Posts Tagged: committee
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Hang on to your hats, California smokers — a cyclone of tobacco legislation is blowing through the Golden State. Moves to crack down on electronic cigarettes, further regulate smokes in the workplace, raise the legal age to buy cigarettes to 21 years old and create new tobacco taxes all won support from the Senate health committee, the bills’ first major policy hurdle in the final weeks of the 2015 legislative session.
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Here’s the diagnosis: It was the doctors versus the nurses, and the doctors won – for now. An effort to allow nurse practitioners limited authority to treat patients without the supervision of a doctor was blocked in the Assembly amid opposition from physicians, who said the plan would hinder high-quality medical care.
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California Healthline: The state Senate Committee on Health this week approved a bill to delay the move to managed care for California Children’s Services, a program for Medi-Cal children with rare and complicated diseases. AB 187, by Assembly member Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), would put off the state’s planned shift of children in the CCS program for a year, till January 2017.
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Legalizing internet poker in California – a fruitless effort that has spanned seven years, a dozen major bills and hundreds of hours of tense talks – was headed for defeat in the Capitol, following opposition from a key Senate committee leader. Casino-owning tribes, card clubs and the horse racing industry were unable to agree on a formula that would allow them to share in the online gaming market, potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
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The Legislature made history of sorts Monday when it recorded its first-ever committee vote on a bill to legalize internet poker in California, but the measure is light on details and remains a focus of intense negotiations. Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, introduced the bill, AB 431, earlier this year.
News
It’s as if they can read your mind: Before customers even ask to be picked up, apps let Uber or Lyft know you’ll need them. That’s because personal data housed in smart phones tell ride-sharing companies when and where their customers most frequently need rides. It’s innovated the car-service industry, critics say, at the expense of users’ privacy.
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Welcome to the 7th Senate District, where money and hardball politics came together in the primary election. The runoff likely will not be much different. Even in a state now accustomed to seven-digit spending in legislative campaigns, the 7th District showdown in May is likely to set records. And powerful interests that weighed in during the primary – organized labor, business interests, the dentists, the doctors and the fire fighters, for example – are all but certain to pony up again.
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Forty years later, the parsimonious Brown is still butting heads with the UC system’s president over money. The issue is simple: The state wants to know in detail how UC spends its money, the first step if the state is to give the system more money in the 2015-2016 budget.
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Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins announced today the standing committee chairs for the lower house’s 2015-2016 regular session. Earlier this week state lawmakers came to Sacramento to take their oath of office and to officially elect Atkins, a San Diego Democrat, as their leader. Her committee chair lineup is a peek at which members will play a key role in this session’s legislative process
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Though the final chapter is still unwritten on Election 2014, we know this much: Republicans took advantage of a traditional dip in midterm turnout and some big spending in targeted races to pick up enough legislative seats to end Democrats’ supermajorities in both houses. The GOP picked off two Democratic Assembly incumbents – Steve Fox, D-Palmdale, and Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton — and were headed to unseat a third – Freshman Assemblyman Al Marutsuchi, D-Torrance.
A smoker savors the vapor from an electronic cigarette, which is the focus of new legislation. (Photo:MisiArt, Shutterstock)
