East Sacramento Improvement Association

ESIA Thanks Senate Pro Tem Steinberg

Senator well received at Fall ESIA Meeting

ESIA thanks Senate President Pro Tem Steinberg for his time and keen insight at our fall 2008 general membership meeting.

Senator Darrell Steinberg biography

Darrell Steinberg was elected on November 7, 2006 to the California State Senate, representing the 6th District, which includes the capital city of Sacramento, parts of Elk Grove and Citrus Heights.

On August 21, 2008, Steinberg was voted by his Senate colleagues to be the next President pro Tempore of the state Senate.


Steinberg is the chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee. He also serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Health Committee, the Budget and Fiscal Review Committee and Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Resources. Steinberg also chairs the Senate Select Committee on High School Graduation.

In addition, Steinberg is a Senate appointee to the Wildlife Conservation Board, the California Ocean Protection Council and the Legislative Blue Ribbon Commission on Autism (chair).

Prior to his election to the State Senate, Steinberg served three terms representing the 9th District of the State Assembly, which includes most of the capital city of Sacramento.

He is the author and co-proponent of Proposition 63, the mental health initiative that was approved by more than 5.6 million California voters on November 2, 2004. Proposition 63 will finally fulfill the promise made by Governor Reagan in 1968 when California closed most of its mental hospitals and pledged to replace them with a community-based system of treatment, prevention and support services. It will generate more than $1 billion per year in state and federal funds to establish mental health programs throughout the state based on the highly successful AB 34 and AB 2034 programs that Steinberg authored earlier.

Steinberg’s hard work and dedication in the Assembly brought him an array of public recognition. He was honored in California Journal’s biennial “Minnie Awards”, which recognize legislators who represent “a pattern of conduct, an outlook and demeanor that exemplifies the best kind of public service”. The nonpartisan magazine named Steinberg “Assemblymember of the Year” for 2004 and also honored him as the Assembly’s top member in the categories of integrity, best problem-solver, and hardest working.

“No other member of either house was praised as often as Darrell Steinberg when it came to identifying those traits that make up the consummate legislator”, wrote Journal Editor A. G. Block in the magazine’s August, 2004, issue. “Most observers credited him with being in the thick of nearly every tough problem to come before the legislature over the past two years. He was cited repeatedly for his problem-solving abilities, quick intelligence, integrity and hard work. No other member so dominated the Minnies in his or her house.”

In 2000, during his first term in office, Steinberg was a nearly unanimous choice for the magazine’s “Rookie of the Year” award. In 2002, he was honored as the Assembly’s best problem solver and the member with the most integrity. Steinberg was twice named Legislator of the Year by the California Psychiatric Association. Other Legislator of the Year awards include the California School Boards Association; California Federation of Teachers; California Association of School Counselors; Californians for Disability Rights; Girl Scout Councils of California; and the California Probation, Parole and Correctional Association. Mr. Steinberg also received the outstanding Public Service Award from the California School Employees Association and the Phillip S. Tow Government Award (Clean Air Award) from the American Lung Association.

During his tenure in the Assembly, Steinberg served as Chair of the Assembly Committees on Budget, Appropriations, Judiciary, Labor and Employment, and the Select Committee on High Priority Schools. He also served as a member of the Assembly Housing and Local Government Committees.

Steinberg authored 70 state laws that cover a wide range of vital public policy issues. They include the following:

Mental Health

The first significant expansion for community mental health programs in more than a decade. AB 34 (Chapter 617, 1999) provided $10 million for Community Mental Health Demonstration Grants to serve homeless adults who are severely mentally ill. Follow-up bills, AB 2034 (Chapter 518, 2000) and AB 334 (Chapter 454, 2001), expanded this successful program to more than $55 million statewide.
Education

$200 million targeted to improve low performing schools through AB 961 (Chapter 749, 2001), the High Priority Schools Grant Program for Low Performing Schools.
Legislation providing leadership training for every high school principal, AB 75 (Chapter 697, 2001).
Expanding after school programs, AB 1984 (Chapter 1025, 2002).
Author of the High School Pupil Success Act, AB 2531 (Chapter 1028, 2002), encouraging public/private partnerships that reform high schools and improve student achievement, including the formation of smaller “schools within schools”.
Requiring schools to include dropout rate in Academic Performance Index scores in SB 219 (Chapter 731, 2007). Also holds home high schools accountable for test scores of students sent to alternative schools.

