Thursday, August 15, 2024

PLAs Cost Taxpayers What? A new 35-page study by Rand estimates the effects of a project labor agreement (PLA) requiring union construction labor on the production costs of publicly funded permanent supportive housing projects aimed at addressing chronic homelessness in Los Angeles. The results indicate that the PLA added 21 percent to total development costs. Additional evidence presented suggests that longer project completion time is one potential mechanism driving this cost effect. Study

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BAHFA Decides, Not 2024 A Bay Area affordable housing bond of $20 billion to invest in producing and preserving affordable housing in the nine-county region had been proposed for the November 2024 ballot. But because this is California, state Senator Dave Cortese amended a bill to require PLAs on any construction using bond proceeds. WECA contacted Bay Area citizen groups and assisted in crafting a ballot opposition statement that was reportedly instrumental in the decision to drop the bond. Leaders of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority and the Association of Bay Area Governments issued a joint statement on removing it.

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Hawaii’s New “Captive Audience” Law: What Employers Need to Know Under current federal law, employers may legally require workers to attend meetings during working hours that concern the employer’s views on politics, religion, and similar matters. Hawaii recently joined several states, including Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New York, and Oregon, that have enacted laws restricting employers from requiring employees to attend such employer-sponsored meetings. Hawaii’s Captive Audience Prohibition Act, Senate Bill 2715 (SB 2715), went into effect July 2, 2024, and is codified in Hawaii Revised Statutes § 377-6. Learn More

But, you ask, why is a Hawaii law important to California, Utah, and Arizona contractors? Because California is poised to adopt its own bill to restrict the free-speech rights of employers. Senator Aisha Wahab (I bet readers remember that name) is the author of SB 399, which effectively prohibits any discussion of political matters in the workplace and is unnecessary in light of existing California and federal laws that protect employees from any coercion related to their political beliefs or activities outside the workplace. The bill is also opposed by a coalition of public employer associations led by the League of California Cities, which argues this bill “would treat many routine government functions as political matters and interfere with government operations” or “potentially be argued to be political, leading to costly disputes.”

The California Labor Federation and California Teamsters Public Affairs Council co-sponsored the bill. Despite the Legislative Analyst’s Office projecting that the General Fund faces a structural deficit in the tens of billions of dollars over the next several fiscal years, Democrats are expected to vote AYE if the bill comes off suspense.

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Illinois Makes Move to Ban Employer-Sponsored Meetings For over 75 years, the National Labor Relations Board and courts (including the U.S. Supreme Court) have held the right of employees to make informed choices about unions is best served when employers share competing information—the side of the story employees don’t typically hear when organizers are soliciting them to sign union cards, petitions, or cast a vote. On July 31, 2024, Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker signed into law Illinois Senate Bill 3649 (SB 3649). The new law is scheduled to take effect immediately and is aimed at prohibiting employers from discharging or disciplining employees who refuse to attend mandatory employer-sponsored meetings. Learn More

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Bill C-58’s Ban on Use of Replacement Workers in Strikes or Lockouts in Federally Regulated Workplaces to Become Effective on June 20, 2025 On June 20, 2024, Bill C-58, an Act to amend the Canada Labour Code and the Canada Industrial Relations Board Regulations, 2012 (Bill C-58) received Royal Assent. Bill C-58, which will go into effect on June 20, 2025, prohibits an employer from using the services of replacement workers to perform all or part of an employee's duties in the bargaining unit on strike or locked out in federally regulated workplaces, subject to exceptions. Once effective, the new law will influence how an employer in a federally regulated workplace conducts itself during strikes and lockouts.

Why do I care about Canada, besides being a beautiful country and a major trading partner of the USA? I haven’t decided who I am voting for in November, but I could envision a future Harris/Walz administration if the Democrats build a wave, take the House and Senate, and toss out the filibuster, where a bill like C-58 hits home. Learn More

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In Defense of Liberty, Jack Karlson, the Australian petty crook whose 1991 arrest outside a Chinese restaurant unexpectedly became one of the great viral clips of all time decades later, died recently at 82. If you’ve never seen his finest moment, take a second and do yourself a favor.

