Tuesday was the deadline for the Governor to either veto or sign bills into law.

Among those that he signed was “Michelle’s Law,” also known as Senate Bill 1168, a bill I authored that allows dependent college students to continue receiving health insurance for up to one year upon taking an academic leave of absence due to serious illness or injury.

The measure is named after Michelle Morse, a New Hampshire college student who was diagnosed with colon cancer some years ago. When advised by doctors to reduce her course load, Morse’s family discovered that she would be dropped from the family’s health insurance and required to pay monthly premiums of $550 for a continuance policy.

This catch-22 situation made life difficult for the Morse family. In response, many states have passed laws to remediate the problems Michelle Morse experienced during her illness.

Now with California’s Michelle’s Law, ailing students and their families will be put at ease and allowed to focus on treatment and recovery instead of haggling with health care providers and insurance companies.

The Governor also signed Senate Bill SB 1546, another bill I sponsored, that authorizes the Department of Mental Health to contract with independent evaluators to perform clinical assessments of sex offender inmates for possible commitment to state mental hospitals.

The goal is to streamline the evaluation process and to effectively determine who needs further treatment in state mental hospitals – for the sake of sex offenders who did not rehabilitate in state prison and certainly for the safety of communities.

The Governor also signed the following bills:

Senate Bill 1608, which I jointly-authored with Santa Clarita Assemblyman Cameron Smyth, improves disability access and reduces litigation on businesses. Due to conflicting access standards in our state and federal codes, a lack of continuing education for architects and building inspectors, and inconsistent interpretations of our state’s damages provisions, complying with access standards in California is next to impossible. SB 1608’s provisions address these issues and will greatly improve accessibility compliance throughout the state.

Senate Bill 1064, a bill I co-authored with Inland Empire Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, provides desperately-needed tax relief for homeowners and businesses that suffered financial loss from the 2007 Southern California fires and the recent wildfires that afflicted many areas of the state this summer.

SB 1187, which I co-authored with Sen. Jim Battin, of Palm Desert, makes changes to an existing law requiring the Department of Justice to publish the personal information of persons convicted of specified sexual offenses on the online registry pursuant to Megan’s Law. This bill extends the publishing requirement to those convicted of felony child pornography starting January 1, 2010.

While I applaud the governor for signing these bills, I am disappointed that he vetoed other good bills, blaming his rejection on the late budget and saying that these bills did not meet his “standard of a high priority” for Californians.

Among those that were rejected was Senate Bill 1180, known as the Rim of the Valley bill, which would have allowed the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to include Elsmere Canyon inside the boundaries of the Rim of the Valley Trail Corridor after a public hearing and scientific land planning studies.

Elsmere Canyon is currently an isolated gap surrounded by the Rim of the Valley Trail Corridor, as it was excluded from the 1989 and 1999 legislation that authorized the revision of the Rim of the Valley Trail Corridor boundaries.

Also vetoed was Senate Bill 1359, a simple bill that made technical and clarification changes to California’s retail food safety laws known collectively as CalCode. However, while the bill made minor changes which may appear to be unimportant to the governor, to restaurant owners and other food handlers SB 1359 was an essential bill.

The Governor also vetoed Senate Bill 1564, but not because of the budget but rather because the Governor disagrees with the bi-partisan position I share with Santa Monica Democrat Senator Sheila Kuehl that California’s $3 billion taxpayer-funded stem cell agency requires better oversight and scrutiny; its therapies should be affordable and accessible to all Californians; and adult stem cell researchers should have equal access to the agency’s grants.

However, even though the Governor disagrees with the Legislature, the Little Hoover Commission will examine the structure and governance of the state stem cell institute in the coming months to determine if the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine is indeed providing the services promised to California voters in 2004.

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Prison update

As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, the Legislature has yet to deal with California’s prison problems – namely the crowding and health care issues. I asked the Governor for a special session to deal with the prison issues, but that was rejected.

That means the 2009 Legislature will address the problem and the building of new prison beds will hang in the balance until then.