September 3, 2019 - SACRAMENTO – Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) announced that his bill to close a loophole in schools’ abilities to deny food for or otherwise shame children with school lunch debt, along with a handful of other key bills, passed the Assembly Appropriations Committee last week.

SB 250 (Hertzberg, 2017) made the practice of lunch shaming illegal, but some schools are still maintaining policies that discriminate against children because their parents have school lunch debt, denying children as young as 5 a meal or serving them an alternative meal because they didn’t have lunch money that day. As a result, too many children are left hungry and with negative feelings about their learning environments.

SB 265 ensures that meal charge policies established by school officials do not delay or deny food, or provide an alternative meal to punish students.

Upon the decision of the Appropriations Committee, Hertzberg commented, “I introduced SB 265 to make it crystal clear what the intent of SB 250 was: to officially end the practice of delaying or denying food to school children in California.”

The following bills authored by Hertzberg also passed out of Assembly Appropriations and will be eligible for an Assembly floor vote next week:

SB 51 - Cannabis Banking - authorizes the creation of cannabis limited charter banks and credit unions and authorize the use of special purpose checks issued by those institutions for specified purposes.

SB 63 - For-Profit College Student Tax Relief - ensures that students impacted by the recent closures of Brightwood Colleges and Art Institutes across California are not penalized for the failure of the for-profit colleges by certifying that their federal loan debt assistance is not considered “gross income” for tax purposes.

SB 205 - Stormwater Quality Improvement Act - diminishes water pollution by requiring industrial facilities to demonstrate compliance with the Industrial General Permit (IGP) when applying for their business license or renewal. This would standardize the filing process for all facilities subject to an IGP, encouraging uniformity with water quality requirements, and would bolster California’s efforts to keep harmful pollutants out of precious water sources.

SB 520 - Electricity Safety Net - establishes a safety net, or Provider of Last Resort, for electricity customers, ensuring that service continues without disruption or extreme price shocks in the event that an electricity provider exits the market for any reason. 
Source: Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg