By Michael J. Arnold & Michael Belote, Esq., Legislative Advocates

We are now officially half-way through the 2018 legislative year. June 1st was the deadline for bills to be in the second house. We now have a very good idea of which bills are continuing to move through the process. Policy committees in both houses are scheduled to be very busy for the next few weeks. The Legislature leaves Sacramento for the summer recess from July 6 – August 6th.

The month of August will be extremely busy as everyone tries to move or stop bills before the August 31st final recess of the Legislature. A key function of your lobbying team is to monitor all amendments to bills during the final month of the legislative session. We often encounter “gut and amend” activities during this busy time. This process can transform a bill which had nothing to do with lending into a measure which would have major negative impacts on the CMA membership. When these bad bills spring to life at the end of the session it is important to be ready to work with our coalition of lenders to stop them.

Key Bills

We continue to actively follow over 90 bills of key interest to the CMA membership. Any CMA member may obtain a Legislative Status Report (LSR) showing the bills currently being followed and providing information on each bill. The LSR is available on the CMA website at: www.californiamortgageassociation.org.

PACE Legislation. We are happy to report that AB 2063 and SB 1087 are moving forward in the process. CMA is supporting these measures to improve oversight of PACE programs by the Commissioner.

Sales Tax on Services. CMA opposed SB 993, the bill to extend sales taxes to services. The measure is now dead for the year and will not be pursued this year in the form of a ballot proposition. With the demise of the bill we were worried that Senator Hertzberg would propose an initiative proposition, but that did not happen.

Extension of Subdivision Map Act Approvals. AB 2973, supported by CMA, would extend by 24 months the expiration date of tentative maps approved between 1/1/2002 and 7/11/13 that have been previously extended by prior legislation and that are within the 10 counties meeting the terms of the original legislation.

HOBR Extension. CMA has been very involved in the measure to re-enact the sections of the Home Owners Bill of Rights Act which applied to lenders doing more than 175 foreclosures annually and which expired in January. Our key effort has been to ensure that the language for entities doing fewer than 175 foreclosures annually is retained. SB 818 is moving forward, and our language remains in the bill.

CFL Legislation. AB 2953, SB 3207 and other CFL bills have been challenging bills for CMA. The key effort of the proponents this year deals with non-real property lending. We have been successful in securing amendments to make it clear that the provisions of these measures do not apply to real property loans, but additional effort will be needed between now and the end of the session.

Election Update

What an interesting June primary election! In addition to the normal elections there was a recall of Senator Newman (D) (and election of his replacement: Ling Ling Chang (R) in SD 29 in Orange County, and four special elections to select new people to replace those who left office due to sexual harassment or health issues.

One key result is that the Democrats in the Senate will no longer have a two-thirds majority for the balance of the 2018 session.

With the Assembly special elections now concluded, the House is back up to a full 80 members (55 Democrats and 25 Republicans). Thus, the Democrats have retained their two-thirds majority in the Assembly for the balance of 2018.