The bills, which have drawn support from both parties in Sacramento, are set to come before the Senate Appropriations Committee later this month. One measure would lower the retirement age for public safety workers from 57 to 55. Another would establish a new deferred retirement option for California Highway Patrol officers and Cal Fire firefighters. A third would raise wages for Cal Fire personnel.

Supporters argue that boosting compensation and retirement benefits is essential to recruiting and keeping first responders on the job, and several lawmakers have said they’d be willing to trim spending elsewhere to make room for the increases. During a Senate hearing in June on the retirement age bill, state Sen. Tony Strickland, a Huntington Beach Republican, pointed to the heroics of firefighters who responded to a chemical leak in Orange County in May.

“I still get goosebumps for these firefighters and their families that had to know that they’re putting their lives on the line to save that explosion from happening, which they actually end up doing,” Strickland said. “You can’t put a price tag on that.”

Except, in this case, there is a price tag — and it’s a steep one. The bill lowering the retirement age alone would require an extra $282 million a year in contributions to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and would add $4.8 billion to the pension system’s long-term liabilities, according to estimates.

Whether Newsom would sign any of the measures if they land on his desk is an open question. Labor groups representing firefighters and correctional officers were among his biggest financial backers during the 2021 recall effort, but the governor has shown he’s willing to say no to public safety unions when cost is a concern. Last year, he vetoed a bill that would have raised Cal Fire salaries, citing budget pressures.

In other Sacramento news, nurses at Kaiser Permanente are raising alarms about workplace surveillance tools and artificial intelligence software the health care giant uses to monitor phone-based patient interactions. Nurses who staff Kaiser’s advice and triage lines — often speaking with patients experiencing medical emergencies, mental health crises or difficult diagnoses — say they feel pressure to wrap up calls within 15 minutes, with longer conversations sometimes triggering scrutiny from supervisors or performance reviews.

“People can get hurt,” said Charlotte Capulong, who has worked in nurse call centers for 22 years. “You aren’t calling Comcast. We’re dealing with life here.”

Nurses say Kaiser uses software to flag potential inefficiency or slow response times, and that the company began testing an AI tool in 2024 designed to evaluate the tone and empathy in nurses’ voices. Kaiser says its use of AI includes human oversight and is meant to safeguard patient care, and the company denies relying on “average handle time” metrics to judge employee performance.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan bill meant to give small businesses more time to fix disability access violations has quietly died in the Assembly, despite passing the Senate with support from both parties. The measure, authored by Sen. Roger Niello, a Roseville Republican, would have given business owners 120 days to correct violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act before facing a lawsuit. Niello has argued the change is needed to curb what he considers opportunistic litigation from law firms and their clients.

But Assemblymember Ash Kalra, a San Jose Democrat who chairs the Assembly Judiciary Committee, declined to schedule a hearing for the bill, effectively killing it. Kalra said the proposal “completely undermines the ADA” and that Niello had not agreed to amendments floated during private negotiations. Niello says he intends to bring the measure back if reelected in November. Longtime Capitol lobbyist Chris Micheli called the outcome unusual, noting it’s rare for a bill to be blocked in its second legislative house through closed-door dealings rather than a formal vote.

In a separate development, the private prison and detention contractor GEO Group has agreed to pay more than $100,000 to settle allegations that it failed to protect the safety of detainees working inside one of its Central Valley immigration detention facilities — a outcome cheered by immigrant rights advocates.

Original source: CalMatters

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