Legislative Update for 2009...

Posted on 02-25-2009

Legislative Update for 2009

For the past few months the California State Legislature has been consumed with solving the budget debacle which had the state running into a $40 BILLION deficit. The benefit of this is that they have had little time to work any other piece of legislation including gun bills.

The legislature solved the budget crisis by passing a series of bills that will end up costing the average family of 4 somewhere between $1,200 and $1,600 a year more than they are presently paying. The glaring problem is that budget projections were based on the assumption that the economy in California will be improving in the near future. If the economy continues to suffer, the budget agreement will again become a massive problem and the legislature will be in the throws of solving this too.

Again, the good news is that no anti-gun bills have yet to surface from the bill-mill but that will most assuredly be short lived. The bad news is that as part of the budget resolution, the Governor will be borrowing $30 million from the Wildlife Preservation Fund, that is the pot of money where all of our hunting license and permit fees go into. Although the plan is to repay the fund in the future (don't laugh too hard) be prepared to see significant increases in the cost of tags, licenses and fees.

Another piece of good news is that pro-gun and pro-hunting stalwart Senator Dennis Hollingsworth was elected by his Republican colleagues as the new Senate Minority Leader. We will finally have a true friend in leadership and that is a very good thing.

Gun Owners of California will keep everyone informed as news breaks…