This paper deals with how bills in the state of California become laws, otherwise known as the Legislative Process. It will trace the process of a bill from the inception of an idea, to the outcome on a particular bill. Since I am majoring in Electronics Technology, Computer Repair here at American River College, I have chosen a bill related to that field. This bill is Assembly Bill 1710, Liability, and computer failures. The failure being referred to deals with "year 2000" date change problem, or Y2K as it has been come to known.

The Y2K problem is that of information processing using the incorrect date as a parameter. In order to save on hard disk space and the size (number of bytes or kilobytes) of software, it was decided to only refer to the YEAR part of the date without the '19'. Therefore, the date would read as follows: dd/mm/yy (e.g. 02/12/98).

On the turn of the century the date parameter will read as follows: 03/01/00 and the software will misinterpret it as the 3rd of January 1900 and not 2000. This style of programming was adapted and has been used for the past 30 years and up until now. Most financial software

The next step was to send the bill to the Office of State Printing, which was done that day. It was returned from the printer the next day. Additionally, the bill was sent to the Assembly Rules Committee, whose primary jurisdictions are proposed amendments to the rules, and other matters relating to the business of the Legislature, to determine which policy committees would have hearings to review the bill. On February 6, the bill was assigned to the Committee on the Judiciary, whose primary jurisdictions are family law, product liability, tort liability, Civil Code, and Evidence Code (excluding criminal procedure), and the Committee on Televising the Assembly and Information Technology, whose primary jurisdiction is information technology.

The bill was amended twice and re-referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. On April 21, the bill failed passage in the committee hearing (Ayes 6, Noes 7). On May 5, reconsideration was granted, however the bill once again failed passage during the second hearing (Ayes 6, Noes 6). This was mainly due to unclear wording and unanswered questions. As a result, the bill was returned from committee without further action.

If both houses were to approve the bill, it then is passed on to the Governor. The Governor can sign the bill into law, or allow it to become law without signature, or veto it. If it is vetoed, then the veto can be overridden by a two-thirds vote in both houses.

has estimated (with a probability of 0.7) that approximately 50% of the companies with this software problem may not become Year 2000 compliant in time and will have all or part of their computer systems shut down (or start producing incorrect data) on or after January 1, 2000. The Gartner Group estimate appears to conform with a survey conducted by Arthur Andersen in July of 1997, which predicts, based on an extrapolation of current data, that only 50% of companies will be fully compliant by the year 2000.

The idea for this measure was sent to the Legislative counsel where it was drafted into the actual bill, and was then returned to Brooks Firestone for introduction to the Assembly. The bill was first read on January 28, 1998 on the assembly floor identifying the bill number, author and the descriptive title.

3. Intel Corporation--The Year 2000 problem requires a broad based solution and this bill will encourage that approach. Intel mentions the notice provisions for repair or replacement, and the free upgrade for the "off the shelf" software versions put on the market after December 31, 1997, as especially noteworthy.

4. California Government web site; www.ca.gov: Overview of the Legislative Process

1. Kappelman, Leon (editor); Solving the Year 2000 Problem; International Thomson Computer Press, 1997.

purchased by financial institutions was developed using the Cobol (Common Business Oriented Language) with the date parameter used incorrectly or only applicable in the 20th century (using the last two digits of the year). This makes most of the world's financial software inadequate and incorrect for the new millenium.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Dean Morehous, Governor Governor, R-Los Olivos, Information Technology, Judiciary April, Association AIA--AB, Y2K Y2K, California PIF--This, Oriented Language, Attorneys California-This, ab 1710, web site, brooks firestone, computer failures, legislative process, assembly bill, date parameter, bill returned, senator bruce mcpherson, remediation results, bruce mcpherson, press 1997 2, international thomson computer, thomson computer press, computer press 1997,
Approximate Word count = 2703
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)