CalWatchdog Morning Read – August 11

• Controversial language dropped from Title IX bill
• L.A. has deadliest air in the country
• Audit of Brown’s twin tunnels project approved
• Dead parental leave bill enjoys new life
• Orange County supervisors fight transparency law hard

Good morning and welcome to Thursday. While all eyes will be on the Legislature’s appropriations committee meetings today and the hundreds of bills they’ll be deciding the fate of, one bill found new life yesterday. 

After weeks of opposition from religious colleges and their supporters, state Sen. Ricardo Lara announced he would drop provisions from a bill that would have made it more difficult for faith-based institutions to receive Title IX exemptions.

The Bell Gardens Democrat said he wrote Senate Bill 1146 to protect LGBT students who may not be treated equally at religious colleges by putting roadblocks in the way for institutions making admission, housing and accommodation decisions based on traditional views about sexuality. 

But after pushback from religious colleges who claim the bill forces them to violate long-established standards of conduct, as well as making them vulnerable to lawsuits, Lara said SB1146 required a second look.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• Around 1,341 people die annually from bad air in the Los Angeles area, making it the deadliest air in the country, according to a new study. The Orange County Register has more. 
• “Critics of Gov. Jerry Brown’s nearly $16 billion plan to bore two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta won a state audit of its ongoing costs on Wednesday, though state officials don’t expect the audit to delay the project,” reports The San Jose Mercury News/AP.
• The sponsor of a bill to would extend job protection for workers on parental leave plans to revive the bill before the end of the legislative session after it died in June at the hands of West Covina Democrat Roger Hernández. “Two months prior, (the sponsor) had issued a public letter demanding that Hernández take a leave of absence from the Legislature pending resolution of spousal-abuse charges filed in April,” writes the Santa Barbara Independent.
• “Orange County supervisors have unleashed a frontal assault on the California Shield Law, which protects journalists from disclosing unpublished information and is vital to the news gathering process in our democracy,” writes Voice of OC. 

Legislature:

• The Appropriations committees in both chambers convene today to clear out hundreds of bills from the “suspense file,” the beginning of which is done in near secrecy, writes the Los Angeles Times.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced. 

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