In the News

March 24, 2021

At some point over the past 50 years, people started listening to Walker. Back in 1984, when current California State Senator Nancy Skinner won her first election and took a seat on the Berkeley City Council, she was predisposed to side with conventional wisdom in opposition to market-rate housing.

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March 20, 2021

SB95, sponsored by state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, passed the Senate 29-8 Thursday and required employers with more than 25 workers to create a separate pool of sick days for workers, retroactive to the beginning of the year.

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March 19, 2021

State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), the author of the disclosure law, proposed follow-up legislation last year that would allow a court to impose fines of $1,000 per day if a police department does not release documents within 30 days and the person seeking the records files a lawsuit. Had that provision been included when the law went into effect, the Sheriff’s Department could have faced more than half a million dollars in fines for its handling of The Times’ request.

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March 19, 2021

The California Legislature on Thursday voted to expand paid sick leave for about 10.4 million workers, sending a bill to Gov. Gavin Newsom that mandates up to two weeks of paid time off for things like having coronavirus symptoms, scheduling a COVID-19 vaccine or caring for a child who is doing school at home.

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March 18, 2021

So-called sunshine laws can be improved further to make it harder for public officials to shroud their decisions in secrecy. For example, state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), the author of SB 1421, has proposed new legislation that would give the public access to additional records about police misconduct and impose fines on agencies that didn’t respond in a timely manner.

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March 18, 2021

Expanding access to police records (SB 16). This bipartisan accountability proposal passed the Assembly but stalled in the Senate last year. Building on the landmark police records transparency bill, SB 1421, Berkeley state Sen. Nancy Skinner’s revived proposal would expand the type of records that are eligible for release and impose penalties against agencies that don’t comply.

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