For the legislative and political week July 27-31
Welcome to the July 27 issue of the NFIB California Main Street Minute from your small-business-advocacy team in Sacramento.
- Assembly Bill 1035, which NFIB CA co-sponsored and would have provided some small businesses with liability protection against nearly unprovable COVID-19 lawsuits, is effectively dead for the year after the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 25 decided against holding a hearing on it.
- NFIB intends to have a call with bill authors to consider it a pause and not an end. If Congress fails to provide relief, NFIB will push for reintroduction and have more data to share on need.
- The Legislature commences work today (July 27) and will adjourn for the year on August 31. For the Senate, that means allowing remote voting.
- The California Department of Public Health last week released a 31-page, COVID 19 Employer Playbook for a Safe Reopening.
- Last Thursday, State Director John Kabateck testified before the State Board of Equalization at an informational hearing about Proposition 15, the “split roll” initiative on the November ballot pushed by labor unions to raise commercial and industrial property taxes. Kabateck made it clear that most small businesses (78%) rent their property, and the higher taxes will be passed on to our members and ultimately consumers – or result in job loss – which would be more devastation during this COVID-19 era. Read Kabateck’s full testimony here.
- Keep a close eye on Proposition 24, the souped-up consumer privacy initiative on this November’s ballot. The ACLU of California and other groups not usually found wading around in small-business waters have joined the cause to defeat the proposition. Reports Politico, “If Proposition 24 REALLY strengthened privacy provisions, we’d fight for it,” reads a ballot argument published Tuesday and signed by the ACLU, California Alliance for Retired Americans and Color of Change. “But the truth is, its 52 pages are full of giveaways to social media and tech giants.”
- In the same Politico story, State Director John Kabateck said the increased opposition is “validating for us to see the consumer groups so vehemently opposed because it underscored what we had been saying from the start, that all of this privacy policy has moved with lightning speed … raising ‘grave concerns’ about changing a privacy law that fully took effect just this month.”
Nationally
- This Wednesday’s webinar, July 29, will feature special guest Bridget Weston, CEO of SCORE, a mentoring service, who will discuss SCORE, updates on the EIDL and PPP loans, and paid leave reimbursement. Weston will join NFIB’s Holly Wade and Beth Milito to discuss the free business resources available through SCORE, and also reimbursement for paid sick and family leave, loans, and what’s next for small business financial assistance. Register here.
- So, why is NFIB sticking its nose into the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021? After all, NFIB’s reputation with lawmakers rests on the high regard in which it’s held for speaking only on those issues directly related to small business. Were the defense act just that, NFIB would probably not be commenting on it at all. But someone decided to amend the Act to include the text from the Corporate Transparency Act, and that Act definitely affects small business.
- In a letter to U.S. House members, Kevin Kuhlman, NFIB’s vice president of federal government relations, wrote, “This amendment would saddle America’s smallest businesses with 131.7 million new paperwork hours at a cost of $5.7 billion, and treats small business owners as criminals by threatening them with jail time and oppressive fines for paperwork violations.1 The amendment also puts the personal information of small business owners at serious risk. The Corporate Transparency Act of 2019 requires small businesses with 20 or fewer employees to file new reports with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) containing the personally identifiable information of businesses’ beneficial owners and update that information every year.”
- NFIB successfully kept similar language out of the U.S. Senate’s defense authorization act and will keep up the fight in the House version.
NFIB California Main Street Minutes are published every Monday on the NFIB California webpage. Two additional updates are published the first and third Thursday of each month for inclusion in the bi-monthly newsletters to the membership. Next California Main Street Minute is August 3.