Foster Care, Civil Rights, and Women’s Rights

Ensuring full and equal access to state programs and activities for persons with disabilities, AB 677 (Chapter 708, 2001).
Ensuring that our foster care system is directed toward positive outcomes for children, keeping siblings of foster care children together whenever possible, establishing standards in the state and federally funded Independent Living Program for emancipating foster youth, and ensuring a stable education, and creating permanent relationships for foster children AB 636 and AB 705 (2001), AB 1979 (2002), AB 408 and AB 490 (2003).
Preserving and protecting Title IX here in California against any federal attempts to reduce its important and longstanding protections for girls’ and women’s athletic programs, AB 833 (Chapter 660, Statutes of 2003).
Extending Title IX’s protection of gender equity for school athletic programs to cover non-school community sports such as softball leagues, AB 2404 (Chapter 852, Statutes of 2004).
Ensuring that foster and adopted children can get mental health services even if they are placed in homes outside their home counties, SB 785 (Chapter 469, Statutes of 2007).

Consumer Protection and Public Safety

Providing a streamlined and cost-effective system to resolve disputes over construction defects, AB 1700 (2001) and AB 903 (2003).
Prohibiting insurers from canceling policies of houses of worship or non-profits in the wake of a hate crime, AB 1193 (Chapter 253, 2001).
Encouraging attorneys to perform pro bono legal work, AB 913 (Chapter 880, 2001).
Expanding designated driver services in California, AB 1855 (Chapter 990, Statutes of 2002).
Ensuring gun dealers are properly licensed, AB 2080 (Chapter 909, Statutes of 2002).
Requiring public disclosure of settlement agreements in cases involving abuse of elderly citizens so that people placing loved ones in nursing homes have access to all relevant information about the facility’s record of care, AB 634 (Chapter 242, Statutes of 2003).
Permitting lawyers to reveal confidential client communications when necessary to prevent death or substantial bodily injury, AB 1101 (Chapter 763, Statutes of 2003).
Requiring police to perform background checks before returning guns seized during arrests or investigations to their owners, AB 2431 (Chapter 602, Statutes of 2004).
Giving judges additional tools to provide restitution to elders and dependent adults who are victims of financial abuse, SB 611 (Chapter 45, Statutes of 2007).

Honoring our Cultural Diversity

$500,000 in matching funds for the planning of the California Unity Center to promote the understanding of diversity in our community, AB 1163 (Chapter 575, 1999). Steinberg currently serves as board president of the Capital Unity Council.
Repatriating Native American remains quickly and with respect, AB 978 (Chapter 818, 2001).
Protecting the Environment

Created the Sacramento Emergency Clean Air and Transportation (SECAT) Program, and the San Joaquin Clean Air Attainment Program through AB 2511 (Chapter 532, 2000) which provides incentives to replace older engines with clean burning, low emission engines.

Established the Environmental Protection Indicators for California (EPIC) program, which will use more than 80 scientific indicators to monitor the health of the state’s air, land and waters, AB 1360 (Chapter 664, 2003).
Prior to his election to the State Assembly in 1998, Darrell Steinberg served on the Sacramento City Council, where he founded Sacramento START (Students Today Achieving Results for Tomorrow), a free literacy-based public/private after-school program. START has since become a model for both statewide and national after school programs. He also led the City Council in adopting a law that prohibits the sale or display of junk guns in Sacramento.

Steinberg was born in San Francisco. He earned a BA in economics from UCLA and a JD from UC Davis Law School. He was the commencement speaker at the UC Davis Law School in 2004 on the 20th anniversary of his graduation. Steinberg served as an employee rights attorney for the California State Employees Association for 10 years before his work as an Administrative Law Judge and mediator.

Steinberg and his wife Julie have two children - a daughter, Jordana, and a son, Ari.

Links

Senator Darrell Steinberg