BILL ANALYSIS Ó
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de León, Chair
AB 1433 (Gatto) - Postsecondary Institutions: Student Safety
Amended: May 23, 2014 Policy Vote: Education 7-0
Urgency: Yes Mandate: Yes
Hearing Date: June 30, 2014
Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez
This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill Summary: AB 1433 requires postsecondary educational
institutions to establish policies regarding the reporting of
certain crimes to local law enforcement agencies, as specified.
This bill is an urgency measure.
Fiscal Impact: This bill's policy and reporting requirements
will likely result in significant additional workload at all
postsecondary education institutions in California, to the
extent that their existing policies and practices differ from
those required by this bill. The most significant state costs
will be for the bill's mandate on community college districts
(CCDs).
Mandate: Significant reimbursable mandate, likely $300,000
- $450,000 in one-time costs and $400,000 - $1.3 million
annually, in CCD costs to implement these provisions.
Background: Federal statutes addressing sexual assault on or
around institutions of higher education include Title IX and the
Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus
Crime Statistics Act (Clery Act).
The Clery Act requires public and private postsecondary
educational institutions that receive federal financial aid to
disclose information about crimes on and around campuses as well
as establish certain rights for victims of sexual assault. Those
rights include notification to victims of the right to file
criminal charges, available counseling services, the results of
disciplinary proceedings, and the option for victims to change
their academic schedule or living arrangements.
The federal Campus Sexual Violence Elimination (Campus SaVE) Act
amended the Clery Act to, among other things, require
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postsecondary institutions to offer prevention and awareness
programs to new students and employees regarding rape, domestic
and dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Programs must
include a definition of those offenses and consent with
reference to sexual offenses. Institutions are also required to
compile statistics of incidents of sexual assault, domestic
violence, dating violence and stalking. Campus SaVE also
requires the Annual Security Report to contain additional
information on prevention programs, procedures once incidents
are reported, and possible sanctions following an institutional
disciplinary procedure. Federal regulations implementing Campus
SaVE are currently in the adoption process.
Existing state law requires the governing board of each
community college district (CCD), the Trustees of the California
State University (CSU), and the Regents of the University of
California (UC) to each adopt, and implement at each campus or
other facility, a written procedure or protocols to ensure, to
the fullest extent possible, that students, faculty and staff
who are victims of sexual assault committed on grounds
maintained by the institution or affiliated student
organizations, receive treatment and information. The written
procedures or protocols must contain at least the following
information:
1) The college policy regarding sexual assault on campus.
2) Personnel on campus who should be notified, and procedures
for notification, with the consent of the victim.
3) Legal reporting requirements and procedures for fulfilling
them.
4) Services available to victims and personnel responsible for
providing these services.
5) A description of campus resources available to victims, as
well as appropriate off-campus services.
6) Procedures for ongoing case management, including keeping
the victim informed of the status of any student
disciplinary proceedings and helping the victim deal with
academic difficulties that may arise because of the
victimization.
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7) Procedures for guaranteeing confidentiality and
appropriately handling requests for information from the
press, concerned students and parents.
8) Each victim of sexual assault should receive information
about the existence of at least the following options: a)
Criminal prosecutions; b) civil prosecutions; c) the
disciplinary process through the college; d) the
availability of mediation; e) alternative housing
assignments; and, f) academic assistance alternatives.
(Education Code § 67385)
Existing state law further requires that the segments, in
collaboration with campus and community-based victim advocacy
organizations, provide as part of campus orientations,
educational and preventive information about sexual violence.
Each campus is required to post sexual violence prevention and
education information on its campus website, including how to
file a complaint, and the availability and contact information
for resources for victims. Each campus is also required to
develop policies to encourage students to report any campus
crimes involving sexual violence.
(EC § 67385.7)
Proposed Law: This bill establishes new requirements for
addressing and reporting certain crimes when the victim is a
student or employee of a postsecondary institution.
Specifically, this bill:
1) Requires any report made by a victim or an employee, as
specified, of a Part 1 violent crime, sexual assault, or
hate crime, as described in Penal Code § 422.55, that is
received by a campus law enforcement agency to immediately,
or as soon as practicably possible, to be disclosed to the
local law enforcement agency with which the institution has
a written agreement without identifying the victim unless
the victim consents to being identified. If the victim
does not consent to being identified, the alleged assailant
shall not be identified in the information disclosed to the
local law enforcement agency.
