Last Friday marked the deadline to get bills out of the house of origin for the California Legislature. More than 600 bills were voted on last week.
The good news is that the business community had some significant victories in defeating or stalling legislation that would have made it harder and more expensive to do business in California. Included were: AB 5 (Fletcher-Gonzalez), an overly burdensome scheduling mandate on employers; SB 705 (Allen), a costly mandate prohibiting food establishments from using take-out containers made of polystyrene foam; SB 57 (Stern), which would threaten Southern California’s energy reliability by shuttering Aliso Canyon.
As legislation makes it way over to committee assignments in the next house, there are a number of bills we’ll be focused on defeating.
- SB 568 (Mendoza) –The measure would expand the LA Metro board from 12 to 15 members, reduce the number of county supervisors on the board from five to two, remove the appointment of two public members and increase L.A. City Council member appointments by the mayor from two to five. The current composition of the Metro Board was the result of a lengthy, local process in which all local stakeholders were brought together to develop a consensus. We do not support a restructuring mandated by Sacramento.
- SCA 12 (Mendoza) – This constitutional amendment would expand the L.A. County Board of Supervisors from five to seven members and create the position of an elected county executive. Like SB 568, this is another attempt by Sacramento to mandate changes specific to L.A. County. This decision should be under local control.
- SB 63 (Jackson) – SB 63 would require small businesses with at least 20 employees within a 75-mile radius to give new parents 12 weeks of paid leave. Combined with other state laws, employees would have seven months of protected leave, which would overwhelm small employers. The Governor vetoed a similar measure last year.
We’ll also be closely watching and discussing at our Health Care Council SB 562 (Lara), which would replace private health insurance with a single-payer plan that would include everyone living in the State. It comes with an estimated $400 billion price-tag. While the legislation itself is silent on how to pay for it, ideas have included a gross receipts tax of 2.3 percent and a sales tax of 2.3 percent.
There are many important issues that the legislature will continue working on this summer, including a myriad of bills to address our housing crisis, an extension of Cap and Trade and an L.A. Area Chamber-sponsored bill that would create an Emergency Child Care Bridge Program for foster children. But as is the case every year, there are many bills that California just doesn’t need.