NFIB California Main Street Minute

Date: August 15, 2022

For the legislative and political week August 15-19

Welcome to the August 15-19 edition of the NFIB California Main Street Minute from your NFIB small-business-advocacy team in Sacramento. 

Topline

  • The Assembly and Senate appropriations committees’ suspense file date has passed, freeing some bills for a final floor vote and killing others from advancing.

  • NFIB continues into the third week of its CARB campaign to alert members about the board’s 2022 scoping plan. 

The Suspense is Over

  • The suspense, which allows lawmakers to kill or pass bills without a recorded vote being taken, was unsuspended on Thursday, August 11, by the Senate and Assembly appropriations committees.

  • First, the bad news. Of the 15 bills of small-business importance, 12 that NFIB would have preferred to have died, instead, passed and are now on the Assembly or Senate floors for a final vote before going to the governor’s desk.

  • The lone measure NFIB supported also passed. One bill NFIB was happy to see fail to make it past suspense dealt with plastic waste. Another bill had been neutered before the suspense file date. One bill was removed as a concern and replaced with another that was taken off the inactive file and amended.

  • Click here for a list of the 15 bills and a brief description of them and their status. The Legislature adjourns for the rest of the year on August 31.

NFIB’s CARB Campaign Continues

  • Last week was the second week in a row of NFIB’s social media campaign to rally its members to get their stories told about how the California Air Resources Board’s 2022 Scoping Plan, the most far-reaching regulation ever, would affect their businesses.

  • As of last Friday (August 13), the social media campaign had made just under 15 million online impressions. It will continue for the rest of the month. Readers wanting to click the social media ad were driven to this landing page to learn more information.

  • To complement the social media effort, NFIB last Monday (August 8) sent an Action Alert to the entire membership eliciting its participation. If you haven’t told your story yet, you can do so here. Time is of the essence. The CARB staff is finalizing the regulation to present to the board sometime in October.
  • Is it having an effect? Yes. It is. At an August 11 Zoom meeting with NFIB California State Director John Kabateck and other business leaders, CARB Chairwoman Liane Randolph and Acting Small Business Ombudsman Judy Nottoli requested continued dialogue with Kabateck and small-business owners. Kabateck reiterated the three Cs small businesses were looking for: cost, compliance, and capacity.

Speaking of the Climate

  • On Friday (August 12), Gov. Gavin Newsom released another climate action plan he wants the Legislature to implement. It’s not in bill form yet and lawmakers plan to vamoose in a couple of weeks and not return until January when a new Legislature opens for business.
     
  • The plan basically calls for moving up goals, such as raising the 2030 target on greenhouse gases from 40 percent below 1990 levels to 55 percent below. Reports Politico California, “The language creates clean electricity targets of 90 percent by 2035 and 95 percent by 2040, with the goal of 100 percent clean electricity retail sales by 2045 … Newsom and lawmakers remain in talks to solidify legislation in the final weeks of the session. The language introduced by the governor on Friday has not yet been introduced by a legislator.”

NFIB California in the News

  • In a story on California’s unemployment insurance debt reported by The Center Square and published by its subscribing media throughout California, State Director John Kabateck points out that “For a small business, even a few $100 out of their pocket to help pay down a debt they didn’t create can be massive and damaging for them.”

National

Highlights of the week.

  • Last Tuesday, NFIB released its monthly Small Business Economic Trends report (aka the Optimism Index) showing “Thirty-seven percent of small business owners reported that inflation was their single most important problem in operating their business, an increase of three points from June and the highest level since the fourth quarter of 1979.”

  • On Friday (August 12), Kevin Kuhlman, NFIB vice president of federal government relations, released this statement on U.S. House passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, part of which said, “While the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 doesn’t include a direct tax on small businesses, it includes components that are concerning for owners, specifically the new IRS enforcement that could negatively impact law-abiding small business owners.”

  • Farewell, Karen. NFIB California wishes the always professional and accessible Karen Harned the very best of luck in her new endeavor. “I am starting my own small business providing legal, regulatory, and communications consulting services to anyone who will hire me.” she said in a farewell email to colleagues. Harned has led NFIB’s Legal Center for the past 20 years. Her new contact information is: Karen R. Harned, President, Harned Strategies LLC, (202) 886-4651, [email protected].

Next Main Street Minute August 22.

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