For the legislative and political week March 20-24
Welcome to the March 20-24 edition of the NFIB California Main Street Minute from your NFIB small-business-advocacy team in Sacramento.
Paid Leave for Any Reason
— None of the eight paid leave bills running through the legislative mill go quite as far as Illinois went last week, when its governor signed into law a measure granting paid leave for any reason.
— February 17 was the deadline in the California Legislature to introduce bills, but take no comfort in that because of something called gut-and-replace. So, will California follow Illinois, Maine, and Nevada in leaping over illness as a reason for paid leave and into the land of no reason needed at all?
— Right now, NFIB is lobbying against two bills that would stretch the boundaries of paid leave definitions: Assembly Bill 518 “would expand eligibility for benefits under the paid family leave program to include individuals who take time off work to care for a seriously ill individual related by blood or whose association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship” and Assembly Bill 524, which would prohibit employment discrimination on account of family caregiver status and would enshrine family caregiver status as a civil right. NFIB is part of a coalition that sent this letter of opposition to AB 524 to the Assembly Judiciary Committee. (Bolded text by NFIB)
— NFIB will forever point out that the best leave policies, paid or unpaid and for whatever reason, are made by the mutual consent of employees who know what they truly need and employers who know what they can truly accommodate. Government mandates only muddy the situation to neither’s benefit.
— Pre-pandemic, NFIB conducted an extensive poll of its membership and, among other things, found that, “The vast majority of small employers (73%) offer paid time off (PTO) to the majority of their full-time employees, and 67 percent of them offer two week or more of leave. The number of days offered is dependent on an employee’s length of service in 76 percent of small businesses offering the benefit.”
— Those percentages may have changed post-pandemic but then so too have the percentages of employers unable to fill the job openings they have (at historic highs) and the percentages of employers still in business. You cannot derive a benefit from a job you don’t have from an employer no longer in business. A government mandate cannot change that. Click here for the latest Talking Points Memorandum on paid leave.
Speaking of Bills …
— Click here for the current list of bills NFIB California is either supporting or opposing as of this Main Street Minute date, a list that will evolve over time as legislation fails or passes and lobbying priorities are directed elsewhere.
— Also, of the 2,800 bills introduced in this new session, 1,026 are non-substantive or, in legislative parlance, ‘spot bills,’ stating the “intent” of the Legislature to do something.
— Assembly Bill 1690 is an example of a spot bill. Whereas last session’s attempt to saddle California with the most far-reaching universal health care scheme in the nation eventually failed, Assembly member Ash Kalra, sensing he bit off more than he could chew, toned it down and came back this session with a proposal simply stating it “the intent of the Legislature to guarantee accessible, affordable, equitable, and high-quality health care for all Californians through a comprehensive universal single-payer health care program …”
— Given this Legislature’s disregard for small business, NFIB is quite happy to have as many of its proposals be intentions rather than real law punishments.
Quite a Tab Lawmakers Want to Stick You With
— “During the first three months of the 2023-24 session, California lawmakers have considered more than $185.6 billion in new taxes and fees, including a ‘wealth tax,’ a government-run health care system that would require hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes, a tax on oil company earnings, and a slew of fee increases. This figure includes all tax and fee legislation introduced from the beginning of the session through this report’s publication date.” So wrote the California Tax Foundation (CalTax) in its March 16 Tax and Fee Report.
Need to see Your Assembly Member or Senator?
— All of them, presumably, will be back in their districts March 30 through April 10 when the Legislature will be in Spring Recess.
Circle the Date
— NFIB California’s annual Small Business Day at the Capitol will be a virtual event this year on April 19. Already, we have California State Treasurer Fiona Ma and Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher confirmed. Some of the issues to be discussed include retail theft, frivolous lawsuits, minimum wage, and the California Air Resources Board’s sweeping energy mandates.
National
Highlights from NFIB Legislative Program Manager Caitlin Lanzara’s weekly report
— On March 16, NFIB sent a Key Vote letter in support of H.J.Res. 27, the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution of disapproval for the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) final rule. The vote hasn’t occurred yet but is expected in the near future. H.J.Res. 27 will be the first Senate Key Vote for 118th Congress.
o To learn more about NFIB’s Key Vote process, visit NFIB.com/VoteReport.
— On March 16, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) highlighted his remarks concerning burdensome federal regulations, citing NFIB in a press release: “[The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposed rule requiring reporting on greenhouse gas emissions] is not only impractical – it’s unclear how contractors would even begin to gauge emissions over which they have no control – but it’s likely to be both costly and burdensome. By the government’s own reckoning the rule would cost affected small businesses more than $600 million over its first 10 years, and the National Federation of Independent Business notes that the actual cost is likely to be much higher.”
Next Main Street Minute March 27.
