Improvements to a prescription drug database, reforms at the California Public Utilities Commission, checks on law enforcement surveillance. Those were just a few of the more than 100 bills state lawmakers introduced on a variety of topics this week, on the first day of the 2017-18 session.
On technology and transparency, lawmakers are revisiting issues left unresolved in previous years and seeking to upgrade state databases in a bid to make them more robust and user-friendly.
The Department of Justice’s prescription narcotics database, known as CURES, is once again a target of improvement after years of scrutiny. Legislation introduced Monday by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, seeks to make the database more available to emergency room doctors.
Specifically, AB 40 would require the department to make the information collected in its database available to doctors through an online portal or an authorized health information technology system.
That could significantly speed things up for emergency room doctors who can only access the information manually through the CURES webpage. Additionally, a number of health information technology systems can aggregate patient information from multiple health systems and give providers a more complete account of a patient’s medical background, according to a bill fact sheet.
In a statement to Techwire, Santiago said his measure would “help reduce stress on California’s overcrowded emergency departments by allowing ER physicians to more efficiently access critical information while treating patients and helping to fight prescription drug abuse.”
Legislation signed last year by Gov. Jerry Brown requires all California doctors to check the database before writing patients a prescription for addictive narcotics.
Concerned surveillance technology may impact Californians civil liberties and privacy, Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, introduced legislation intended to ensure that law enforcement justify legitimate crime-fighting tech tools to catch criminals.
SB 21 would set privacy standards for all surveillance technologies used by law enforcement agencies, such as facial recognition systems, social media scrubbers, biometric scanners, video surveillance and more. Hill modeled the bill after two 2015 privacy laws he authored that require law enforcement agencies to develop privacy and use policies for automatic license plate reader systems or a cell phone intercept device.
Under the bill, law enforcement agencies would be required to submit their surveillance use policy to the locally elected body that oversees their department, such as a city council or county board of supervisors. The policy must identify surveillance technologies, the authorized purposes, the types of data collected, the types of employees who are authorized to use the technology and their training, a description of how the technologies will be monitored to ensure they are not abused, and the length of time the data will be held.
Hill is also continuing his push in the Legislature to reform the California Public Utilities Commission, with legislation intended to bring more transparency and accountability to the commission.
SB 19 would prevent an executive of a public utility from serving as a member of the commission within two years after their employment ends. It also calls for an ethics officer and ethics program to train commissioners and employees of the commission. Among other things, the bill also gives the superior court the authority to review Public Records Act issues.
“SB 19 is aimed at putting the public back into the CPUC,” Hill said in a press release. “The CPUC needs to play by the same rules as other state boards and commissions.”
The bill addresses a host of issues lawmakers left unresolved last year after they passed a package of CPUC reform bills. The measure calls for the the Secretary of Transportation to annually report statistics and complete an analysis of transportation-related regulatory functions moved from the CPUC to the California State Transportation Agency.
Assemblymember David Chiu, D-San Francisco, introduced legislation that would require law enforcement agencies to submit information about rape kit evidence to a Department of Justice database within 120 days. Information must include the number of kits collected, if biological evidence samples were submitted to a DNA laboratory for analysis, and if a probative DNA profile was generated. AB 41 would require the department to file an annual report to the Legislature that summarizes the information in the database.
An effort by Assemblymember Marie Waldron, R-Escondido, aims to verify online voter registration. AB 4 would require counties mail a voter a postcard that verifies he or she submitted their voter registration online at the Secretary of State’s website.
