Thursday, July 30, 2026

In This Edition:

·        Honest Graft

·        What Goes Around

·        OSHA Retreats?

·        Union QPQ?

·        Friends in High Places

·        Housing Costs

·        EEOC RIP?

·        Wage & Hour Space

·        Beskatta Inte Rikedom Som Vi Gjorde!

·        Mileage Rate Increase

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I Seen My Opportunities and I Took 'Em

Reports allege that a longtime White House teleprompter aide used advance knowledge of presidential speeches to place bets on Kalshi prediction markets, reportedly turning a tidy profit before the activity was detected. The employee has since been placed on unpaid administrative leave while the matter is investigated.

Frankly, I would have expected a commendation.

After all, the alleged strategy sounds remarkably similar to the philosophy of George Washington Plunkitt, the legendary New York political boss who proudly distinguished "honest graft" from dishonest graft. As Plunkitt famously put it, "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em." He argued there was nothing wrong with profiting from information available through one's position—so long as you didn't steal it.

Of course, modern ethics rules, securities laws, and prediction markets tend to see things differently. Markets only work when participants compete on equal footing. If someone has access to information the rest of the market doesn't have, confidence in the system quickly evaporates.

Plunkitt might recognize the opportunity. Today's regulators are more likely to recognize the investigation.

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Congressman Jimmy Gomez Faces Heat—And Contractors Haven't Forgotten

Los Angeles Congressman Jimmy Gomez suddenly finds himself on the defensive. According to Politico, Gomez is facing a well-funded primary challenge from the left, criticism over his positions on Israel, and reports that the House Ethics Committee is investigating allegations of sexual misconduct that he denies. While Gomez acknowledges "personal mistakes outside my marriage," he insists he violated neither House rules nor the law.

Those controversies will be sorted out by voters and the Ethics Committee.

What California contractors shouldn't forget is Gomez's own legislative record. Before heading to Congress, Assemblymember Gomez authored AB 1431 (2015), the bill that transformed Job Order Contracting by requiring school districts and community college districts using JOC to operate under Project Labor Agreements. That PLA mandate is exactly the language Assemblymember Mike Fong now seeks to preserve and extend through AB 1809.

I met with Gomez while AB 1431 was moving through the Legislature to explain how the PLA mandate would shut many merit shop contractors out of JOC work. His response was memorable, not because he engaged on the merits, but because he dismissed them. Smiling, he said he expected to lose the occasional Republican vote and advised me to "save my breath."

Eleven years later, we're still fighting the same battle. AB 1809 would continue the very mandate Gomez put into law in 2015, denying school districts the freedom to decide for themselves whether a PLA makes sense. Contractors may not have changed Congressman Gomez's mind then, but they shouldn't forget who wrote the mandate in the first place.

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As Federal OSHA Pulls Back, States Diverge on Workplace Safety Rules

• With federal OSHA expected to remain largely inactive on new rulemaking, states are splitting into different directions on workplace safety — some tightening rules on heat, ergonomics, and workplace violence, while others move to roll back protections that exceeded federal minimums, creating a compliance patchwork for multi-state employers.
• Attorney Samuel H. Pond notes that “state control” doesn’t necessarily mean stricter enforcement — California, Oregon, and Washington run some of the most active state programs, while Kentucky’s HB 398, passed in March 2025, bars its state plan from enforcing any safety standard stricter than OSHA’s federal floor.
• Pond argues that when injury prevention weakens at the regulatory level, the workers’ compensation system absorbs the fallout through more claims, higher premiums, and increased litigation, and advises facilities managers to build safety programs to the strictest standard they operate under rather than the federal minimum, since OSHA violations can still fuel negligence claims and raise insurance costs even though federal fines themselves remain relatively modest.

READ MORE

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CV Mayor Accuses Union of Quid-Pro-Quo Offer

Chula Vista Mayor John McCann recently accused a prominent San Diego County labor union of trying to strong-arm him into supporting a controversial ballot measure by promising not to fund his opponent in this year’s mayoral race in exchange for his support.

McCann said a representative of Local 89 of the Laborers International Union of North America made the offer during a recent meeting to discuss a charter reform measure the union has been seeking to place before Chula Vista voters in November.

The measure, which would give city councilmembers a large pay raise and make other significant changes to city government, has faced strong opposition from residents.

“I was informed if I supported placing the ballot measure on the ballot, they would not fund my opponent in the election,” McCann said from the dais during debate over the measure at Tuesday’s Chula Vista City Council meeting.

“He was trying to make a deal with me,” McCann said of Kelvin Barrios, LIUNA’s director of government affairs, who met with the mayor last month to discuss the ballot measure. “I feel it was unethical,” McCann said. “I don’t believe in a quid pro quo.”

