Welcome to the August 21-25 edition of the Main Street Minute from your small-business-advocacy team in Sacramento.

• Capitol observers are saying it will be any day now when legislators find a bill they can gut and amend and replace with text allowing striking workers to collect unemployment benefits. Time is of the essence, because September 14 is the adjournment date for the 2023 session.

• NFIB and its coalition partners are ready to fight tooth and nail against the audacious and outrageous proposal by reminding lawmakers that unemployment benefits are for those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Striking workers choose to leave their job. Further, the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund is insolvent. The only way to add new UI recipients would be to tax small business owners more.

• NFIB members are asked to keep a sharp eye on their inboxes this week for an Action Alert NFIB will send asking you to register your extreme displeasure with your Assemblymember and Senator once the bill number is known.

• This week will be an important one for another reason. With an end-of-session deadline looming, bills on the ‘suspense files’ of the appropriations committees of the Assembly and Senate will either be released to continue their legislative journey or left to die a quiet death.

• As a reminder, suspense file actions leave no fingerprints.

• There are some hugely important measures that will either languish or spring back to life, including bills raising the minimum wage for health-care workers, increasing paid time off, and others slanting the labor code in favor of employees—much more than it already is—just to name a few.

• There are 13 bills of the 54 bills NFIB is tracking currently on suspense. They are highlighted in red in this bill report on the 54 measures. A list, by the way, that has grown by two since the last Main Street Minute – two that we’re supporting. They are:

— AB 258 (Reyes) – Existing law sets out certain provisions for the Office of Small Business Advocated within the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz). This bill would recast those provisions concerning the advocate’s responsibility to post the above-described information on the Go-Biz internet website or the advocate’s website, and would instead require the advocate to establish on the GO-Biz or advocate’s internet website an internet web portal entitled “The Front Door.” Status: On Senate Appropriations suspense file.

— AB 1198 (Grayson) — This bill would require the Energy Unit [with the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz)] to identify, among other things, nonratepayer-funded energy industry resources, including grants, tax credits, loans, and technical assistance, across local, state, and federal departments and agencies that are available to assist businesses and workers in the transition to a net-zero-powered economy. Status: In Senate Appropriations Committee.

• Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1 would cut from two-thirds to 55% the voter threshold needed to pass local special taxes for various projects. More about ACA 1 can be found in NFIB’s bill list above.

• NFIB California is part of a coalition of 45 business groups that sent this joint letter of opposition to ACA 1 to members of the Assembly Appropriations committee.

— “It is important to improve infrastructure and increase housing availability, but higher taxes on working Californians run counter to the goal of making the state more affordable for all. We, therefore, must regretfully oppose ACA 1,” said the letter.

• State Director John Kabateck sat down with the Knuckleheads of Liberty, libertarian podcasters, to discuss the California business climate.

• Congress is on summer recess.