Today's Law As Amended


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AB-2549 Gambling: moratorium: City of Milpitas.(2013-2014)



As Amends the Law Today


SECTION 1.
 The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) Recent losses of local funding have degraded public safety in the City of Milpitas (city) as the city has cut employment. Since the 2011–12 fiscal year, the city has laid off 110 employees, including 12 firefighters, and has been unable to fill 147 other positions that would otherwise have been filled, including 13 police officer positions.
(b) A lack of economic development tools has stopped investment in previously approved critical infrastructure in the city. Two hundred twenty million dollars ($220,000,000) worth of road, water, and sewer improvements, which had been approved in the capital improvement plan of the city, cannot be constructed. Other projects, including infrastructure projects, have been delayed due to significant funding shortfalls in the city’s general fund to maintain streets. The city’s annual shortfall to maintain its Metropolitan Transit Commission-mandated Pavement Condition Index goal of 70 is four million five hundred thousand dollars ($4,500,000) per year.
(c) A lack of economic development tools has stopped previously approved development projects in the city, including a 120-room hotel and a low- and moderate-income senior housing project. With respect to the latter project, the project developer had agreed to employ 100 full-time medical and caregiver positions. Both projects had completed permits and land use reviews, including reviews under the California Environmental Quality Act.
(d) The Milpitas City Council adopted an entertainment overlay to its zoning ordinance on March 16, 2010, that would allow for operation of a licensed gambling establishment in specific areas in the City of Milpitas. Although the Legislature enacted the moratorium on the expansion of gambling in the Gambling Control Act, the Legislature retains the power to create exceptions to the moratorium to determine where gambling may take place consistent with factual and legal circumstances.
(e) Gambling establishments are significant sources of tax revenues within their jurisdictions that can fund staffing, economic development, and public infrastructure projects, including those that have suffered in the City of Milpitas as a result of cuts in the city’s budget.

SEC. 2.

 Section 19967 is added to the Business and Professions Code, to read:

19967.
 (a) Notwithstanding any provision of this chapter, including, but not limited to, Sections 19961, 19961.06, 19962, and 19963, the City of Milpitas may authorize controlled gambling within that city pursuant to this section.
(b) The City of Milpitas may authorize controlled gambling in that city if a majority of the electors voting thereon have affirmatively approved a measure that complies with subdivision (c) of Section 19960.
(c) (1) Controlled gambling authorized pursuant to this section shall be conducted only by a gambling establishment licensed by the commission and operating in the County of Santa Clara on or before January 1, 2013, that elects to change its location to the City of Milpitas from another location in the County of Santa Clara.
(2) A gambling establishment shall do both of the following prior to relocating to the City of Milpitas from another location in the County of Santa Clara:
(A) Apply for, and receive, a license from the City of Milpitas.
(B) Upon receipt of the license described in subparagraph (A), provide notice to the commission and the department of the gambling establishment’s intent to relocate to the City of Milpitas from another location in the County of Santa Clara. The notice required by this paragraph shall be provided at least three months before the gambling establishment relocates to, or offers controlled gambling in, the City of Milpitas.
(d) Notwithstanding any law or regulation, if the conditions of subdivision (c) are satisfied, the commission and the department shall authorize a gambling establishment’s relocation to the City of Milpitas from another location in the County of Santa Clara.
(e) The Legislature finds and declares that a special law is necessary and that a general law cannot be made applicable within the meaning of Section 16 of Article IV of the California Constitution because of the unique circumstances in the City of Milpitas, described in Section 1 of this act. There is a rational relationship between authorizing controlled gambling within the entertainment overlay designated by the city’s zoning ordinance and reversing the city’s financial crisis. This act simply allows the voters in the City of Milpitas to act effectively on the question of whether to authorize controlled gambling in that jurisdiction consistent with provisions of the Gambling Control Act and under the city’s financial circumstances. Should the voters in the City of Milpitas adopt such an ordinance, the city can then compete to attract one of the three licensed gambling establishments operating in the County of Santa Clara to move within the county to the City of Milpitas. This exception to the moratorium in the Gambling Control Act is not arbitrary because it respects the Legislature’s policy, adopted in the moratorium, to not authorize new licenses. Moreover, the circumstances in the City of Milpitas outweigh any consideration of a more general law creating an even greater exception to the policy adopted by the Legislature in the moratorium.