Thursday, May 27, 2021

The Appropriations Deadlines Last Friday was the Legislative deadline requiring all bills be out of their first house Appropriations Committees and moved on to the floor. Any Bills remaining in Appropriations became 2-Year bills and may not be heard again until January of 2022. This year, 1,337 bills were referred to the Appropriations Committees. Of those, 897 were placed on the Suspense File, and 213 failed to pass the Legislative Deadline. In 2019, 1,600 Bills were referred to Appropriations Committees. That year, 1,078 Bills were placed on the Suspense File, and 222 failed to pass the Legislative Deadline. Next Friday, June 4 brings the deadline requiring all bills pass out of their house of origin.

Here’s what happened to a few we track that are now two-year bills.

AB 95 (Low - D) JobKiller: Requires an employer with 25 or more employees to grant a request by an employee to take up to ten business days of unpaid bereavement leave for the death of a family member, as defined. An employer with fewer than 25 employees is required to grant an employee’s request for up to three days of unpaid bereavement leave.
AB 230 (Voepel - R) Would permit an individual nonexempt employee to request an employee-selected flexible work schedule providing for workdays up to 10 hours per day within a 40-hour workweek and would allow an employer to implement this schedule without the obligation to pay overtime compensation for those additional hours in a workday.
AB 247 (Ramos - D) Would exempt a small business or nonprofit organization with 100 or fewer employees from liability for any injury or illness to a consumer, as defined, due to coronavirus (COVID-19) based on a claim that the consumer contracted COVID-19 while at that small business or nonprofit organization, or due to the actions of that small business or nonprofit organization. 
AB 299 (Villapudua - D) Would establish the California Apprenticeship Grant Program, commencing with the 2022–23 academic year, under the administration of the office of the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, to provide grants to encourage high school pupils, community college students, and employed and unemployed workers seeking to go into career technical education and vocational professions through participation in qualifying, state-approved apprenticeship programs.
AB 460 (Mayes - I) This bill, among other things, would as provided, prohibit water-related fees imposed on the owner of residential property from being affected by the installation of a residential fire sprinkler system on that residential property, including those residential fire sprinkler systems mandated by a local jurisdiction or a fire protection district.
AB 621 (Rivas, Robert  - D) Would authorize the Governor to certify a new hospital project or hospital expansion or modernization project as an environmental leadership hospital project if the project meets specific requirements. The bill would exempt PLA projects from skilled and trained workforce mandates, the need to submit certified payroll records, and deny the State Labor Commissioner from enforcing the labor code.
AB 672 (Garcia, Cristina - D) Would require a city, county, or city and county to rezone sites used as a golf course to also allow for residential and open-space use following specified requirements.
AB 836 (Gabriel - D) Would require, on or before January 1, 2023, the California Building Standards Commission to adopt mandatory building standards requiring that a newly constructed non-residential building be built with dual plumbing to allow the use of recycled water for all applicable non-potable water demands if that building is located within an existing or planned recycled water service area.
AB 839 (O'Donnell - D) Increases the ongoing annual funding for the California Career Technical Education Incentive Grant (CTEIG) program to $300 million as of the 2021-22 fiscal year.
AB 899 (Cunningham - R) would require the CSLB to annually adjust the $500 amount by regulation to reflect the rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index
AB 902 (O'Donnell - D) Made minor adjustments to the school design-build law.
AB 1119 (Wicks - D) This bill expands the list of protected characteristics under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) to include “family responsibilities,” defined as an obligation to provide ongoing care to a minor child or “care recipient.” Creating a new protected class of employees with “family responsibilities” will allow many employees who fall within that category a basis for challenging any adverse employment action.
AB 1161 (Garcia, Eduardo - D) Requires the Department of Water Resources to purchase power from projects constructed using project labor agreements.
AB 1179 (Carrillo - D) Requires employers with 1000 or more employees, on or after January 1, 2022, to provide 60 hours of paid backup childcare benefits to employees who work for the same employer for 30 or more days within a year.
AB 1256 (Quirk - D) Would prohibit an employer from discriminating against a person in hiring, termination, or any term or condition of employment because a drug screening test has found the person to have non-psychoactive cannabis metabolites in their urine, hair, or bodily fluids.
AB 1277 (Rubio, Blanca - D) This bill would authorize a public university to carry out a project to certify the project as a student housing development project if the project meets specific requirements.
AB 1324 (Rivas, Robert  - D) Would establish the Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing Funding Program, administered by the Treasurer’s office. The bill would authorize the city council of a city, or the board of supervisors of a city and county, to participate in the program by enacting an ordinance establishing a transit-oriented affordable housing district. The bill would exempt PLA projects from skilled and trained workforce mandates, the requirement to submit certified payroll records, and deny the State Labor Commissioner from enforcing the labor code.
SB 32 (Cortese - D) Would require a city or county to make a one-time amendment to its general plan's appropriate elements, including goals, policies, objectives, targets, and feasible implementation strategies, to de-carbonize newly constructed commercial and residential buildings.
SB 304 (Archuleta - D) Raises threshold for exempt contracting to $1,000
SB 413 (McGuire - D) Would require the Energy Commission, in consultation with the Offshore Wind Project Certification, Fisheries, Community, and Indigenous Peoples Advisory Committee, which the bill would create, to establish a process for the certification of offshore wind generation facilities that is analogous to the existing requirements for certification of thermal power plants.
SB 430 (Borgeas - R) requires state agencies to establish a policy to provide for the reduction or waiver of civil penalties for violations of regulatory or statutory requirements by a small business under certain circumstances
SB 563 (Allen - D) This bill makes several changes to the Second Neighborhood Infill Finance and Transit Improvements Act (NIFTI-2). The California Housing Consortium and the California Housing Partnership Corporation are opposed unless amended to remove “skilled and trained” requirements and require prevailing wages and investments in pre-apprenticeship programs.
SB 621 (Eggman - D) allows a ministerial, streamlined conversion of hotels and motels into multifamily housing if the development satisfies specified objective planning standards. The bill would exempt PLA projects from skilled and trained workforce mandates, the requirement to submit certified payroll records, and deny the State Labor Commissioner from enforcing the labor code.

