Staff requests that Council support three bills currently pending before the state legislature: AB 203 (Consumers= Financial Privacy Act), SB 985 (regarding tenants= rights) and AB 1313 (Toxic Fertilizer Prevention Act).

California financial institutions are currently allowed to sell and share personal information about their customers (including bank account numbers, spending history, and Social Security numbers) with both affiliated and unaffiliated companies. Consumers cannot prevent banks= sharing of private information with Aaffiliated@ companies. Recent federal legislation allows banks to merge and affiliate with insurance companies, securities firms, and many other entities, so this type of in-house sharing has far more ominous implications for consumers than it did only a few years ago. As to unaffiliated companies, consumers can prevent such sharing but California law currently requires consumers to affirmatively Aopt out@ to do so. However, in such cases they often have to search through long statements from their banks (often buried in what looks like junk mail) and write separate letters to each of them in order to opt out.

AB 203 would require financial institutions to obtain a customer=s consent before sharing personal information with any other entity (affiliated or unaffiliated). This is consistent with the strong public concerns about financial and personal privacy and the very real risks inherent in the sharing of such information.

Support for privacy protections like those in AB 203 is broad. In an editorial last year in support of similar legislation, the Los Angeles Times refuted the banks= arguments that this measure would be too expensive: ABanks last year mailed out more than 3 billion credit card solicitations B more than 11 for each man, woman, and child in the United States. Surely, notifying consumers to whom they owe fiduciary duty should not be such a financial burden@ (Editorial, March 29, 2000). In addition, the National Association of Attorneys General met in June 2000 to discuss privacy. In their draft APrivacy Principles,@ the Attorneys General supported privacy safeguards like those contained in AB 203: AA private company or governmental agency must receive prior affirmative consent of the individual before it uses and/or discloses that individual's information for any other purpose other than that for which it was originally given.@

2. Tenants= rights bill

SB 985 addresses several issues of concern to Santa Monica tenants. The bill would, among other things, (1) require landlords to provide tenants with a copy of their lease upon demand and upon service of a three-day or eviction notice; (2) require landlords to give tenants the name, address and telephone number where their rent is to be paid, and create a conclusive presumption that if rent cannot be paid in person then it is deemed received by the landlord upon mailing; and (3) require landlords to provide tenants with the name, address and telephone number of the person responsible for managing the building.

Each of these issues was raised in the public testimony before Council on March 6, 2001 regarding problems tenants are having with their landlords in Santa Monica. Additionally, the City Attorney=s Office has received complaints from tenants on all three issues which are not covered under existing state law. The bill would address these concerns by placing reasonable disclosure requirements on landlords.