Bill to document disparities in the AAPI Community vetoed by California governor; effort will continue

• CALIFORNIA Assemblymember Rob Bonta, the only Filipino/American member of the state legislature, has had a good year with the legislations that he has introduced benefiting the Asian/American Pacific Islander community. So it was a bit of a surprise to see the bill to collect additional data about the AAPI community vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown.
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• Data is critical because government agencies and nonprofits need that information in order to justify the funding of their services.



Assemblymember Rob Bonta
(D) Oakland


Assembly Bill 176 would have uncovered many of the health, social, economic, and educational disparities in the Asian/American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. 

“This bill started from a simple but powerful idea,” said Bonta during a news conference in San Francisco’s Chinatown last week. “There are more than 23 distinct communities within the Asian American population and 19 within the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population. Each of these API communities has different health and educational outcomes and needs.” 

AB 176 passed the Assembly and Senate with just one dissenting vote so Assemblymember Bonta says he was surprised and disappointed that it was not signed by the governor.

Some state agencies already collect this data and this bill would have added the Departments of Industrial Relations, Fair Employment and Housing and Public Health to collect that information.

The proposed legislation acknowledges the diversity (67 different groups) within the AAPI umbrella by expanding the data collection for the groups including, but not limited to, Bangladeshi, Hmong, Indonesian, Malaysian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Taiwanese, Thai, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander groups, including, but not limited to, Fijian and Tongan.

Among the successes this year, Bonta authored the bill declaring Oct. 25 as Larry Itliong Day. That followed a bill in late 2014 that mandated that the role of Filipino/American farmworkers be included in school curricula.

Bonta said that the bill's sponsors will reintroduce a similar measure in next year's legislative session.

"This is an issue that is not going away," said Bonta, "Communities should not be rendered invisible. They should be counted."

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