Halftime Report: Environmental Bills Moving Forward The UCLA Emmett Institute is tracking California environmental bills. In a year of tough budget choices, here are the notable bills that cleared Sacramento’s first big legislative deadline.

Legislators reached the first deadline of the 2023-2024 legislative season last week—passage of bills out of their house of origin. As the name implies, this refers to Assembly bills working their way through the Assembly, and Senate bills moving through the Senate, culminating with floor votes which concluded last Friday, May 24th. This period is marked as the crossover, where the bills that passed off the floor of their house of origin, move to the other house for the review process to begin again.

Assemblymember Laura Friedman’s AB 1963 would prohibit paraquat dichloride. This bill has been supported by the Dolores Huerta Foundation, the Environmental Working Group, and others, to protect human health and the environment. “An EWG analysis published on March 27 shows paraquat is disproportionately sprayed in areas of the state inhabited by Latino farmworkers and their families, exacerbating environmental health risks for these communities.”

In the Assembly, AB 1567, authored by Assemblymembers Eduardo Garcia, Wendy Carrillo, Damon Connolly, Laura Friedman, Diane Papan, Eloise Reyes, and Luz Rivas, would again, if approved by voters, authorize funds for projects including drought preparation, safe drinking water, wildlife prevention, clean energy, and extreme heat mitigation. Both passed their respective houses. We’ll have to see what happens.