"Job Killer" Bills Fail to Move

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Missed Deadline

The following "job killer" bills failed to pass the house in which they were introduced:

AB 10 (Alejo; D-Watsonville) Automatic Minimum Wage Increase. Creates uncertainty by imposing an automatic indexing of the minimum wage based on inflation whether or not California is in a recession and increases the minimum wage while California struggles to recover from the recession.

AB 59 (Swanson; D-Alameda) Family and Medical Leave Expansion. Creates an increased burden on employers and makes a California-only mandated benefit different than the federal family leave act by significantly expanding the category of individuals with serious health conditions for whom an employee can take a leave of absence. 

AB 400 (Ma; D-San Francisco) Paid Sick Leave Mandate. Unreasonably expands both public and private employers’ costs and liability by mandating employers to provide paid sick leave for employees.

AB 638 (Skinner; D-Berkeley) Increased Trans­portation Costs. Increases costs on consumers and business by mandating an unrealistic reduction of petroleum fuel consumption with an unrealistic increase in alternative fuel consumption to 15 percent below 2003 levels by 2020.

AB 832 (Ammiano; D-San Francisco) Back Door Tax Increase. Imposes a back door tax on software with a majority vote bill by making it virtually impossible for the owner to show that the software is eligible for a property tax exemption.

AB 1208 (C. Calderon; D-Montebello) Court Inefficiency. Creates uncertainty, inefficiency and unpredictability for litigants, further aggravating California’s reputation as a bad place to do business, by decentralizing control of trial court funds.

SB 129 (Leno; D-San Francisco) Employee Safety Risk. Undermines employers’ ability to provide a safe and drug-free workplace by establishing a protected classification for employees who utilize medical marijuana.

SB 237 (Wolk; D-Davis) Climate Change Tax Increase. Increases costs and discourages job growth by implementing unlimited fees and taxes under a cap-and-trade system.

SB 242 (Corbett; D-San Leandro) Technology Sector Liability. Worsens California’s reputation as a highly litigious state by exposing tech-sector employers to unlimited civil liability, and creates an unworkable regulatory scheme with which Internet companies must comply.

SB 246 (De León; D-Los Angeles) Discourages Emission Reductions. Prohibits finding the most cost effective ways to reduce emissions, creates uncertainty and significantly increases business costs by imposing new and excessively burdensome requirements on the development and use of compliance offsets in a cap-and-trade program under AB 32.

SB 653 (Steinberg; D-Sacramento) Multiple Tax Increases (see SBX1 23 in "New ‘Job Killer’ Bills" section below). Creates uncertainty by providing 58 counties and over 1,000 school districts, subject to voter approval, the authority to impose and/or increase a tax on all products and services.

SB 761 (Lowenthal; D-Long Beach) Regulatory Burden. Creates an unnecessary, unenforceable and unconstitutional regulatory burden on Internet commerce by indirectly regulating virtually all businesses that collect, use or store information from a website.

New ‘Job Killer’ Bills

SBX1 23 (Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review) was introduced on June 2 because SB 653 (Steinberg; D-Sacramento) failed to pass its house of origin on June 3. SBX1 23 is a mischaracterized "budget trailer bill" that is not necessary to implement the state budget. Rather, this bill creates uncertainty for taxpayers by providing 58 counties, over 70 community college districts, and over 1,000 school districts, subject to voter approval, the authority to impose and/or increase a local tax on all products and services.

SB 111 (Yee; D-San Francisco) New Lawsuits Against Small Business. Identified as a "job killer" bill on June 1, the bill could result in new shakedown lawsuits against business establishments by making it a strict liability violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act, subject to minimum damages of $4,000, if a business limits the use of a customer’s language, even if unintentionally. The bill is in the second house, set for hearing in the Assembly Judiciary Committee on June 14.

For updates on the remaining "job killer" bills, visit www.calchamber.com/jobkillers.