Immigration. Prison overcrowding. Hydraulic fracturing. The minimum wage. Those were just some of the major issues California lawmakers tackled during a frantic week of legislating in Sacramento.
The 2013 legislative session closed with a bang—more than 400 bills were sent to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk this week alone.
(Maybe that’s why the governor got some whiffle ball action in yesterday—he’ll be too busy signing and vetoing bills the rest of the month to play.)
Among the high-profile bills sent to Brown: a measure creating driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants; a bill increasing the minimum wage from $8 to $10; legislation regulating fracking; a bill that would transition the state’s schools to a new system of testing.
Brown’s public endorsements of three of those bills (on driver’s licenses, fracking, and the minimum wage), plus his opposition to a resolution renaming the Bay Bridge for former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, illustrated how involved the governor was in wrangling votes this week. (When he wasn’t playing whiffle ball, that is.)