SACRAMENTO — It's not all about budget brawling. Beneath the haze of haggling over taxes and spending, several hundred bills are lined up awaiting their fates as legislators rush to leave town.
The two-year regular session of the Legislature ends Aug. 31. More important, the secretary of state's deadline for placing any measure on the November ballot -- budget reform, water bond, revised high-speed rail proposal -- is this weekend. That deadline presumably could slip.
But what won't slip are the national political conventions that begin Aug. 25. Many Democrats -- including Assembly Speaker Karen Bass of Los Angeles -- want to be headed for Denver by the end of next week.
So bills are flying off the Senate and Assembly floors. Lobbyists are flooding the Capitol trying to propel or derail measures.
Many proposals would significantly change things in California. Here are four:
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Bad baby bottles
Sen. Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) has maneuvered a bill (SB 1713) onto the Assembly floor that would ban a suspect chemical -- bisphenol A, or BPA -- from baby bottles, formula cans, sippy cups and other products marketed for kids under 3.
BPA is an estrogen-like compound used to make hard plastic. The National Institutes of Health has reported "some concern" that the brains and reproductive organs of fetuses and babies are threatened by BPA, which leaches from beverage containers and can liners.
Scientists -- based on animal research -- suspect that the chemical disrupts hormones and alters genes, programming a child for breast or prostate cancer, premature female puberty, attention deficit disorders and other reproductive and neurological problems.
"This is a chemical we don't want babies exposed to," says Frederick vom Saal, a reproductive scientist at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who has extensively studied BPA. "The fetus and newborns are at the most unprotected stages of their lives. Once the harm occurs, it never can be undone."
Wal-Mart and Toys R Us are phasing out baby bottles containing BPA. Canada also is banning the chemical from baby bottles.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to consider the chemical safe, but is reviewing the research.
"What you have," says Vom Saal, "is a federal regulatory system that is completely incapable of dealing with chemicals that generate huge amounts of income for very powerful lobbying groups.
