AB 1868 (Wagner): Regulatory Actions Support: Requires agencies to submit proposed regulations to the Legislature for review.

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2 The Good Bills AB 12 (Cooley): Agency Review of Regulations Support: Requires all agencies to do a full review of their regulations to see if they are outdated, too costly, or overlap with other rules. Such a full-scale review has not happened in decades. AB 1868 (Wagner): Regulatory Actions Support: Requires agencies to submit proposed regulations to the Legislature for review. AB 1948 (Wagner): Employee Break Penalties Support: Employers must pay an additional hour of pay to employees who miss their work break, but they also face other civil and criminal penalties. This bill would make the extra pay the only penalty for employers. Asm Labor Committee. AB 2066 (Lackey): Fuels Under the Cap Notice Support: Requires new added fuel costs incurred by cap and trade to be included on the list of fuel taxes at the pump. AB 2465 (Grove): Private Attorneys General Act Reform Support: Will reduce frivolous employee lawsuits by requiring the Labor and Workforce Development Agency to review potential claims for merit before any legal action can proceed. AB 2476 (Daly): Notification of Proposed Parcel Taxes Support: Requires a notification by a local government to property owners who would be affected by a proposed local parcel tax before it is voted on. AB 2582 (Maienschein): Disabled Tax Credit Support: Creates a tax credit for employers who pay disabled employees more than the special minimum wage. AB 2625 (Lopez): Minimum Franchise Tax Support: California s $800 minimum franchise (i.e. business) tax is the highest in the nation. This bill reduces the tax on a sliding scale to as little as $200 for micro-businesses (those with five or fewer employees). AB 2807 (Mayes): Minimum Franchise Tax Support: Reduces the minimum franchise tax to $700. SB 269 (Roth): ADA Reform Support: This is a reintroduction of last year s SB 251, which was vetoed by the Governor because it included a tax credit. This bill allows a chance to fix ADA compliance issues before a suit can be filed for small businesses that hired a Certified Access Specialist to inspect their facilities. It also allows all small businesses to fix basic issues like signage and warning strips without penalty. SB 1142 (Moorlach): ADA Reform Support: Allows 120 days for small businesses to fix ADA compliance issues without being sued. 1

3 SB 1228 (Runner): California Small Business Regulatory Fairness Act Support: Requires agencies to assist small businesses with complying with regulations. Also requires agencies to create guidelines for reducing or waiving penalties based on certain criteria, including equity and fairness, with a 30-day warning grace period for compliance if small a small business was unaware of a regulation or violation is not serious. SB 1349 (Hertzberg): Campaign Transparency Support: Requires the Secretary of State to create an online searchable database for independent expenditure contributors to disclose donations and expenditures. The Bad Bills AB 1550 (Gonzalez): Greenhouse Gas Revenues Oppose: Requires 25% of greenhouse gas revenues to be spent on disadvantaged communities and 25% to be spent on lowincome households. This is another example of money being spent on things outside of what was intended. AB 1643 (Gonzalez): Workers Compensation Oppose: This bill sets a huge precedent by barring specific factors from being considered as pre-existing conditions when a workers comp settlement is being negotiated. Specifically, pregnancy, osteoporosis, menopause, carpal tunnel syndrome, and psychiatric injury cannot be considered as contributing to a workplace injury. This is a Pandora s Box and will result in more expensive claims. AB 1676 (Campos): Employee Wages Oppose: Prohibits employers from asking applicants about their salary history. It effectively eliminates the ability of an employer to negotiate wages, and creates a new cause of action for lawsuits. It also requires employers to provide a pay scale for a position upon request. AB 1732 (Ting): Gender Neutral Single Occupant Restrooms Oppose: A nanny government bill that requires businesses with single occupant restrooms to make them gender neutral. AB 2782 (Bloom): Sweetened Beverage Tax Oppose: Imposes a two cents per ounce tax on sweetened beverages to combat obesity. It is nanny government singling out a product despite evidence that other factors play a much larger role, including inactivity. SB 899 (Hueso): Gender Pricing Oppose: Requires retailers and grocers to disclose price differences for products based on gender, and prohibits discrimination in prices. SB 1167 (Leyva): Indoor Heat Injuries Oppose: Creates new rules regarding heat injury for indoor workers, with new liabilities for employers. It is unnecessary as current law already covers it. 2

