- The ARC - California Edition -

Carryover Prevention-Oriented Legislation

The new year is well underway and new legislative proposals are being submitted by our representatives. The year 1998 is the second year of the two-year legislative session, and remaining are a number of unresolved proposals still on the legislative table. While the thousands of new issues are being sorted, we will review some prevention-oriented bills which will continue to be debated during the second-half of the legislative session.

SB537 (Greene) Genetic diseases: expanded newborn screening pilot project. The statewide newborn screening program currently provides testing of each child born in California for 4 treatable genetically-caused disorders using methods which were originally developed and implemented during the 1960's. These test methods have served us well and have resulted in eliminating or reducing damage to thousands of the babies born in California during the past 25 years .

However, during recent decades, major advances in testing technology for other genetically-caused disorders have been made and new treatment strategies have been developed.

The proposal of SB537 is to establish two pilot programs in order to develop procedures and evaluate the extension of the current newborn genetic screening services to test for additional types of inherited disorders.

During the 1997 portion of this session, the bill was successfully passed through the Senate process and consideration in the Assembly Appropriations committee is now pending. The opposition to this bill comes from the California Department of Finance which objects to spending state funds for this effort.

SB654 (Johnston) Discrimination. Current federal law makes it an unlawful employment practice to discriminate on the basis of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, marital status or sex of any person. Other provisions of federal law (the ADA) have been interpreted to extend the ban on employment discrimination to include genetic characteristics as well.

The proposal embodied in SB654 would specifically identify the employment practices to include the basis of genetic characteristics, and would clarify the definition of what "genetic characteristics" means. In addition, the proposed statute would make it California law to apply the federal provisions to any employer regularly employing five or more persons instead of the 15 persons specified by federal law. This measure would also clearly prohibit California employers from conducting genetic screening or testing at the workplace.

Opposition to expanding the ban on the use of genetic traits in their employment practices has been voiced by the California Manufacturers Association, and the California Chamber of Commerce.

At the time of this writing, SB654 has passed the Senate policy committees and was approved by the entire Senate. The author then requested that the measure be placed in the inactive file. The bill likely will be reactivated during this session and sent to the Assembly for their consideration.

AB813 (Baldwin) Income and bank and corporation taxes: credits: swimming pool safety devices. In California, drowning is the leading cause of death for toddlers ages 1 through 4. For every drowning fatality, there are approximately four more near-drowners. The backyard swimming pool poses a tremendous danger to toddlers as they are the sites that are taking the lives of approximately 70 to 80 toddlers per year.

During the 1995-96 legislative session, a measure was signed into law which will require NEW pools to have one of five specified safety devices. The object of this law is to reduce the possibility of backyard swimming pool drownings. Thousands of existing pools, however, remain unprotected and will pose an on-going danger to future generations of toddlers.

The proposal being made by AB813 is to provide a tax credit for existing pool owners to retrofit their pools with an approved safety device. Opposition to this tax credit proposal has come from the Department of Finance which claims the credits would result in near term unplanned General Fund revenue losses of $5 million annually. The bill has been stalled in the Assembly Appropriations committee.

AB1412 (Ducheny) Motorcycles: helmets: drivers. Since January 2, 1992, it has been the law in California that the driver and any passenger of a motorcycle, motor-driven cycle, or motorized bicycle must wear a safety helmet. Since the passage of this law, compliance with using a safety helmet has risen to essentially 100%, and the numbers of motorcycle riders killed and injured have been cut in half.

During the first six years under the California law, there have been over 1,750 fewer motorcycle-riders killed, and over 45,000 fewer motorcycle-riders injured than had occurred during the six-year pre-law period. These are impressive numbers. However, well organized efforts to obtain a repeal of the helmet requirement are continuing in spite of the clear results that helmet-use is meaningfully reducing death and brain injury.

The issue being debated boils down to: whether riding a motorcycle is a right or a privilege; and whether the public should pay for the medical and social costs of a person knowingly taking undo risk. The proposal to repeal the helmet mandate has usually been approved by transportation policy committees, but fails to be approved on fiscal grounds.

During the 1997 half-session, AB1412 was passed by the Assembly policy committees and on the Assembly floor, but was defeated by the members of the Senate Appropriations committee on fiscal grounds.

— Peter Leibert, Editor —