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This year, Proposition 5 is a constitutional amendment referred to on the ballot by lawmakers that would lower the threshold of voter backing necessary for cities and counties to pass bonds for public housing and infrastructure. In the past, the same number has been used for measures that would: Create an office of state corporations commissioner to oversee investment banks and stock brokers (1914, passed)...Impose a system of land-value taxation (1915, failed)...Create a state licensing board for chiropractors (1920, failed)...

Ban boxing and wrestling prizefights (1928, failed)...Provide pensions to state employees (1930, passed)...Legalize gambling on horse and dog racing (1932, failed)...Require Los Angeles and Orange County property assessors to reassess properties damaged in that year’s Long Beach Earthquake (1933, passed)...

Issue $5 million in bonds for an exhibition celebrating completion of the Boulder Dam (1936, failed)...Reinstate state employees and public officials who resigned their posts for military service (1944, passed)...Allow legislators to simultaneously sit on boards or commissions that fund state agencies (1950, failed)...Prohibit “subversive persons,” including those who endorse overthrow of the U.S. government, from holding any state job (1952, passed)...

Cap state legislators’ pay at the average salary of supervisors in the five most populous counties (1958, failed)...Require state Senate approval for the appointment of UC regents (1972, passed) ...Abolish the state inheritance tax (1982, passed)...Legalize tribal casinos and permit the state to sign gaming compacts with tribes (1998, passed)…Reduce penalties for marijuana possession and expand treatment rehabilitation programs for non-violent drug offenders (2008, failed)... Amend Prop 13 to allow seniors to transfer the assessed value of their home to a new property (2018, failed).

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association won the first round in a legal fight over the amendment’s ballot label. A Sacramento County judge ruled that the ballot description does not make it clear that the measure reduces the threshold to pass local housing bonds to 55 percent rather than raise it. Alas the appeals court rejected the trial courts decision and concluded the language needed no rewrite.

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Gavin Newsom’s Office Pays a Famed Photographer $200,000 a Year. Newsom has quietly hired a famed photographer—who has previously worked with Mark Zuckerberg, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—to burnish his man-about-the-state image. Charles Ommanney, a former photojournalist and war photographer who traveled with Newsom to China last fall as a freelancer, was on hand recently to capture Newsom in aviator sunglasses, jeans, and work gloves, picking up trash left over from a recently cleared homeless encampment in Los Angeles County. Late last month, he photographed the governor surveying the damage of the Borel Fire in Kern County.

This week, standing on the edge of a steep river embankment in a bright-white shirt, he pointed his lens at the governor as he collected items left behind in the San Fernando Valley encampment: a shopping cart, skateboard, soiled blankets, and tires.

The governor’s office named Ommanney its director of photography about six months ago. According to the state controller's office, the title comes with a $200,000 per year salary, which makes him among the top earners in the Newsom administration. The governor himself drew a $234,101 salary last year. Ommanney’s position is new for Newsom’s office, although his team points out that other governors use the role. It didn’t include an announcement, as the administration usually shares only new senior staff hires.

“Charles plays an instrumental role in communicating the work of state government across visual platforms—including social media, helping us meet Californians where they are at,” said Izzy Gardon, a Newsom spokesperson, in a statement to POLITICO.

The job makes sense for a governor with national ambitions and an affinity for developing his own media to tout his accomplishments. This year, instead of the traditional State of the State address before a live audience of lawmakers and journalists, Newsom’s office produced a slick video showing shots of the governor delivering his speech behind a podium cut together with relevant images. The address, released just ahead of President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate, leaned heavily into national issues and painted a dramatic picture that his team could easily broadcast to the national audience the speech seemed to target. The video featured some of Ommanney’s photos. Newsom hired the photographer full-time in January after he had worked freelance last year when he documented the governor’s trip to China.