Yesterday, the California Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees held their suspense committee hearings where they quickly dispensed with bills that are keyed fiscal and given a high price tag.

In the Assembly, any bill with a fiscal effect in any fiscal year of $150,000 or more will be placed on the suspense file. In the Senate, a bill is typically placed on the suspense file if its estimated cost to the General Fund is $50,000 or more, or $150,000 or more to a special fund.

Bills can either pass out of committee as is, be amended, or be held in committee — meaning that bill is not moving forward. Amendments for bills are usually not in print until over the weekend.

Between both committees, legislators voted on nearly 1,000 bills today. You can read below for credit union victories and additional suspense outcomes for California’s Credit Unions’ remaining priority bills.

Looking ahead, all bills must pass out of their House of Origin by May 29. The California league will be sending out a full bill report with its positions after that deadline.

In the meantime, do not hesitate to reach out to Senior Vice President of State Advocacy Robert Wilson with any questions.

Credit Union Victories

AB 1865 (Bauer-Kahan) — Test Message Advertisements

Opposed by California’s Credit Unions — HELD, not moving forward.

• This bill would prohibit an allowed text message advertisement from being transmitted to a recipient between 9:00 p.m. and 9:00 a.m., regardless of whether the recipient consented to receiving a text message advertisement. The bill would require a sender to adjust message timing to Pacific standard time.

AB 1898 (Schultz) — Workplace Artificial Intelligence Tools

Opposed by California’s Credit Unions — HELD, not moving forward.

• This bill would require an employer to provide a written notice to a worker that a workplace AI tool, as defined, was used to assist the employer in making employment-related decisions or to surveil workers in the workplace. The bill would require the notice to be given to a worker within a specified time and would require the notice to contain specified information, including the specific employment-related decisions likely to be affected by the use of the workplace AI tool. The bill would require an employer to maintain an updated list of all workplace AI tools currently in use and their impact on jobs, as specified, and to provide the list to workers annually.

AB 2064 (Sharp-Collins) — Discrimination: Criminal History

Opposed by California’s Credit Unions — HELD, not moving forward.

• This bill would add criminal history, as defined, to the list of protected characteristics under the Unruh Civil Rights Act and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.

AB 2243 (Haney) — State Bank Act

Opposed by California’s Credit Unions — HELD, not moving forward.

• This bill, the State Bank Act, would create in state government the State Bank Commission and provide for its membership, as prescribed. This bill would require, on or before June 1, 2028, the commission to develop a state bank plan that addresses various items with respect to creating a state bank, including a state guarantee of public deposits, including those held by public banks.

SB 894 (Allen) — Wildfire Resiliency: Financial Assistance

Supported by California’s Credit Unions — Passed, moving forward with amendments.

• This bill would establish the California Wildfire Resilience Loan Program and would require the authority to administer the program to provide financial assistance for projects and activities to reduce wildfire-related risks and losses, including home hardening and defensible space improvements, as provided, and would make related changes.

SB 1041 (Arreguin) — Voluntary Contractual Assessments: Wildfire Safety Improvements

Opposed by California’s Credit Unions — HELD, not moving forward.

• This bill would indefinitely extend the operation of certain provisions of the Wildfire Safety Finance Act and would revise the requirements on a legislative body of a public agency to establish a voluntary contractual assessment program under the act. The bill would expand home hardening under PACE.

SB 1066 (Niello) — Unclaimed Property

Supported by California’s Credit Unions — Passed, moving forward with amendments.

• This bill would extend the period before which property is deemed abandoned and escheats to the state, from three years (in most cases) to seven years.

SB 1029 (Seyarto) — Vehicle Lien Sales: Department of Motor Vehicles

Supported by California’s Credit Unions — Passed, moving forward.

• This bill would require the Department of Motor Vehicles, within 14 days of receiving the balance, to provide prescribed notice about the funds from the lien sale that were forwarded to the department and the process to file a claim to specified individuals, including the registered and legal owners of the vehicle.

SB 1208 (Grayson) — Money Laundering: Digital Financial Assets

Supported by California’s Credit Unions — Passed, moving forward with amendments.

