For the legislative and political week September 7-11
Happy Labor Day! Welcome to the September 7 issue of the NFIB California Main Street Minute from your small-business-advocacy team in Sacramento.
- Did Sen. Melissa Melendez capture the recently concluded legislative session in a word? Many understand her frustration.
- State Director John Kabateck met with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s senior business advisor and Small Business Advocate to discuss the signatures and vetoes small business would like to see on bills that made it to his desk.
- Still, he doesn’t believe the state’s chief executive can resist signing Senate Bill 1383 into law, which would require employers to grant 12 workweeks of leave time to care for a broader set of relatives and to hold open those jobs for leave-takers upon their return. Too much is politically at stake for the governor to do the right thing and veto the measure. By the way, the bill also applies to businesses with five or more employees, an untraditionally low threshold.
- One bill the governor has signed into law, which NFIB took no position on but has an interest in, is Assembly Bill 2257, which just gave more than a dozen previously classified independent contractors a get-out-of-the-AB 5-jail card. They can now merrily return to running around the fresh air of independent contracting freedom. A similar bill, AB 323, which would spring newspaper carriers from the state’s gulag, passed the Legislature but has yet to be acted by the governor.
- NFIB California has steadfastly opposed giving anyone occupation a free pass and has instead supported legislation giving all independent contractors back the freedom and flexibility they once enjoyed. The Supreme Court of California’s Dynamex decision made a mockery of our system of governance by determining what was rightfully the Legislature’s role to decide, and the Legislature has made its wildly flailing codification of the decision, via Assembly Bill 5, a joke, as each new classification exemption proves.
- Of course, that is not how AB 5’s author sees it, “Assemblywoman Gonzalez was clear that the application of a new employment test would require additional deliberation to work through the outstanding issues that remained following the court’s decision,” which is Latin for ‘we left ourselves an out for something we sensed we’d screw up.’
Politically
- NFIB California once again thanks U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta for talking to our members last Monday (August 31) as a wrap-up to NFIB’s first-ever “Virtual Fly-In” lobbying event with members of Congress. More than 125 NFIB California members participated – thank you for being heard.
- Last Thursday (September 3), the NFIB California PAC made its endorsement of Jordan Cunningham public. More endorsements of candidates and ballot measures to come in the weeks ahead.
Nationally
- When Congress returns from its Labor Day break, two huge priorities for NFIB will be securing a second round of PPP loan money, read letter here, and stopping the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, which would fund the Pentagon, from passing.
- SAY WHAT??!!
- Since when did NFIB involve itself in national defense issues? We haven’t before and hope to never again, but an amendment slipped into the Thornberry Act the Corporate Transparency Act, would be devastating for small business—an amendment that has nothing at all to do with defense. Remove it and NFIB will go back to taking no position on the defense bill. The high regard lawmakers nationally and in the states hold NFIB in, even the ones who don’t side with us, comes from our lobbying and commenting only on those issues affecting small business—not on every issue. Another reputation our state and federal lobbyists have is not easily being thrown off the scent of legislative legerdemain. Kudos to our Federal Government Relations team for doggedly pursuing the Corporate Transparency Act through the Congressional thicket.
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 September 14.
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