Asian-Americans grade legislators

[achtungbaby]

Nearly all Bay Area legislators voted in favor of bills and resolutions important to Asian-Americans this year, according to a nonpartisan survey released by Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality.

The advocacy group created the report card in an effort to inform Asian-Americans about the voting records of their local political leaders and to hold California’s legislators accountable to the state’s 3.7 million Asian-Americans.

http://yellowworld.org/comments.php?id=10670_0_1_0_C

[Faithless]

Would this score card take into account how a legislator voted on California proposition 209 (http://vote96.ss.ca.gov/Vote96/html/BP/209.htm) ?

[AliBabaIncorporated]

For those interested, the actual report card is available at the address below. The list of bills in question begins on page 9, or I also quoted it below:
http://www.caasf.org/PDFs/aacre%20reportcard.pdf

As far as I can tell, they didn't include anything about affirmative action. I'm impressed, especially for a group with such an obvious slant on the issue as "Chinese for Affirmative Action." Making legislators' grade dependent on such issues on which the Asian community is split and which may benefit some sectors of the community while harming others, would merely reduce the utility of the grade as a guide which all Asian-Americans could look to. (Also it makes sense that 209 specifically is not included, since the report card focuses on their voting on bills which came before the legislature, not on referenda.)

The bills in question (for those of you who don't know, AB are bills in the lower house, AJR are assembly joint resolutions, and SB are bills in the upper house):
1. AB 78 (Reyes) – SIGNED BY GOVERNOR – urges social science classroom instruction on the role and contributions of Southeast Asians during the Vietnam War, including the "secret war" in Laos.

2. AB 177 (Oropeza) – SIGNED BY GOVERNOR – creates a Voter Bill of Rights (VBOR) and requires the Secretary of State to publish posters and other appropriate materials containing the VBOR in English and sufficient non-English languages to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

3. AB 309 (Chu) – SIGNED BY GOVERNOR – extends existing consumer protections currently available to Spanish speakers to include speakers of Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Korean as well.

4. AB 526 (Chan) – VETOED BY GOVERNOR – would have established a pilot program in
Alameda County to evaluate the effectiveness of Election Day voter registration in local elections, and required the Secretary of State to assess the program.

5. AB 534 (Vargas) – SIGNED BY GOVERNOR – requires that immigration consultants translate service contracts as well as specified statements and receipts into their limited-English speaking clients' native languages. AB 534 also requires immigration consultants to return all original documents provided by clients in support of their applications.

6. AB 587 (Ridley-Thomas) – SIGNED BY GOVERNOR – requires that voter registration forms contain a space in which the voter may voluntarily state his or her race and/or ethnicity.

7. AB 781 (Lieber) - SIGNED BY GOVERNOR – authorizes a school district or county educational office to retroactively grant high school diplomas to former pupils who were pulled out of school during the Japanese American internment.

8. AB 1485 (Firebaugh) – SIGNED BY GOVERNOR – prohibits the California Department of Education and the State Board of Education from excluding local "Reading First" programs that teach English language learner (ELL) students through bilingual or non-English immersion instruction in consideration of funding through the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

9. AB 1715 (Assembly Committee on Judiciary) – VETOED BY GOVERNOR – precludes
employers from requiring that employees or prospective employees agree to arbitrate any civil rights claim arising under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) as a condition or employment.

10. AJR 6 (Diaz) urges United States Attorney General John Ashcroft to suspend deportation proceedings against 275 South Korean immigrants who may have been victims of a corrupt INS official and rogue immigration consultants until a fair review process is conducted proving actual fraud in each case.

11. AJR 30 (API Legislative Caucus) condemns statements made by United States Congressman Howard Coble (R-NC) justifying the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, urging him to apologize and asking him to resign from the chairmanship of the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

12. SB 146 (Escutia) – SIGNED BY GOVERNOR – clarifies a loophole in existing consumer
protection law by requiring that the terms of specified contracts negotiated in Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, or Korean must be translated, except as exempted.

13. SB 578 (Alarcon) – SIGNED BY GOVERNOR – requires state contractors to comply with specified anti-sweatshop conditions.

14. SB 853 (Escutia) – SIGNED BY GOVERNOR – directs the California Department of Managed Care to issue regulations requiring health care service plans to assess subscriber needs and to provide language appropriate and culturally competent medical services.

[Faithless]

Thanks for the PDF. As I read it (on page 7) --

Ratings were calculated by examining each member's votes on the 14 bills and resolutions identified as partcularly important to California's Asian and Pacific American (APA) communities. These bill and resolutions were identified based on either strong support by APA organizations and community groups for the legislation during the legislative process, or particularized benefit fof APA communities. Our record reflects the final floor votes on each piece of legislation, meaning the votes of the full assembly or Senate on the final version of each bill or resolution.