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“We clearly have ... many, many, many people up and down the state, and experts, who feel that California’s use-of-force standard should be revised,” said Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Berkeley who chairs the Senate public safety committee and engineered the surprise development to combine the measures.

She said she hopes the committee’s move will lead to compromise after listening to dozens of opponents of the original police-backed legislation describe their loved ones’ deaths in confrontations with police.

“It creates the opportunity for all of the parties involved to continue to have conversations about this very important subject,” said Sen. Nancy Skinner, chair of the Senate Public Safety Committee, adding that she hopes “we might come to a place where we both have a revised use of force standard and good associated training, so that California can move forward.”

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“Regular Californians face the fourth-largest income inequality gap between the super-rich and the average resident,” Skinner said, referring to a ranking of U.S. inequality. “Meanwhile, we struggle to fund our schools, to fund essential services, and many Californians struggle to make ends meet."

Skinner, D-Berkeley, announced Senate Bill 37, known as the Corporate Fair Share for California and Californians bill, in Oakland alongside Assembly members Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, and Rob Bonta, D-Alameda.

Fresh off teachers’ strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland, three East Bay lawmakers are hoping to drum up money from the nation’s largest corporations who do business in California to generate billions more for K-12 schools, community colleges and early childhood education — while also helping reduce the state’s income-inequality gap.