BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
1277 (Florez)
Hearing Date: 05/10/2010 Amended: 04/27/2010
Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-HernandezPolicy Vote: Public Safety
4-3
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BILL SUMMARY: This bill requires the Department of Justice (DOJ)
to create a registry for people convicted of felony animal abuse
offenses, as specified. This bill provides requirements for
implementing and enforcing the bill's provisions, related to the
creation, operation, and regulations of the registry, and
establishes penalties for misuse of registry information. This
bill requires specified individuals convicted of felony animal
abuse to register for 10 years after the date of conviction;
failure to register is punishable as a misdemeanor.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 Fund
New DOJ registry $750-2,000
$750-2,000$300-500 General
Ongoing DOJ workload **Unknown, potentially
significant** General
Mandate: law enforcement **Possibly significant reimbursable
mandate** General
Mandate: county probation **Likely minor, potentially
reimbursable mandate** General
Civil penalties ***Unknown,
possibly significant revenue*** General
Local
New misdemeanor ***Unknown, non-reimbursable
local costs*** Local
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STAFF COMMENTS: This bill meets the criteria for referral to the
Suspense File.
This bill requires individuals convicted of animal abuse to
register with local law enforcement, as specified, for ten years
within 10 days of coming into this state or changing his or her
residence or location within the state. Failure to register
would be punishable as a misdemeanor.
This bill creates a new program within DOJ, and assigns new
duties to local law enforcement and county probation officers.
This bill requires DOJ to create a new registry, similar to the
sex offender registry created by AB 488 "Megan's Law" (Parra,
2004) within the DOJ, which provides specified information about
individuals living in the community who have been convicted of
felony animal abuse. Because this bill requires the registry and
publicly accessible website to be operational by January 1,
2012, the majority of costs to DOJ will be incurred in calendar
year 2011 (above, in the first two fiscal years).
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SB 1277 (Florez)
The registry described in the bill, like the sex offender
registry, is not a simple website. There are interactive
functions and search capabilities beyond a standard departmental
website, and a registry is frequently updated due to the
requirements on registrants to
update their information. The bill specifies certain information
that must be available on the registry, but is silent on most
aspects of design and implementation. DOJ will likely
bring in outside consultants to determine the best way of
establishing a new registry that, while conceptually similar to,
is not related to, the Megan's Law website. The cost of this
project depends upon how it is implemented. If DOJ creates a new
website and registry system, it will likely be more costly than
integrating the registry with the existing Megan's Law platform
(assuming there is no technological reason that latter cannot be
done). DOJ may decide, however, that integrating the websites is
inappropriate. The estimate range in the Fiscal Impact summary
shows the potential difference in cost of building from the
existing platform versus creating a new, separate website and
registry.
In either case, DOJ will also have to hire outside consultants
to build (and translate into other languages, as specified) the
system, and will need DOJ staff dedicated to establishing the
new registry. Ongoing staffing needs, once the registry is
operational, are unknown but it is reasonable that DOJ would
need at least dedicated resources for this new program. DOJ is
also required to make registry information available by
telephone and upon written request, to make reasonable efforts
to notify individuals of the registration requirement, and to
work with stakeholders to assist the public in understanding the
registry and animal abuse. These activities create ongoing work
for DOJ. DOJ is also required to determine who would be
retroactively affected, and notify previously convicted
individuals whose information will be posted by the department.
This would create a new, one-time project workload.
This bill mandates, upon initially receiving the required
registry information, that local law enforcement electronically
transmit specified information about (and a photograph of) the
person to DOJ, within three days. Local law enforcement must
follow the same procedure every time the required registrant
moves. This bill also requires that, when a required registrant
is released on probation or discharged by payment of a fine,
county probation officers inform the individual of his or her
duty to register, and forward the registrant's address to DOJ.
The cost of these new mandates will depend upon the number of
people required to register, and how often they move. The
mandate is likely to affect more local police and sheriff's
departments than county probation offices.
This bill establishes civil penalties for misuse of the registry
information by individuals and companies. To the extent that
this misuse occurs and is proven, this bill would generate some
amount of offsetting penalty revenue.