SACRAMENTO – A key Senate committee on Tuesday unanimously approved a bill by Assemblywoman Patty Berg that would send government collection agents after wife beaters who refuse to pay restitution to their victims.

“It’s about using the government’s power to help the powerless,” said Berg, D-Eureka.

Berg’s bill, AB 2487, would allow the collection arm of the state’s Franchise Tax Board to help collect civil judgments owed to the victims of domestic violence.

The measure, which has received strong bipartisan support in the Assembly, would apply only to cases in which the abuser is convicted in criminal court. The cost of collecting the debt would be paid by the abuser, not the state.

“Basically,” Berg told the Senate panel, “it takes the machinery of government and gears it to work on behalf of people who have been stripped of their power, people who have been abused by someone obsessed with exercising power over them.”

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