Political Landscape: Gatto has several bills approved; Schiff writes to FAA on helicopter noise
It was a busy week for Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Silver Lake), who had several bills approved by various committees, including one piece of legislation aimed at better training school employees to identify and report child abuse.
AB 1432, passed by a 5-0 vote by the Assembly Education Committee, would require school employees to take mandatory training on state-developed standards for spotting abuse and neglect and taking the proper steps to report it.
“By training school personnel to recognize the signs of abuse, it is my hope we will help stop it,” said Gatto in a statement. “And by training school personnel on their reporting duties, we give them the tools to notify authorities of potential abuse in a timely manner.”
A bill he co-authored with Raul Bocanegra (D-Pacoima) to expand tax credits for movie and TV filming in California passed with a 7-0 vote by the Assembly Arts, Entertainment, Sports Tourism and Internet Media Committee.
AB 1839 looks to bring back some of the 16,000 production jobs that have left the state from 2004-12, according to the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, resulting in more than $1.5 billion in lost economic activity and wages.
The bill will now head to the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation, which is chaired by Bocanegra.
The Burbank City Council this week sent a letter to Gatto in support of the tax credits bill.
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Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) co-wrote a letter with Sen. Diane Feinstein to the Federal Aviation Administration expressing their disappointment in efforts to mitigate flying helicopter noise in Los Angeles County.
A house resolution was passed last summer aimed at reducing noise, but there’s been only one update, which Schiff said fell short of expectations.
“It has been more than nine months since the FAA identified action items it would undertake and support to mitigate helicopter noise in Los Angeles County,” Schiff wrote. “However, to date, the FAA has only produced one update, dated Jan. 30, 2014. This update did not provide a detailed schedule, as we had previously requested, and lacks metrics on how progress will be demonstrated.”
He also added that the FAA relies too heavily on community stakeholders to monitor and record helicopter noise.
Efforts to reduce noise are currently on a voluntary basis, but if that doesn’t work, it could trigger a regulatory process to make them mandatory in January 2015.
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Follow Arin Mikailian on Twitter: @ArinMikailian.
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