Legislative Update: 18 Bills Authored by Senator Cortese Advance!

The month of July is summer recess for the State Legislature, a perfect opportunity for me to provide an update on bills that I have authored that are advancing – I am hopeful that these 17 bills will soon head to the Governor’s desk for a signature.

My bill SB 1210 has already been signed into law – this new law will help survivors of online abuse find justice. I’d like to thank my colleagues in the Legislature as well as Governor Newsom for taking this important step towards ending online sexual exploitation.

• SB 300 – Sentencing Reform
• SB 384 – Family Finding Protocols for Children
• SB 649 – Tenant Preferences to Prevent Displacement
• SB 692 – Special Education Inclusion & Equity
• SB 707 – Protection for Continuing Care Residents
• SB 868 – Equity & Stability for Retired Educators
• SB 874 – Parity for Classified School Employees
• SB 999 – Mental Health & Substance Use Disorder Treatment Patient Safety
• SB 1100 – Accessible, Safe & Democratic Public Meetings
• SB 1126 – Retirement Savings Program Expansion
• SB 1168 – Postretirement Benefit Equity Adjustment
• SB 1184 – Student Mental Health Support: School-Linked Services
• SB 1278 – Labor Statistics Reporting 
• SB 1294 – Worker Wellness
• SB 1297 – Low Carbon Construction & Climate Restoration
• SB 1315 – Safe Sale of Alcohol for Small Businesses
• SB 1385 – Multi-Family Solar Energy Access

Learn more about all of these bills on my website.

Supporters of my bill SB 300 are pictured here at our recent Press Conference at the State Capitol. SB 300 is advancing to reform previous state statutes that are severely outdated and unjust. No one should be sentenced to death, or to die behind prison walls, due to actions of another. But for many Californians – this is their reality. SB 300 restores judicial discretion to judges allowing them to order a sentence other than the death penalty or life in prison without parole for felony murder special circumstances cases in which a person did not kill anyone, nor intend for anyone to die.  View our recent press conference on SB 300 at this link.

During an historic surplus, I believe that the Legislature has met this moment and this incredible opportunity to truly provide stability to our children, families, older adults, and small businesses that are recovering from a time of such instability. With this $300 billion budget agreement, we have gone back to basics to ensure Californian’s have access to their essential needs: housing and rental assistance, utility cost relief, healthcare, active transportation, a quality education, and a path to higher learning. When so many of us face uncertainty around our financial future, a challenge that is only intensified by the rising threat of inflation, the State Legislature has passed a budget that will ensure economic strength and stability, even in our tighter budget years ahead.

These are only a few of this year’s investments I’d like to highlight:

• An additional $2 billion in affordable housing and an additional $2 billion in student housing
• $47 billion toward infrastructure to create jobs and prepare for us for the future, including almost $15 billion for transportation infrastructure (read more about my work in this area in my recent OpEd)
• Record funding for education, with a 13% increase in ongoing discretionary funding to California schools
• $2 billion to provide direct relief to impacted small businesses and nonprofits
• $9.5 billion in direct tax refunds to millions of California families
• An expansion of access to Medi-Cal to all eligible Californians regardless of immigration status
• $200 million in support of women’s reproductive rights
• $37 billion in reserves – to ensure fiscal responsibility and stability for the years ahead
• A $19 billion climate package to address our climate emergencies, including drought, extreme heat and wildfire

To learn more about this year’s state budget, visit this link.

As I shared previously, my approved district budget requests this year total over $14,000,000 and endeavor to educate and empower our next generation:

• $5,000,000 for Martial Cottle Park Improvements
• $5,000,000 toward Integrated Data for Student Mental Health Support
• $2,200,000 for the Eastside Education Initiative
• $2,000,000 for the Santa Clara County Youth Climate Initiative

Learn more about funding I secured for our district at this link.

Check out the new “East Side Dreams” exhibit presented by the San Jose Public Library. In the California Room of the MLK Library, you can find a large display telling the history of the “Cortese” family. It is meaningful to reflect on all those that helped to build are community into the place that it is today.

