Bill to Extend Eviction Notice Period Approved

The Legislature moved Tuesday to double to 60 days the amount of notice landlords must give before evicting problem-free tenants -- a necessary safeguard, proponents say, to keep working families from homelessness.

As it rushes toward an Aug. 31 adjournment, the Legislature also sent to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill to give school principals more control over the hiring and firing of teachers.

Against opposition from the California Apartment Assn. and Realtors, Democrats passed AB 1169 by Assemblyman Alberto Torrico (D-Newark) to require landlords to give 60 days’ eviction notice to tenants who have been renting for at least a year and are being evicted through no fault of their own.

The bill passed with the bare minimum of votes and no GOP support. Republicans called it unfair to landlords and said such meddling by the Legislature has worsened the state’s housing shortage.

“Why should I be stuck for 60 days?” asked Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City). “It’s my property. Thirty days should be plenty good enough.”

Torrico said his chief concern is the working family that needs time to raise money for a security deposit on a new apartment.

“I told the apartment association, ‘You know what my slogan is?’ ” he said. “ ‘It’s the right thing to do.’ You keep families out of homelessness, and you keep them off the eviction blacklist.”

The bill’s sponsor, the nonprofit Western Center on Law and Poverty, argues that the legislation is necessary in places such as Los Angeles that are undergoing rapid conversion of apartments into condominiums. And Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties are projected to have some of the lowest vacancy rates in the nation, making it extremely difficult for families to quickly find new places to live, said center lobbyist Christine Minnehan.

The governor has not taken a position on the bill.

He has voiced support for another bill that cleared the Assembly on Tuesday with bipartisan support: SB 1655 by Sen. Jack Scott (D-Altadena). It aims to halt the circulation of bad teachers from school to school -- what’s known among educators as “the dance of the lemons.”

The bill, which passed 55 to 9, would give principals in low-performing schools the right to refuse the voluntary transfer of any teacher he or she doesn’t find acceptable. What often happens, Scott said, is that teachers request voluntary transfers to new schools after they’ve been told they aren’t working out and will be evaluated strictly if they stay.

The bill trumps union rules and was opposed by the powerful California Teachers Assn. and United Teachers Los Angeles.

Scott said he wrote the legislation after studies blamed the voluntary transfer policy for concentrating unsatisfactory teachers in the neediest schools. “We can’t allow less than competent teachers to circulate through the system endlessly,” he said.

Scott said Schwarzenegger regarded his bill favorably, although the governor has taken no public position on it.

Also Tuesday, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) declared dead several flood-control bills pending in the upper house, including one to require cities and counties to get assurance that they at least have protection against a 100-year flood, one so big that the odds of it happening in any one year are 1 in 100.

He blamed the Schwarzenegger administration for trying to weaken the bills with last-minute amendments and said such legislation should wait until next year, after voters have acted on a $4.1-billion flood control bond issue on the November ballot.

“When complicated policy is rushed through at the last minute,” Perata said, “you inevitably screw it up.”