative, referendum, and recall petitions to instruct voters to sign the petition only after viewing Top Funder disclosures. The bill would also make changes to political advertisement disclaimers including the form, content, and sometimes the color of the disclaimer. The newest version of this bill would bring back the $50,000 Top Contributor threshold for radio, television, and newspaper ads where the previous version of the bill required the listing of Top Contributors regardless of contribution amounts for these types of advertisements.
SB 1362 (California Legislation) – Update
Amendments to this bill (included in last month’s update) would apply the provisions of the PRA that regulate lobbyists and lobbying to redistricting by the Citizens Redistricting Commission. This is done by expanding the definitions of “administrative action” and “state agency” to include redistricting and the Citizens Redistricting Commission, respectively.
SB 1439 (California Legislation)
This bill removes the local agency officer exception to Section 84308 requiring disqualification and recusal of an officer before voting on a decision where the officer received a contribution from a party that has a direct financial interest in the decision within 12 months preceding the decision. It would also require that an officer of an agency to not accept contributions from parties with financial interests to the decision during the decision process and for 12 months after, instead of 3 months. Amendments to this bill would extend the contribution prohibition to the spouse and/or agent of a party with a direct financial interest in the local agency decision. The amendments would also allow the local agency officer to cure an unintentional violation by returning the portion of the contribution that is over the limit within 14 days.