Thank you to the San Jose Public Library for highlighting the history of East Side San Jose, including my own family’s history. Stop by the MLK Library to view displays and upcoming panels that tell the story of our rich history and the stories of community builders across the East Side. Learn more at this link.

I am proud to co-host Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action’s 2022 Youth Leadership Summit to unite youth behind learning about and taking action to combat climate change while building collective resiliency and awareness around sustainability. This summit invites high school and college students, as well as young adults, to a day of interactive workshops as well as informative speaker programs that stretch across a vast array of urgent environmental topics, such as state legislation, green career paths, environmental literacy, and effective climate action. All students and young adults are invited for the free summit on Saturday, August 6th, 2022, from 9:00am - 4:30pm at the Quinlan Community Center located at 10185 N Stelling Rd, Cupertino, CA 95014. Learn more and RSVP at this link.

Mark your calendar for this year’s National Night Out which will be held August 2^nd at sites across our community. National Night Out (NNO) is a crime prevention event held every year on the first Tuesday in August. NNO is sponsored nationally by the National Association of Town Watch and co-sponsored locally by the San José Police Department. This year over 38 million people across the country are expected to participate. Your neighborhood is invited to participate with many other neighborhoods across the City of San José. Learn more and register at this link.  

The California Climate Action Corps is currently accepting applications from individuals interested in serving for 11 months starting in September with public agencies, tribes, nonprofits, and schools throughout the state to engage communities in climate action and education. As AmeriCorps members, selected Fellows will serve 1700+ hours and learn real-world climate action skills through community projects while being part of this unique program and statewide force of emerging leaders. Fellows will earn a stipend of $30,000 (spread over 11 months) and combined education awards of $10,000 upon completion to pay educational expenses at eligible schools and training programs or repay qualified student loans. Fellow applications accepted until filled. Apply today!

The state has been making transformative investments to enhance access and opportunity in our education system. Local high school student and Co-Founder of ClosingTheDivide, Ayush Agarwal, reflects on the work we’re doing at the state level to ensure digital access for every student in his recent piece “Digital Divide”. Ayush joined me at our recent 19^th Annual Sacramento Bus Trip for Education, and I’m honored to highlight his writing below on this important topic. Thank you for your strong advocacy, Ayush!

Digital Divide
By Ayush Agarwal

In 2020, an encapsulating photo went viral. In the midst of a pandemic, two children of color sat on the ground outside a Taco Bell to capture the restaurant’s wifi and complete their digital homework. Other pictures illustrated Oakland students experiencing constant power outages and inconsistent internet access, with consequences of them being interrupted and unable to concentrate in the middle of tests. Both of these instances are occurrences in the wealthiest state in the wealthiest nation in history.

The fact that this wealth is not allowing the underprivileged to allocate money for their children to continue education virtually is blatantly obvious - a phenomenon, Erin, a fourth-grade student at Ben Painter Elementary who attended Senator Dave Cortese’s 2021 Virtual Bus Trip, raised awareness about in regards to broadband infrastructure and device access inequities in the current system. Why are those with PhDs in law and political powers not able to comprehend the magnitude of the issue to the extent that those without even an elementary diploma are not only able to recognize, but also take action?

Now that school is back in-person, some may claim the problem is over so no governmental intervention is necessary. This could not be further from the truth, as the reality is that the pandemic did not fabricate the problem of the digital divide, but rather augmented the severity. As Senator Mike McGuire quantifies, “50% of rural households in California don’t have access to high-speed internet and hundreds of thousands in large metropolitan centers face similar challenges,” translating to devastating impacts in every sector of peoples’ lives due to every aspect of 21st-century activity relying on technology.

Senator Dave Cortese did not wait one second after the pandemic hit to let the underprivileged students of the Bay Area suffer, immediately authoring a proposal as a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors to provide 15,000 families with device and internet access- he did not even hold a state office position at the time! Additionally, his work on the state level to set up the California Emergency Technology Fund provided cities such as San Jose with the resources to set up successful digital divide mitigation operations such as the San Jose Digital Inclusion Fund, which has dedicated $18 million to combat the issue. 