Biden Tax Increase Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained the Biden administration’s push to hike taxes on corporations to attendees of a virtual U.S. Chamber of Commerce event on the economic recovery. “We're confident the key investments and tax proposals” in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure and jobs plan “will enhance the net profitability of our corporations and improve their global competitiveness,” Yellen said during her keynote. “We hope business leaders will see it this way and support the jobs plan.” Yellen framed the president’s proposed increase of the corporate rate to 28 percent from 21 percent amounted merely to business “bearing its fair share,” while arguing the shift is aimed at simply returning the “corporate tax towards historical norms.” She added: “At the same time, we want to eliminate incentives that reward corporations for moving their operations overseas and shifting profits to low-tax countries.” She also used her time in front of the business lobby, which has vehemently opposed a Democratic bill to overhaul labor laws, to decry an “erosion in labor’s bargaining power,” saying a decline in unionization was in part because of wage stagnation for lower-income workers and a yawning income inequality gap. Yellen encouraged executives to embrace competition from abroad while vowing to create an even playing field for American companies. “Let others innovate and advance,” she said. “Let us seek to advance faster and further. We ultimately benefit from the positive spillovers of innovation, wherever it occurs.” Chamber CEO Suzanne Clark thanked Yellen for her candor, “It's always an honor to hear from the Treasury Secretary, including and maybe even especially when we disagree, as we do on taxes,” she said following Yellen’s remarks, arguing that while the Chamber strongly wants an infrastructure deal, “the data and the evidence are clear, the proposed tax increases would greatly disadvantage U.S. businesses and harm American workers, and now is certainly not the time to erect new barriers to economic recovery.” POLITICO

VP Harris Convenes First White House Labor Task Force Meeting With the goal of facilitating worker organizing and increasing union membership, Vice President Kamala Harris convened the first meeting of the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. Calling the administration “proudly pro-union,” Harris said the task force would look at ways to ensure that working people can organize and negotiate with employers. The task force, which includes more than 20 heads of agencies and Cabinet officials, including Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, is an effort by President Joe Biden to help reverse a nationwide decline in union membership and power. Story

Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA) released its’ annual economic impact study titled, “The Impact of Tort Costs and the Potential Benefits of Tort Reform in the United States.” They noted important findings of the report.

• Lawsuit abuse results in $160.1 billion in high tort costs. In other words, lawsuit abuse costs every American about $488 in a “tort tax.”
• These excessive costs have been highly destructive to American businesses and harmful to consumers, wiping out an estimated $435.6 billion in overall economic activity. This is equivalent to 1.2 percent of the overall U.S. economy.
• Tort costs impact 2,211,450 jobs across the country, with a loss of $143.8 million in wages and a $435.6 billion decrease in the economic pie.
• The federal government lost $29.5 billion in tax revenue thanks to tort costs. State and local governments lost $18.1 billion in tax revenues.