May 29, 2009

Dear Colleagues,

Yesterday, Appropriations Committees in both houses of the Legislature considered a total of five bills with potential impacts on after-school programs. AB 983 (Skinner), which would permit after-school programs to use their base grants to provide activities on weekends, passed by a vote of 12 to 5. AB 434 (Block), which seeks to clarify the direct service status of site coordinators and temporarily lower the ASES match requirement, also passed with an amendment to lower the portion of the match requirement that can be claimed for facilities use from 25% to 15%. In other words, if the bill is enacted, instead of being able to claim 25% of the required 33% match as in-kind facilities usage, grantees would only be able to claim 15% of the required 15% match through June 30, 2011.

The three remaining bills, AB 364 (Torlakson), AB 1349 (Torlakson) and SB 798 (DeSaulnier) were all held due to perceived cost pressures. Only bills that were deemed to have little or no fiscal impact were released from the suspense files. The vast majority of the bills did not make it out of committee as a result of California's unprecedented financial challenges. This is not necessarily the end of the road for these three bills, but it will certainly be an uphill climb to have any of these provisions re-considered through alternative vehicles during the current session.

Yours in Partnership,

Steven Amick
Executive Director