Let us now look into Senator Cortese’s and his colleagues’ fight in the State Senate to combat the Digital Divide. One piece of legislation that has already been signed by Governor Gavin Newsom and is currently being implemented on the bureaucratic level is Senate Bill (SB) 156, which sets aside $6 billion to completely revamp the state’s broadband network. Over the course of three years, this bill will utilize $5.25 billion to contract a private corporation to build a majority of the overhauled internet infrastructure, while the rest will be distributed to non-profit organizations that combat the digital divide to expand their operations. Of course, Senator Cortese was a major player in the signing of the bill and the whipping up of votes to help it reach majority support.

Other critical bills in the making break down into the categories of investment and affordability: Investment-related bills include Senate Bill 4, which expands state grant programs regarding the construction of new broadband networks, and Assembly Bill 34 which sets aside funding for schools, cities, etc to build personal internet infrastructure; the former bill is supported by the senator and the latter will be if it reaches the senate. Affordability-related bills such as SB 743 (also co-sponsored by Senator Cortese) create funds to subsidize broadband, digital literacy classes, and computer equipment for underprivileged families, giving them access to the resulting infrastructure from the investment bills. This slow and steady pace of progress in getting legislation passed will ultimately lead to the mass mitigation of the digital divide in California. 

            Senator Cortese is not only backing bills that close the technological access gap, but smartly taking into account the surrounding implications and the interrelatedness of the digital divide with other issues into his decision calculus. For example, he sponsored SB 435 and SB 1210 to combat online sex trafficking and exploitation, so that while broadband does become a staple, it is not used in a way that is detrimental to California residents. He also considered how increased new device access also means previous devices being thrown into landfills and polluting the environment, and subsequently introduced SB 37 to set up contaminated site cleanup guidelines.

However, Cortese did not just utilize these innovative approaches after entering office, but back in August of 2020 as well, where his funding from the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors also earmarked funding to provide seniors with devices so they could remotely visit their doctor through new Telehealth technologies.

Back to the current day, as a major player in the technology caucus, the Senator has co-sponsored bills about making STEM education and digital literacy for children mandatory aspects of the state curriculum and standards to ensure every child is able to thrive in this modern-technological based world.

Overall, I believe the activeness of Senator Dave Cortese and the entire California State legislature in regards to legislation proposed to combat the digital divide provides optimism for the tens of thousands of underprivileged households with no access to a device or broadband. Senator Cortese’s constant mobilization of his legislative resources to support virtually every bill related to increasing technological accessibility will create a monumental impact in raising awareness about this niche but significant issue. I’m hopeful that over time, through the work of leaders such as Senator Cortese, broadband and the internet will not be the only aspects of technology that are democratized, but rather renewable technologies, smart cities, college-level STEM education, technology jobs, and more will overtime reach the underprivileged and people of color. Until then, even simply providing those children working on homework outside Taco Bell with internet access could fundamentally transform their lives and lift them out of poverty.

I am a proud principal co-author of SCA 10, that has placed a constitutional amendment on the November 2022 ballot for California voters that would make the right to an abortion and contraceptives an explicate constitutional right in California. The Governor has also signed AB 1666 to ensure women from out of state, at risk of civil action and financial retaliation, are protected when they come to California to seek an abortion.

I will continue to do everything in my power to ensure that an individual’s reproductive freedom is never denied or interfered with. This is an issue that affects not only women, but everyone in our country.

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade is a step backwards for our entire country. To overturn 50 years of legal precedent and take away a women’s constitutional right to abortion access is an exceptionally devastating decision and a threat to women and working families across America. 

Reproductive access and bodily autonomy are basic human rights.

With the Supreme Court leaving it up to states to uphold these rights, the State of California and State Legislature is committed to protecting reproductive freedom, so that women don’t need to resort to unsafe abortions which will be the brutal reality for many women across our country due to this unjust and hypocritical decision.

State resources and services available are posted on my new website: sd15.sen.ca.gov. Get connected to some of the most frequently used state resources, including resources for businesses and employers, students, those in need of housing and financial assistance, and more.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions, comments, or concerns. I can be reached at senator.cortese@sen.ca.gov.