Assemblymember Heath Flora wants state fir=fighters to earn competitive pay.

Flora also believes  electric scooters should be able to go as fast as electric bicycles on California’s streets.

Those are two measures Flora has authored  that the California Legislature has designated as two-year bills  for further consideration as the current “session” wrapped up this week.

*AB 1254 would require the state to pay state firefighters a wage that more closely-aligns with the average pay of city and county firefighters.

 This would still need to be implemented through collective bargaining.

It also establishes pay benchmarks for firefighters similar to what is currently in place for police.  

*AB 1447 increases the speed limit for motorized scooters with a seat from 15 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour.

As such, it would allow seated scooters to operate at the same speed as electric bicycles and under similar regulations; thus expanding personal mobility options.  

The California Legislature convenes in two-year sessions and bills are introduced in both of those two years. Under the state Constitution, bills introduced in the first year of Session (the odd-numbered year) can be carried over to the second year of the Session (the even-numbered year).

The California Legislature on Thursday reached its Constitutional “End of Session”.

That means that the State Assembly has debated and voted on all of the bills passed by the State Senate and the Senate has done the same for all of the bills passed by the State Assembly.

The Governor now has 30 days to sign or veto any bill that has passed the California Legislature. If no action is taken on a particular bill, it automatically becomes law.

 “The Legislature passed several great bills that I either authored or joint-authored. I hope to see some good legislation signed by Governor Newsom,” said Flora. “There were also plenty of bills that I didn’t author myself, but still voted in favor of when they were brought before the State Assembly.”

Gov. Newsom has already signed Flora’s AB 1557 into law on Sept. 1.

AB 1557 makes permanent a temporary waiver that gave health facilities and pharmacists the flexibility to perform medication chart reviews remotely as needed.

It improves access to medication especially in rural and underserved areas that are facing personnel shortages.  “

 One of the other bills that received a lot of media attention that Flora supported was SB 14 (Grove) which would add human trafficking to the list of “serious felonies” under California law.

 This bill was initially met with opposition from the majority party, but after public outcry, it was passed by both the Senate and the Assembly.

“Obviously there were some pretty bad bills that passed as well, but we’re going to keep this announcement positive,” said Flora. “There were a couple of my bills that we worked pretty hard on that we’ll have to keep working on next year.”