Special election primaries have been scheduled to fill the California Assembly District 45 and Assembly District 54 seats. The special election primaries will be held on April 3.

Under special-election rules, if no candidate gets an outright majority of votes on April 3, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held June 5.

Matt Dababneh, who represented District 45, resigned his seat after being accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women.

Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, who represented District 54, resigned because of health problems.

California Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas resigned the California’s 54^th State Assembly District seat, effective December 31, due to health issues.

A special election will be held to fill the seat. No date has been set.

Ridley-Thomas is the third assemblyman to resign in the last month. His resignation leaves Democrats with 52 of the Assembly’s 80 members, which is two votes short of what once had been a two-thirds supermajority.

On December 19, the Los Angeles, California Ethics Commission approved a set of recommendations requiring more disclosure from lobbyists, which will go to City Council for approval.

The recommendations require lobbyists to disclose direct communications with city employees by specifying the date of the communication, the employees title, division, and agency.

Additionally, the recommendations expand the current registration exemption for 501(c)(3) organizations.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee died in the early hours of December 12 after suffering an apparent heart attack.

The President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, London Breed, is now the acting mayor of San Francisco.

The Board of Supervisors may now vote to make Breed the temporary mayor or choose another candidate.

If a majority of the remaining 10 supervisors cannot agree on a candidate, Breed would remain in the office until the June 2018 election.

Gov. Jerry Brown called a special election to fill California’s Assembly District 39 seat.

A primary election will be held April 3 with a potential runoff to follow on June 5.

The seat opened after Raul Bocanegra resigned amid sexual misconduct allegations.

The San Jose City Council voted unanimously to amend the city’s gift ordinance.

The new law struck the city’s exceptions for allowable gifts and incorporated the exceptions for allowable gifts under the state’s Political Reform Act while maintaining a $50 gift limit.

Under the new ordinance, tickets to certain events are no longer considered an exception to the gift rule. Instead, San Jose will follow a framework similar to the Political Reform Act.

San Jose will consider tickets to civic, cultural, or community functions as permissible gifts, so long as they do not exceed the $50 limit.

The ordinance is effective on December 8, 2017.

State Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.

Bocanegra initially stated he would resign in September and not seek reelection when allegations first surfaced. However, his resignation was accelerated after additional sexual harassment allegations emerged.

Gov. Jerry Brown has two weeks from Bocanegra’s resignation to declare a special election to fill the vacancy in Assembly District 39.

State Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.

Bocanegra initially stated he would resign in September and not seek reelection when allegations first surfaced. However, his resignation was accelerated after additional sexual harassment allegations emerged.

Gov. Jerry Brown has two weeks from Bocanegra’s resignation to declare a special election to fill the vacancy in Assembly District 39.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 867 into law, recasting various provisions of the Political Reform Act regarding the definition of the term contribution.

The law moves the behested payment reporting requirements out of the definition of contribution, and instead places those requirements in the part of the campaign disclosure sections of the act.

Additionally, the law provides specific definitions for terms related to behested payments and the reporting of such payments.  The law is effective January 1, 2018.

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed four bills into law – three amending the Political Reform Act and one amending post employment restrictions.

Assembly Bill 867 states behested payments are not contributions and recasts the provisions defining the term “contribution.”

Senate Bill 45 prohibits sending mass mailings within the 60 days before an election by or on behalf of a candidate on the ballot.

Senate Bill 226 requires slate mailer organizations to disclose on any mailing whether the organization represents public safety personnel.

Assembly Bill 1620 extends the time frame a member of the Legislature can lobby after resignation from one year after leaving office to one year after the adjournment sine die of the session in which the resignation occurred.

The San Francisco Ethics Commission has proposed to place strict limits on behested payments.

A behested payment is when a public official asks a person or group to donate to a civic or charitable cause instead of directly to the public official, and the proposal would ban these requests. The penalty for officials could be $5,000 for each violation, but there would be no penalty for the donor.

If this proposal becomes an ordinance, the city’s Board of Supervisors would have to approve it. The commission could also put the changes on a ballot, which would be decided by voters in June of 2018.

On Tuesday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 267 and Senate Bill 358 into law.

Senate Bill 267 authorizes the Fair Political Practices Commission to have primary responsibility for the impartial, administration, implementation, and enforcement of a local campaign finance reform of the city of Sacramento, effective immediately.

Senate Bill 358 requires the secretary of state’s website to post hyperlinks to the website of any local government agency containing publicly disclosed campaign finance information.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 249 on October 7, which amends the Political Reform Act.

The bill requires campaign advertisements to identify the name of the committee paying for the advertisement, as well as clearly displaying the top three contributors to that committee.

The bill also expands disclosure requirements for mass electronic mailings and telephone calls. The bill is effective immediately.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 568 on September 27, moving up the state’s presidential primary to March 3, 2020.

The date of the 2016 primary was in June, but the Legislature pushed for an earlier primary in an attempt to have more of an impact on the national level.

The bill does not change the date of the 2018 primary.