In his Fox and Hounds opinion piece on August 27, Jeremy Leffler COO of BayBio, an industry consortium, touts the growth in biotechnology and bemoans the effects of Proposition 23 could have on that industry. He’s got many facts wrong and misses the bigger picture.
Mr. Leffler states that AB32 was adopted in "bi-partisan fashion." In 2006, on a party-line vote, legislative Democrats passed AB32 over the objections of Republicans. Authored by then-Assembly Speaker Fabien Núñez, ostensibly to combat the effects of global warming, AB32 forces businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. At the time, California’s unemployment rate was just under 5 percent.
"More than 6,000 new jobs were created in our [biotechnology] sector in just in the past 12 months, many of them in the development of alternative bio-fuels that are the direct result of California’s leadership." Also partly as a direct result of that ‘leadership’ California LOST 9,400 jobs in July alone and remains three percentage points higher in unemployment compared to the national average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.