BYE BYE 2020 BILLS THAT COULD RESURFACE NEXT YEAR By Jennifer Wada, Esq.
T
he end of 2020 and sighs of relief are imminent. It is probably a safe bet that almost everyone is ready to close the book on the year that brought a pandemic, an economic recession, a slew of wildfires and one of the most divisive elections in history. As far as the election goes, we all know what happened on a national level. On a state level, all 80 Assembly seats and 20 Senate seats were up for election this year. Democrats retained control of both chambers with a supermajority. In the Assembly, Republicans picked up a seat. At the writing of this article, there is still one race too close to call (AD-74) but if Democratic incumbent Cottie Petrie-Norris retains her lead, the Assembly will end with a 60 seat Democratic majority, with 19 Republicans and one Independent (Assemblymember Chad Mayes AD-42). In the Senate, the Republicans have lost two seats (SD-37 and SD-29). One race is too close to call (AD-21) but if Republican incumbent Scott Wilk retains his lead, the Senate Republican Caucus will consist of nine members and the Democratic Caucus will have a 31-seat majority. There are just under one million ballots that still need to be counted and the Secretary of State has until December 11 to certify the election. As we prepare to leave 2020 behind us, we look forward to what lies ahead. As previously written about, the majority of legislation this year stalled due to the pandemic. The Legislature had to shift gears to focus primarily on issues relating to COVID-19. This left a significant number of dead bills that could come back in 2021. The bill numbers will change but the concepts will remain the same:
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Vision Winter 2020 | cacm.org
AB 2227 (Irwin – funds: insurance) Sponsored by CAI-CLAC, this bill was a cleanup of their AB 2912 from 2018. AB 2227 proposed to require that the bank, savings association, or credit union that the managing agent deposits funds into on behalf of the association be insured by the FDIC, NCUA, or the SIPC. The bill also amended existing law that requires prior written board approval for electronic transfers by making it required for amounts greater than $10,000 but would eliminate the latter part of the provision “or 5% of an association’s total combined reserve and operating account deposits.” Lastly, the bill specifically required the association to maintain crime insurance, employee dishonesty coverage, and fidelity bond coverage, or their equivalent, for the association and the association’s managing agent or management company and would require the protection against computer and funds transfer fraud to be in an equal amount. SB 969 (Wieckowski – SB 323 cleanup) The final contents of this bill were never finalized given that it stalled early in the year. However, things being discussed for inclusion in the bill included expanding the voting by acclamation provisions to all associations, as well as expanding some of the language related to what kinds of insurance would trigger an association’s ability to utilize a criminal conviction disqualification from board elections. SB 981 (Archuleta – document delivery and websites) This bill was sponsored by the California Association of Realtors and proposed to require an association
