The new law being debated is aimed at preventing a very small number of unscrupulous physicians from being paid to illegitimately exempt children from getting the required vaccines before attending public school.

Only rarely does a legislative compromise that waters down an originally tough proposed law end up creating something better. That appears to be what Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Sen. Richard Pan have now accomplished… Instead of subjecting all medical waivers to state review, the new version covers only exemption forms from doctors who sign off on more than five waivers a year. Schools where vaccination rates fall below the 95 percent saturation level many experts say is needed for the protection of “herd immunity” will also be looked at.

Amid the worst national measles outbreak in a quarter of a century, more than 90 Sacramento County schools do not have vaccination rates high enough to achieve community immunity against the preventable disease. More than a dozen of these schools are private and charter schools that reported a disproportionate number of the county’s 309 medical exemptions.