Barrios emphatically denied McCann’s accusation and said, in fact, it was McCann who “wanted assurance we wouldn’t spend money against him in the general election. I said I can’t make those assurances,” Barrios said. “In no way was I trying to tie consideration of [the ballot measure] to political spending… This is the mayor making a false accusation.

After hearing from more than 45 public speakers, almost all of them opposed to the ballot measure, the City Council voted 4-1 to pull the measure from the November ballot and refer it to the city’s Charter Review Commission for further consideration and public input. [VOSD]

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AZ Representative Defends Tate Bros

Accused sex traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested by U.S. marshals in Miami last weekend, as they were set to host a bare-knuckle boxing match. First-term Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.) (Maricopa County) has become one of the Tate Brothers’ most prominent defenders in the aftermath of the extradition, claiming in a tweet that they’re victims of politicized “lawfare” in both the U.K. and Romania. He doesn’t specify why he thinks the brothers would be targets of lawfare—what political reasons these countries would have for taking down the Tates. Nevertheless, Hamadeh said the Trump administration should refuse to extradite the brothers, who are dual American and British citizens.

“There should be no extradition of American citizens when the charges are unclear and political,” he continued. “The US government should either charge them with a crime or protect them from reckless court proceedings in the UK and Romania,” Hamadeh wrote.

Hamadeh is an attorney, U.S. Army intelligence officer, and former prosecutor currently serving as the U.S representative for Arizona's 8th congressional district since 2025. A member of the Republican Party, he is the first Arab American elected to Congress from Arizona.

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By the Numbers

From the Legislative Analyst’s Office’s latest housing affordability tracker:

·        $775,000: average cost of a mid-tier home in California — twice as much as the U.S. as a whole

·        2020-2022: the period of rapid growth of home prices. During this time, bottom-tier home prices increased by 15% every year, compared to 6% per year on average for the two decades prior.

·        44%: the percentage of California households that have incomes high enough to qualify for a mortgage now, down from 57% in 2019.

·        75%: the percentage of California homeowners that have mortgage interest rates below 5%, which makes selling their home and buying a new one with a mortgage at current rates significantly more expensive.

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EEOC Proposes to Rescind All EEO Reporting and Recordkeeping Requirements

On July 21, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) voted to approve a proposed rule which would rescind a series of agency demographic reporting requirements, most notably the EEO-1 Form, which private employers of 100 or more employees have been required to file for decades. The agency also proposed to repeal similar requirements for unions (the EEO-3 report), state and local governments (EEO-4), public-school systems (EEO-5), and institutions of higher education (EEO-6) (collectively, the “EEO Reports”). Finally, EEOC has proposed rescinding the related recordkeeping and record preservation requirements supporting these reports. The proposal is expected to be published in the Federal Register shortly, starting a 30-day public comment period. After that, EEOC will review and consider the comments submitted and adopt a final rule.

Read More

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What’s Happening in the Wage & Hour Space That Should Command Your Attention?

A lot is happening in the wage and hour space. In the Pacific Northwest, there’s been intense activity from California plaintiffs’ firms filing wage and-hour class actions. In fact, Washington State is viewed as the next high-exposure target for meal and rest break claims. But that’s not limited to Washington State. Beyond Washington, approximately 20 states have adopted meal or rest break requirements, and the patchwork of inconsistent state laws keeps getting more complex - with Minnesota creating new requirements and penalties just this year. So, employers now need more than just a California supplement to their national wage and hour compliance strategy. Today, they need intentional, state-by-state review and analysis. And that’s not all.

Read More

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Sweden’s Warning to California: Don’t Tax Wealth Like We Did

California has often looked to Scandinavia — in particular, Sweden — as a model for combining prosperity with ambitious social support. As a Swede who has spent much of my career studying taxation, entrepreneurship, and business ownership, I understand why. Sweden has a large welfare state, high taxes, and strong public institutions. But Sweden also has a warning for California: Not every tax that sounds fair ends up strengthening society. The wealth tax is the clearest example.

California voters will be asked in November to approve a one-off 5% tax on residents with net worth of more than $1 billion. The purpose is understandable: fund healthcare, education, and other public priorities. The appeal is equally obvious. Why not ask the very richest residents to contribute more?

Story

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California Employers Take Note of the Recent IRS Mileage Rate Increase

California Labor Code section 2802 requires employers to reimburse employees for necessary expenses incurred in performing their job duties, which may include an employee’s use of their personal vehicle for work purposes, such as for work-related travel or driving between work sites.

When determining how to reimburse an employee for use of their personal vehicle, employers may select between different methods for reimbursement, including actual expense, mileage reimbursement, or a stipend.

The California Labor Commissioner has opined that the use of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) mileage rate will generally satisfy an employer’s obligation to reimburse employees for the expenses incurred in the use of an employee’s car for work purposes, in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

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