A bill that would increase penalties for child sex buyers in California could die before getting a vote amid concerns from state finance officials over the costs of housing additional prison inmates.
California lawmakers last week placed Senate Bill 1414 on “suspense file,” a list of bills that are expected to cost the state a significant amount of money, during an Aug. 7 meeting. The bill will either advance or be killed without public discussion in a special Thursday hearing.
“When we pursued this to prevent children from being trafficked, bought and sold in the state of California, we never thought in a million years it would be this difficult,” Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove, who introduced the legislation and is its primary sponsor, told Fox News Digital.
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The bill would allow prosecutors to charge adults charged with soliciting minors with a felony. If the minor is younger than 16, or younger than 18 but a victim of human trafficking, the defendant would face up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The bill would also require adults convicted multiple times of soliciting a minor at least 10 years younger than them to register annually as a sex offender. Under the current law, soliciting or purchasing a minor for sex is a misdemeanor punishable by a minimum of two days in jail and up to a year or a fine.
During last week’s Assembly Appropriations Committee hearing, a representative for the California Department of Finance spoke in opposition to the bill.
“California has successfully remained below the court-ordered prison population cap and has even made strides towards closing prisons, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual savings,” Millie Yan, a Finance Department official, told lawmakers. “However, increases to the (prison) population threaten the state’s ability to continue making progress in right-sizing California’s prison system.”
The annual costs associated with increasing the prison population by one inmate can range from $10,000 to tens of thousands of dollars, she said.
“We also note that similar legislation that expands the list of individuals required to register as sex offenders has estimated to result in costs to the Department of Justice in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Yan.
Grove and other lawmakers have dismissed financial concerns, arguing the potential cost pales in comparison to combating a significant problem across the state.
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“We’ve spent $24 billion on the homeless population, and it got worse,” Grove said of California’s efforts to address its growing homeless population. “And they’re worried about spending tens of thousands of dollars on the prison population to lock individuals up who are buying children for sex?”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom supports the bill, his office said. The governor’s office pointed to a Monday social media post when contacted by Fox News Digital.
“It’s standard practice for DOF to oppose bills that have a fiscal impact when not addressed via the budget,” the post states. “It’s NOT a position on policy or merits. The Governor SUPPORTS this bill.”
California state Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher said the issue of child sex trafficking shouldn’t be a “financial question.”
“It should be a right and wrong question,” he told Fox News Digital, while noting the billions of dollars California has spent to fix homelessness and the ballooning costs for a proposed high-speed rail project. “They are funding all of those things fully… but they don’t have money to make sure that johns buying children go to prison. If that’s the case, their priorities are seriously misplaced.”
He also urged Newsom to take charge as the executive of the state and push for similar policies.
In addition to financial concerns, Grove said she was forced to make amendments to SB 1414 by the Democratic-controlled Senate Public Safety Committee.
That resulted in the exclusion of 16 and 17-year-olds from the protection provided, she said. These individuals are now required to prove that they are victims of trafficking in order for the perpetrator to be charged.
Fox News Digital has reached out to state Sen. Aisha Wahab, chair of the committee.
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