CALIFORNIA TO LAY DOWN LAWS TODAY; EDUCATION, SEX CRIMES AMONG TARGETS OF '99 MEASURES.

Byline: Terri Hardy Daily News Sacramento Bureau

Nearly 1,100 new laws take effect today, offering Californians a holiday gift of tax savings, as well as a number of stiffer penalties for serious crimes and just annoying behavior.

Drivers will receive a 25 percent cut in the car tax, an annual registration fee based on the value of their vehicle. The owner of a $20,000 car will save $100; the break for a $10,000 vehicle will be $50. The average decrease will be about $45.

Other new laws bar convicted felons from owning or possessing body armor - like that used by the robbers during the February 1997 North Hollywood shootout. And another new law forbids the seemingly omnipresent practice of ``spamming,'' the mass mailing of commercial e-mail.

Under a new law, home sellers must tell buyers where to find a computerized list of registered sex offenders from law enforcement agencies. After the real estate industry objected, a requirement that buyers be told if a sexual predator actually lives nearby was dropped.

School districts, however, could fill that void. Another new law makes schools immune from civil liability for revealing a sexual predator's whereabouts.

``It's important that when schools know a child molester is in the neighborhood that they can notify parents,'' said Jayne Murphy Shapiro, president of Kids Safe, a Granada Hills nonprofit organization that supports stronger child-protection laws.

LAUSD asked to warn

The new law, she said, ``empowers parents to know the dangers in their community and should prompt them to once again lecture their children to be careful on the streets.''

Los Angeles Unified School District attorneys and school police plan to recommend to the school board, probably this month, that the district draw up guidelines for issuing information on child molesters.

Shapiro said the new law that steers home buyers to a database of registered sex offenders but fails to notify them about sex offenders living nearby ``wasn't enough, but was a step in the right direction.''

She said it will be an improvement over the current notification system, which she said hasn't given enough vital information to the community either.

``I've learned that you have to take baby steps in this process,'' she said.

LAUSD lawyers and staff members have been meeting on the new sex offender law and believe the district's involvement is crucial, said spokesman Brad Sales.

``In certain circumstances where you have sex offenders that are considered exceedingly dangerous and local police believe its necessary that the community should be alerted, that needs to happen,'' Sales said.

David Berglund, a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department's juvenile division, likes the idea of schools being involved in the notification process.

``Parents need more information. It's a good thing, as long as parents don't overreact,'' Berglund said. ``The danger is when a community starts acting like a lynch mob. Sexual offenders have civil rights also, and so people have to be extremely careful in giving out this information.''

That notification process naturally should happen through the schools, said Toni Symonds, legislative director for Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, who authored the legislation granting schools and their employees immunity.

``Their local school is the first place parents stop to find out if the area is safe,'' Symonds said.

Trivial to weighty

Other new laws that take effect today span the topics of agriculture, crime, education and health care.

Some are trivial, such as a new law that changes the name of the state's Health and Welfare Agency to the California Health and Human Services Agency.

Some are more weighty, such as the law that will make it a felony to evade a police officer while driving a motor vehicle.

With polls showing education as the voters' greatest concern, lawmakers passed a slew of education laws. Crumbling buildings and overcrowded districts in K-12 and higher education institutions will get help through the passage of Proposition 1A, a $9.2 billion school facilities bond initiated by lawmakers and approved by voters in November.

Lawmakers also agreed to raise the cap on the number of charter schools allowed in the state, as well as more flexibility in creating the autonomous campuses, which operate free of most local and state regulations.

Classes for ninth-graders will be smaller under another new law. The LAUSD board of education has voted to shrink its ninth-grade English classes.

Schools will also be required to adopt policies to stop ``social promotion,'' in which children are passed to the next grade level even though they have failed the grade. Implementation of the policies will be required in the 1999-00 school year, although some districts, such as the LAUSD, have said they would begin the process this year.

Another law will give schools money to set up summer instruction to help meet students' remedial needs.

Cities and counties will be able to regulate sexually oriented performances in ``juice bars'' that don't serve alcohol and therefore cannot be regulated under current booze laws. And adults who buy liquor for teens can spend at least six months in jail and pay a $1,000 fine.

Car chases and liquor

Penalties for car chases are increasing. Anyone recklessly evading a police officer can get six months to a year, and a driver who chases someone and causes serious injury or death can get three to five years in prison.

After Princess Diana died in a car wreck while fleeing paparazzi, there were many calls for tough laws to protect the privacy of celebrities. A new California law allows lawsuits against anyone who takes pictures or tape-records someone where they might expect to have privacy - such as their own back yards or in private vacation spots.

Anyone convicted of killing or abusing an animal cannot get probation without counseling. The intent is to catch people with violence problems early.

Another law requires circuses to notify local humane society officials before they arrive in town, to provide time to make sure the animals are well cared for.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

TEN NEW LAWS

These laws take effect today.

1. Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail, a process called ``spamming,'' is prohibited.

2. Street gangs will be forced to pay damages to their community if they are the subject of a gang-injunction and the state attorney general wins a nuisance case against them.

3. The punishment for evading a police officer while driving a vehicle is automatically a felony. Drivers convicted of recklessly evading a police officer can get six months to a year in prison, and a driver who chases someone and causes serious injury or death can get three to five years.

4. The state is required to contract with and allocate funds to citizenship-assistance groups to aid legal noncitizens with naturalization.

5. It is a felony for a person with HIV to knowingly and intentionally expose another person to the virus during unprotected sexual activity.

6. Hospital stays for MediCal maternity patients are extended and penalties are set for denying pain management.

7. A six-year pilot program costing $10 million begins to provide matching grants to public high schools for college admissions tests preparation courses.

8. Patients with breast cancer are allowed to stay in the hospital for the duration of their treatment, as determined by their doctor.

9. A California Rice Commission is created.

10. The vehicle license fee or ``car tax'' decreases by 25 percent, to an average of $45 per vehicle. Self-employed people will be able to deduct 60 percent of their health insurance premiums in 1999, up from 45 percent in 1998.

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