In the News

September 29, 2020

“SB 1079 sends a clear message to Wall Street: California homes are not yours to gobble up; we won’t tolerate another corporate takeover of housing,” the bill’s author, Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, wrote in a news release. “Under SB 1079, families will have a fair chance at homeownership, and our local governments will have new tools to stop blight.”

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September 29, 2020

Senate Bill 1079, introduced by state Senate Majority Whip Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, requires foreclosed homes to be sold individually at auction rather than bundled and sold to a single buyer.

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September 29, 2020

Senate Bill 1079 was prompted in part by my book “Homewreckers.” The bill’s author, Democratic state Sen. Nancy Skinner of Berkeley, says the preemptive timing is key. “We were late to the party” during the Great Recession, she said. By the time legislation passed, “the vast majority of homes had already been foreclosed on.”

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September 14, 2020

In addition, the governor is expected to sign legislation in the coming days that would phase out state youth prisons, with counties required to stop sending young people to the facilities starting next July and instead house them locally — likely in juvenile halls.

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September 5, 2020

“There was more dysfunction in this last week than I’ve seen in a long time,” said Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who lost two bills in the chaos.

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September 2, 2020

Law enforcement interests also set their sights on a measure, SB 776, by state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), to open more police personnel records to the public.

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September 2, 2020

A separate measure to open up investigative records about police misconduct, SB776 by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, also died when the Senate adjourned without giving it final approval. 

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September 2, 2020

Willingness to compromise is a fairly new dynamic among the law enforcement lobby, said Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Berkeley Democrat who carried the bill to expand public access to police misconduct records. 

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September 2, 2020

Senate Bill 1079, which modifies the process for how foreclosed homes are sold at auction so that big corporations don’t have an advantage, has won approval from the California Legislature.

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August 27, 2020

We keep hearing lawmakers talking in this post-George Floyd era about improving policing, ending abuses and addressing racism in law enforcement. None of that talk means squat if legislators fail to pass Senate Bills 776 and 731, which, respectively, would require transparency and accountability that’s common in most other states.

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