2) Requires the governing board of each CCD, the CSU
Trustees, the UC Regents, and the governing board of each
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private and independent postsecondary institution, on or
before July 1, 2015, to adopt and implement written
policies and procedures to ensure that any report of a Part
1 violent crime, sexual assault, or hate crime, committed
on or off campus, received by a campus security authority,
as specified, and made by the victim for purposes of
notifying the institution or law enforcement, is
immediately, or as soon as practicably possible, is
forwarded to the appropriate law enforcement agency.
3) Provides that the appropriate law enforcement agency
shall be a campus law enforcement agency if one has been
established on the campus where the report was made. If no
campus law enforcement agency has been established, the
report shall be immediately, or as soon as practicably
possible, forwarded to a local law enforcement agency.
4) Defines a Part 1 violent crime as willful homicide,
forcible rape, robbery, or aggravated assault, as defined
in the Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation.
5) Defines sexual assault to include, but not be limited
to, rape, forced sodomy, forced oral copulation, rape by a
foreign object, sexual battery, or the threat of any of
these.
6) Defines hate crime as any offense as described in Penal
Code § 422.55.
7) Defines local law enforcement agency as a city or county
law enforcement agency with operational responsibilities
for police services in the community in which a campus is
located.
8) Defines on or off campus as the campus and any noncampus
building or property, as specified.
9) Provides that this act is an urgency statute necessary
to ensure student safety by requiring the effective
reporting of Part 1 violent crimes and hate crimes at the
earliest possible time.
Related Legislation: SB 967 (De Leon) requires the governing
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board of each CCD, the CSU Trustees, the UC Regents, and the
governing board of independent postsecondary institutions to
adopt a policy concerning campus sexual violence, domestic
violence, dating violence and stalking that includes specified
components. This bill is pending before the Assembly Higher
Education Committee.
Staff Comments: This bill requires that all 72 CCD governing
boards, the CSU Trustees and the UC Regents, and many
independent postsecondary institutions ensure that the
appropriate officials at each campus in their respective
jurisdictions report certain crimes to the appropriate law
enforcement agency, and to adopt and implement written policies
and procedures to ensure this happens. It also requires that the
institutions compile that information and make it available, as
specified.
While the requirements of this bill are more extensive than
those in existing state law, the degree to which those
pertaining to sexual assault and and related crimes are more
extensive than the forthcoming federal Campus SaVE
implementation regulations is unclear. The higher education
institutions affected by this bill will have to comply with the
Campus SaVE federal regulations, whatever they ultimately are,
in order to continue to receive federal financial aid for their
students; campuses also have to comply with federal Title IX
requirements. To the extent that this bill goes beyond federal
law and future regulations, and beyond what individual campuses
are currently doing, it will likely result in significant costs
to all affected institutions to meet the new reporting and
documentation requirements.
As an entity, CCDs are eligible to seek reimbursement for the
cost of state mandates imposed upon them. If a state law is
similar to a federal law, the Commission on State Mandates
generally deems only the parts of state law that go beyond the
federal requirements to be reimbursable. This bill, however, is
likely to result in a significant reimbursable state mandate on
CCDs for all requirements that go beyond existing state law.
Unlike the Clery Act (and Campus SaVE amendments), which makes
an institution's federal financial aid eligibility contingent on
adherence, this bill simply mandates that the governing boards
of each CCD comply with the bill. While impractical, CCDs can
technically opt not to comply with the federal requirements, and
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choose to forego federal financial aid participation; they
cannot opt out of AB 1433. Thus, regardless of the degree of
overlap between (current and future) federal requirements and
state law, only state law imposes an unavoidable mandate on CCDs
to meet the various new reporting requirements. All of the CCDs
will implement any needed changes and activities to meet the
federal requirements, and some already do meet them, but this
bill would allow all CCDs to seek state reimbursement for those
activities if they are also required by the state to comply.
The Chancellor's office has opined that most, and possibly all,
CCDs would need to make information technology changes to
record, report, and track incidents reported to law enforcement
agencies. The extent and expense of those programming changes
would vary by campus, and the Chancellor's office estimates
those one-time costs would be $336,000 - $449,000 (General
Fund). There would also be ongoing personnel costs to track and
report incidents to law enforcement. Those costs would vary
significantly by campus, based on the size of the campus, the
number of incidents, and the extent to which it has a law
enforcement agency on campus. The Chancellor's office projects
statewide costs of $420,000 - $1,267,500 (General Fund). The
actual reimbursable costs will be determined by the Commission
on State Mandates.
The other institutions of higher education will incur differing
levels of cost, depending both on the degree to which their
policies and procedures already comply with the bill and the
degree to which they would have had to make the same changes to
comply with federal requirements.