California Chamber of Commerce-opposed bills that don’t earn the “job killer” label still pose problems for California businesses and deserve to be rejected.
The CalChamber is urging lawmakers to oppose the following proposals. If passed, these bills will create onerous burdens for California firms, slow economic development, lead to increased costs for labor or health care, or boost excuses for costly litigation.
In a state where business operating costs average 19% higher per job than elsewhere in the nation, the negative impact of proposals like the following should not be ignored.
Barriers to Economic Development
• SB 605 (Lara; D-Huntington Park/Long Beach) Expensive Regulatory Burdens. Creates regulatory burdens and increases the cost of doing business in California by directing the California Air Resources Board to create a new program to regulate short-lived climate pollutants.
• SB 1204 (Lara; D-Huntington Park/Long Beach) Premature AB 32 Auction Revenue Expenditures. Prematurely allocates auction revenues to fund zero and near-zero emission truck and bus technologies.
• SB 1139 (Hueso; D-Logan Heights) Geothermal Procurement Mandate. Increases the cost of energy and threatens current renewable generation jobs by requiring the procurement of 500 MW of new geothermal energy.
• SB 812 (de León; D-Los Angeles) Creates Unworkable Permitting System for Hazardous Waste Facilities. Fundamentally undermines the Department of Toxic Substances Control’s recently proposed plan to issue protective and timely hazardous waste permits by creating extraordinarily aggressive and arbitrary permit processing timelines.
• AB 1739 (Dickinson; D-Sacramento) Premature Regulations. Potentially devalues land prices of commercial and agricultural properties by limiting groundwater rights on which credit worthiness is based by requiring groundwater management plans without careful and thoughtful review of all monitoring data and without clear definitions or directions.
• SB 1168 (Pavley; D-Agoura Hills) Premature Regulations. Potentially devalues land prices of commercial and agricultural properties by limiting groundwater rights on which credit worthiness is based by requiring groundwater management plans without careful and thoughtful review of all monitoring data and without clear definitions or directions.
Increased Labor Costs
• AB 1723 (Nazarian; D-Sherman Oaks) Labor Commissioner Investigation. Expands the authority of the labor commissioner to issue waiting time penalties during the citation process instead of just the administrative hearing, without setting forth the basis of the penalty in citation.
• AB 1556 (Perea; D-Fresno) Unemployment Insurance Tax Increase Risk. Prematurely adopts new statutes while rules and decisions from the federal Department of Labor regarding state requirements for waivers of looming unemployment insurance tax hikes are pending.
• AB 2616 (Skinner; D-Berkeley) Expands Costly Presumptions. Increases workers’ compensation costs for public and private hospitals by presuming certain diseases and injuries are caused by the workplace.
• SB 25 (Steinberg; D-Sacramento) Due Process for Agricultural Employers. Denies due process for agricultural employers by requiring employer to implement a collective bargaining contract ordered by the Agricultural Labor Relations Board while appealing the order, unless the employer meets a high standard to win a stay.
Increased Health Care Costs
• AB 1792 (Gomez; D-Los Angeles) Publicly Shames Employers. Unfairly exposes private-sector employers with more than 50 employees who are beneficiaries of Medi-Cal and CalFresh to liability, to public protests and media attacks by creating a public list of those employers and the cost to the state of the benefits being provided to their workers.
• AB 1917 (Gordon; D-Menlo Park) Increases Health Care Premiums. Increases health care premiums for individuals and employers, and forces plans to increase cost-sharing for other health care products and services, by capping what health care enrollees can be charged for prescription drugs each month to 1/12th of the annual out-of-pocket maximum for individuals.
• AB 2533 (Ammiano; D-San Francisco) Undermines Managed Care. Significantly increases health care costs and makes premiums less affordable for employers by requiring health care service plans, in some cases, to arrange out-of-network care with noncontracting providers regardless of their rates.
• SB 1094 (Lara; D-Huntington Park/Long Beach) Interference with Private Contracts. Inappropriately interferes with the ability of struggling hospitals to seek financing and transfer control to a larger health facilities operator by allowing the California Attorney General (AG) to retroactively amend the contract rather than resorting to traditional remedies when one of the parties breaches the contract or makes material misrepresentations to the AG.
• SB 1182 (Leno; D-San Francisco) Unnecessary Oversight of Health Plans. Imposes unnecessary new administrative burdens on health plans and insurers by requiring them to file rate information about proposed large group rate increases exceeding 5% with their departments 60 days prior to any rate increase, and to annually disclose aggregate data about all large group rate filings and make that information available to certain purchasers for free upon request.
Increased Litigation Exposure
• SB 610 (Jackson; D-Santa Barbara) Expansion of Litigation for Franchisors. Creates a new private right of action for failure to act in “good faith” as defined, with the right to recover attorneys fees only for franchisees.
Action Needed
Contact your legislators and the Governor and urge them to oppose these anti-business bills.
