Senator Scott Wiener

Sacramento –  Today the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee will vote on Senator Scott Wiener’s Senate Bill 35 – which will create a streamlined approval process for housing when cities are not meeting the housing creation goals required by the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), which will expedite the construction of affordable housing. At the hearing, representatives from affordable housing developers, renter advocates, and business groups will testify in support.
WHEN:           Tuesday, March 6 at 1:30pm

Today Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) announced the introduction of a bill that will reform the jury selection process to create a more equitable justice system. Senate Bill 576 will require that demographic data be gathered from all who report for jury duty to ensure that California’s juries are being selected from a representative cross-section of the community. Without this data, there is no way to evaluate the racial and ethnic diversity of jury selection pools.

Sacramento -- Today Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) announced a bill to protect California’s waterways from dangerous spills of tar sands oil. California has laws to prevent and prepare for “conventional” oil spills that can be cleaned up from the surface of the water. These laws do not take into account oils like those derived from tar sands that will sink to the bottom of waterways and contaminate entire aquatic ecosystems. These oils are hard, if not impossible, to clean up after a spill.

Today, Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) announced a ballot measure, Senate Bill 726, to create a California estate tax if Congressional Republicans and President Trump follow through on their threat to repeal the federal estate tax.

Today Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) joined a coalition of transportation and health advocates to announce the introduction of SB 760, which will prioritize the creation of ‘complete streets,’ including safer sidewalks, bikeways, and crosswalks, on roads owned and managed by Caltrans in cities, towns, and neighborhoods.

Today Senator Scott Wiener announced the introduction of two bills that will strengthen California’s water recycling and conservation efforts by developing statewide water reuse regulations and conservation-based landscaping design standards. Senate Bill 740 requires the establishment of a regulatory framework, including health standards, for non-potable water used in irrigation and toilet flushing, thus encouraging and helping local jurisdictions to develop local water reuse programs.

With help from Equality California and the Transgender Law Center, Senators Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) and Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) today announced the introduction of legislation, SB 179 – The Gender Recognition Act of 2017, that will enable more transgender, intersex and nonbinary people to obtain state-issued identity documents that accurately reflect their gender.

Today Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) will introduce the HEAL (Help End Antiretroviral-related Lipodystrophy) Act which will require insurance companies, as well as government programs, to cover medical treatment for lipodystrophy, a fat-redistribution condition impacting many HIV-positive people who took life-saving early HIV medication that were highly toxic in this regard. Equality California is sponsoring the bill.

Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) today announced the introduction of SB 219, the California LGBT Seniors Long-Term Care Bill of Rights, which will strengthen protections for LGBT seniors living in long-term care facilities against discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or HIV status. The bill would protect all seniors living in skilled nursing facilities, immediate care facilities, and residential care facilities.

Today, Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblymember Todd Gloria (D-San Diego) introduced a bill to modernize laws that criminalize and stigmatize people living with HIV. Assemblymember David Chiu (D-San Francisco) is also a co-author of the bill. Senate Bill 239 would amend California’s HIV criminalization laws, enacted in the 1980s and ‘90s at a time of fear and ignorance about HIV and its transmission, to make them consistent with laws involving other serious communicable diseases.