• This bill would expand the crime of money laundering to include transactions involving digital financial assets and establish a process for the forfeiture of digital financial assets that contain the proceeds of crime or that have been used to facilitate a crime.

Additional Suspense Outcomes for California’s Credit Unions’ Priority Bills

AB 1842 (Harabedian) — California Emergency Mortgage Relief Act

Opposed by California’s Credit Unions — Passed, moving forward with amendments to replace the private right of action with enforcement by local district attorneys.

• This bill would, among other things, authorize a borrower to request forbearance on a residential mortgage loan, as defined, secured by residential real property that has become uninhabitable as a direct result of an emergency, as specified. The bill would require the borrower to affirm that as a direct result of an emergency, a residential unit is uninhabitable. This bill would, except as specified, require a mortgage servicer to offer mortgage payment forbearance of a period of up to an initial 180 days, to be extended at the request of the borrower in 90-day increments, up to a maximum forbearance period of 12 months.

AB 1847 (Harabedian) — Mortgage Forbearance: State of Emergency (Wildfire)

Opposed by California’s Credit Unions — Passed, moving forward with amendments to add an urgency clause.

• Current law authorizes a borrower to request forbearance on their residential mortgage loan for a period of 12 months if, among other things, the borrower affirms that they are experiencing financial hardship that prevents them from making timely payments on the loan due directly to the wildfire disaster described in the proclamation of a state of emergency issued by Governor Gavin Newsom on January 7, 2025, or the federally declared disaster, declared on January 8, 2025, related to the Eaton Wildfire, the Palisades Fire, and the Straight-line Winds. Current law requires that request to be made before the earlier of either 6 months after the date upon which the state of emergency is terminated or January 7, 2027. This bill would extend the period of mortgage forbearance to 36 months and extend the latest possible deadline for a borrower’s request for forbearance to January 7, 2029.

AB 2095 (Lee) — Employment Discrimination: Conviction History

Opposed by California’s Credit Unions — Passed, moving forward with amendments to return to existing exemption language under current law for positions that are required by any state, federal, or local law to conduct criminal background checks or restrict employment based on criminal history.

• This bill would amend and expand upon the Fair Chance Act, which makes it an unlawful employment practice for an employer with 5 or more employees to include on any application for employment, before the employer makes a conditional offer of employment to the applicant, any question that seeks the disclosure of an applicant’s conviction history, to consider the conviction history of the applicant until after the employer has made a conditional offer of employment to the applicant, or to distribute information about an arrest not followed by conviction, referral to or participation in a pretrial or posttrial diversion program, or convictions that have been sealed, dismissed, expunged, or statutorily eradicated or any conviction for which the convicted person has received a full pardon or has been issued a certificate of rehabilitation while conducting a conviction history background check in connection with an application for employment, as specified.

AB 2674 (Schiavo) — Financial Abuse and Deception: Preventive Measures

Opposed by California’s Credit Unions — Passed, moving forward.

• This bill would require a depository institution, as defined, to take certain actions that would help protect its customers from financial abuse and deception, as defined, including by requiring a depository institution that suspects financial abuse or deception with respect to any transaction to employ certain preventive measures.

SB 947 (McNerney) — Employment: Automated Decision Systems

Opposed by California’s Credit Unions — Passed, moving forward with amendments to narrow the scope of predictive behavior analysis.

• This bill would prohibit an employer, as defined, from using an ADS to perform certain functions and would limit the purposes for and way in which an ADS may be used. The bill would authorize a worker to request, and require an employer to provide, a copy of the most recent 12 months of the worker’s own data primarily used by an ADS to make a disciplinary, termination, or deactivation decision, as specified. The bill would require an employer that primarily relied upon an ADS to make a disciplinary, termination, or deactivation decision to provide the affected worker with a written postuse notice, as specified. This bill would prohibit an employer from discharging, threatening to discharge, demoting, suspending, or in any manner discriminating or retaliating against any worker for taking certain actions asserting their rights under the bill.