FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Sacramento, CA) The California Senior Legislature (CSL) adjourned its 39th Annual Legislative Session and announced the Top Ten State Legislative Proposals and Top Four Federal proposals earlier this week. Members will advocate diligently during the 2020 legislative session to have state lawmakers support these priorities.

The following were listed as the top ten State Legislative proposals:

1. AP-1: Oral Health Care in Skilled Nursing Facilities
This measure would require the State Department of Public Health to promulgate regulations to authorize registered dental hygienists in alternative practice to provide oral health in-service training to staff in skilled nursing facilities and provide oral health care services in skilled nursing facilities.

2. SP-13: Medi-Cal: Long Term Care: Personal Needs Allowance
This measure would increase the personal needs allowance from $35 to $80 per month and annually adjust the personal needs allowance by the same percentage as the consumer price index.

3. SP-2: Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly: Emergency Disaster Plans
This measure would require the Department of Social Services, the Office of Emergency Services, and the California Department of Technology, in partnership with the private sector, to develop and implement a secure online Emergency Management Database with an Emergency Disaster Technology Tool, to be maintained by the Department of Social Services and accessible by emergency response personnel, and would require all licensed RCFEs to upload their emergency and disaster plans to the database by July 1, 2021.

4. AP-15: Proposition 13: Real Property Taxes Senior Portability
This measure would authorize any person over 55 years of age or any severely and permanently disabled person to transfer the base year value of an original property to a replacement dwelling located in a different county without the adoption of a county ordinance so providing and to allow the transfer more than one time.

5. AP-4: Task Force: Missing Individuals with Memory or Cognitive Impairment
This measure would establish a statewide task force to develop strategies for preventing cognitively impaired individuals from going missing and locating cognitively impaired individuals who have gone missing.

6. AP-5: Senior Citizen Housing Developments: Cohabitants
This measure would prohibit any rule or regulation that would prohibit a qualifying resident in a senior citizen housing development from sharing their home with an appropriate roommate, cohabitant, or co-occupant for companionship, caregiving, or increased income.

7. SP-1: Health Care: Medical Goods
This measure would allocate $800,000 for a 3-year pilot program to establish a comprehensive reuse and recycle program for home-based medical equipment and home health supplies for the counties of Napa, Solano, and Sonoma.

8. SP-7: Residential Care Facilities
This measure would allow a hospice-certified, terminally ill patient who has been diagnosed with a prohibited health condition to remain in a residential care facility for the elderly, under hospice supervision, so the patient can remain in familiar surroundings with family and friends in the final days of the patient’s life. This measure would further memorialize the legislature and the governor to enact legislation that would authorize the staff of a residential care facility for the elderly to administer certain palliative care medications to a patient who is incapable of self-administering those medications.

9. AP-7: California Community Colleges: Equal Funding for Noncredit Education
This measure would equalize the funding formula for all California Community College noncredit programs and courses.

10. AP-12: Travel Safety
This would require all hotels, motels, inns, and bed and breakfasts to install grab bars in the tub and shower areas and nonskid surfaces on the tub and shower floors in all rooms available for public accommodation by January 1, 2025.

The following were identified as the Top Federal Legislative proposals:.

1. AFP-1: Personal Income Taxes: Earned Income Tax Credit: Age Limit
This measure would eliminate the upper age limit for individuals who do not have a qualifying child and allow an individual who is 65 years of age or older to claim this credit.

2. SFP-4: Financial Elder Abuse: Mandated Reporting
This measure would amend the Federal Bank Secrecy Act to explicitly include suspected Elder Financial Abuse as a condition that triggers mandatory filing of suspicious activity reports by financial institutions, including money services businesses, increase penalties for financial institutions that fail to report elder financial abuse, and hold financial institutions fully liable for reimbursement of financial losses suffered as a result of elder financial abuse. The measure would propose that the Federal Government increase its enforcement activities against financial institutions that facilitate elder financial abuse.

3. SFP-1: Health Care: Medical Registries
This measure would research the benefits of creating, and would establish, a National Registry for Seniors Hospitalized for a Traumatic Injury.

4. SFP-2: Taxes
This measure would reauthorize the Work Opportunity Tax Credit and amend the Internal Revenue Code to add low-income older adults to the list of specified groups for whom employers may claim a Work Opportunity Tax Credit.

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INFORMATION CONTACT:
For more information contact Janice Bailey, Executive Director, at (916) 552-8056 or jbailey@seniorleg.ca.gov.

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