4 The Ugly Bills AB 2121 (Gonzalez): Mandatory Restaurant Alcohol Training Oppose: Requires restaurants and bars to give their service employees expensive mandatory training on the regulations and health impacts of alcohol. It would create new legal liability and the potential for huge lawsuits. AB 2459 (McCarty): Gun Dealer Liability Oppose: A bad precedent-setting bill that requires gun dealers to purchase a $1 million insurance policy for damage, injury, or death resulting from the legal sale of firearms. It also requires them to have 24/7 high definition video of their entire premises, with clear facial recording of anyone purchasing guns or ammunition. It also prohibits gun dealers from having a home-based business. AB 2667 (Thurmond): Arbitration Agreements Oppose: Prohibits arbitration agreements that waive the ability to pursue civil rights violations. This is in conflict with established federal law and legal rulings of the United States and California Supreme Courts, and will lead to costly litigation. AB 2757 (Gonzalez, Bonta, et al): Agricultural Employees Oppose: Eliminates the longstanding exemption for agricultural employees from work hours, rest breaks, and other working conditions. Subjects farmers to new legal liabilities and labor lawsuits. It will force farmers to cut employee hours to avoid overtime. ACA 4 (Frazier): Local Tax Increases Oppose: Lowers the vote threshold required to raise local taxes from 2/3 to 55%, making it much easier for local governments to pass a whole lot of taxes. This is a constitutional amendment and does not have to meet the deadlines. SB 3 (Leno): Minimum Wage Increase Oppose: Raises the minimum wage to $11/hour on January 1, 2016, and again to $13/hour by July 1, After January 1, 2019, it requires an annual increase based on inflation, but prohibits any future decreases. This is another $3/hour over the last increase that was just passed, and will add another $7,500 annually to a full-time minimum wage worker s employer costs. This is on top of the $5,000 added by AB 10 in 2013 for a whopping total of $12,500 per employee in new costs. That s $125,000 for a small business with 10 minimum wage employees! Let s not forget that CA law requires exempt employees to make twice what a full-time MW employee makes that s a $10/hour increase. **Signed into law by Governor Brown. SB 32 (Pavley): Global Warming Solutions Act Oppose: Extends AB 32 by requiring further greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030; the current law is a reduction to 1990 levels by The Act gives unfettered powers to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to take any steps deemed necessary to reduce GHG s, and this bill extends this authority without any consideration for impacts on businesses. 3

5 SB 878 (Leyva): Predictive Scheduling Oppose: Requires all grocery and retail stores, and all restaurants, to post a 21-day schedule seven days in advance of employee shifts. Imposes modification pay penalties for any shift changes within the seven day notice period, and increasing greatly when a change is within 24 hours. It will result in employees not getting extra hours or being able to swap shifts as the employer may be penalized, resulting in little flexibility and hurting the employees. SB 1093 (Hancock/Mitchell): Split Roll Property Tax Oppose: Implements the business property tax increase in SCA 5 (see below). SB 1161 (Allen): California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act Oppose: Changes the statute of limitations to 30 years, retroactively, for lawsuits for unfair competition practices committed by entities that have deceived, confused, or misled the public on the risks of climate change or financially supported activities that have deceived, confused, or misled the public on those risks. This bill would allow someone to go back 30 years and sue a business for denying anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming. SB 1166 (Jackson): Parental Leave Oppose: Under current law, businesses with 50 or more employees must provide protected family leave for multiple reasons. This bill will require business with five or more employees to allow their employees to take up to 12 weeks of protected leave (they must preserve their job position) for the birth or adoption of a child. For businesses with 50+ employees, they can take up to 24 weeks. Under the bill, this would apply to an employee who only worked one hour on one day. This will create a hardship for small businesses struggling with a small staff. SB 1383 (Lara): Short-Lived Greenhouse Gas Reduction Oppose: Mandates a 40% reduction in methane and hydrofluorocarbon gases, and a 50% reduction in anthropogenic black carbon gas (a precursor to methane) to below 2013 levels by This will destroy California s dairy industry and will hurt manufacturing by creating an arbitrary, unattainable limit on natural gases that dissipate quickly. SB 1387 (de Leon): South Coast Air Quality Management District Board Oppose: Adds three more state-level appointed positions to the regional air quality board in an effort to shift local control over air quality management to Sacramento. It prohibits legislative appointments from being local elected officials. The SCAQMD is responsible for reducing regional pollution from stationary sources, while the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulates moving sources (i.e. vehicles), and has been effective with a market-based approach. This bill would grant authority to CARB to make changes to SCAQMD s plans, effectively taking over their local authority. SB 1387 is simply a revenge bill against SCAQMD for firing its Executive Officer. 4

6 SB 1445 (Hertzberg): Sales Tax on Services Oppose: This bill is another attempt to impose a sales tax on services. This would hurt small businesses by requiring them to collect new taxes, and when they purchase services like hiring an accountant, attorney, or janitor. **SCA 5 (Hancock/Mitchell): Split Roll Property Tax Oppose: This bill completely undermines Proposition 13 by requiring all business properties to be reassessed annually, resulting in new baselines each year and consequently huge tax increases for business owners. This will even impact businesses who lease their property. This measure would exempt from taxation an amount up to $500,000 of tangible personal property used exclusively for business purposes (i.e. business equipment). A report from Pepperdine University's Davenport Institute reveals that taxing commercial and industrial property without Proposition 13's protections would result in $71.8 billion in reduced economic activity and a loss of 398,345 jobs over the first five years, with impacts increasing over time. This is a constitutional amendment and does not have to meet the deadlines. Special Session SB 1X 1 (Beall): Transportation Tax Increases Oppose: Adds 12 cents/gallon to the gas tax, 22 cents/gallon to the diesel tax, $35 to the vehicle registration fee, and another $35 to registration for a road access charge. It also adds $100 to the registration for zero-emission cars. 5