Submitted by Senator Joel Anderson – April 3, 2017 –

I wanted to make sure you knew that SB 54 has been amended and could be heard on the Senate floor on Monday, April 3.

The amendments removed the bill’s “urgency clause.” Bills that have an urgency clause take effect immediately, but they require 27 votes to pass the Senate. By removing the urgency clause, the vote threshold to pass the Senate was lowered to 21. That allows those members of the majority party who agree with us to vote against it, and the bill could still pass.

But as amended, SB 54 still shields child abusers, human traffickers, and elder abusers from deportation and guarantees their return to our communities.

It still jeopardizes crucial federal funding for public safety. It’ll starve law enforcement and cost the jobs of cops on our streets who are working to keep us safe.

I want to personally thank you for your efforts because by speaking out you helped force the author to amend SB 54 so that murderers, rapists and child molesters would not be shielded from federal immigration authorities. But we can’t stop our fight against this bill when it still shields felons.

If you have friends or family members that have not signed our petition, please forward this email to them and ask them to voice their opposition to this terrible bill.

A quick update on our efforts to defeat SB 54: Last week I was invited back onto the Mark Larson Show (AM 1170 The Answer) to talk more about the fiscal impact of this bill. Originally, the authors of SB 54 said the cost of implementation would cost $2.7 million, but they did not take into account that we would no longer qualify for $117 million in Federal grants if this bill passes.