Welcome to the June 12-16 edition of the NFIB California Main Street Minute from your small-business-advocacy team in Sacramento.

• Thursday, June 15, by midnight is when a new state budget for the 2023-2024 Fiscal Year is required by law. With both houses of the Legislature under one-party control by two-thirds majorities, it is highly unlikely the deadline will fail to be met.

• But don’t think that’s the end of things. What will follow, for an unspecified period, are all the budget trailer bills that will dot the I’s, cross the t’s, and make other adjustments to the state’s spending plan. Another reason why NFIB and other associations must keep an eternal eye on things.

• Click here for NFIB California’s latest update on the legislation we’re tracking. The list has grown by two bills to 49 total.

• NFIB is opposing Assembly Bill 421 (Bryan), which would require notifying the public that a petition circulator is receiving money or other valuable consideration for the purpose of soliciting signatures, and Senate Constitutional Amendment 7 (Umberg), which would ensure that all Californians have the right to join a union and to negotiate with their employers, through their legally chosen representative, and the right to protect their economic well-being and safety at work.

• AB 421 might, at first glance, appear to be a harmless good-government proposal, but that belies its insidious purpose to weaken the state’s referendum process that has been the one bulwark against the worst excesses of the most anti-business Legislature in history and a governor too often complicit for comfort. As we have mentioned in prior Main Street Minutes, progressives pulling the policy levers are still fuming over the use of a referendum to stop their wholesale seizure of all workplace decisions in fast-food restaurants.

• As for SCA 7, “California workers already have extensive rights to organize, unionize and collectively bargain for wages, hours, and working conditions under the federal NLRA, and the state ALRA, Rodda Act, Dills Act, Meyers-Milias-Brown Act, Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act, and many other public sector and child care worker collective bargaining statutes,” argues a letter of opposition from a business coalition NFIB is part of.

• At the end of the month, the California State Assembly will have a new speaker. In an intra-caucus deal, Democrat Anthony Rendon, who has been speaker since 2016, will yield the gavel to Robert Rivas, whose Monterey County-centered district will at least represent a shift in perspectives from a suburban Los Angeles County one to a farming community one. Neither lawmaker has a great NFIB voting record (Rendon, 18%, Rivas 20%) but even a two-point difference can matter in a vote here or there. NFIB congratulates Rivas on his ascension to the speakership and is ready to work with him on small-business issues of mutual concern.

• NFIB California’s occasional coalition partner CalTax is out with its latest look at the numbers.

• “During the first five months of the 2023-24 session, California lawmakers considered more than $196.3 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, a corporate tax increase that would make California’s rate the highest in the nation, and numerous fee increases. This figure includes all tax and fee legislation introduced from the beginning of the session through May 19, 2023.”

• A conversation with Democratic State Senator Angelique Ashby, whom NFIB endorsed for election last year.

• Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, discusses the resilience of Proposition 13 against efforts to eliminate or emasculate it.

• On June 7, NFIB sent letters of support to the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House for the Credit Card Competition Act of 2023, sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), and Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) and in the U.S House by Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX), Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). Read the press release here.

— NFIB President Brad Close participated in a press conference hosted by Senator Roger Marshall (KS) at the U.S. Capitol following the introduction of the legislation. Watch the video here.

• On June 7, NFIB-ID member Stephanie Camarillo, owner of Molly Maid of Boise and Treasure City, participated in a roundtable on business tax issues for the Senate Finance Committee and Senate Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee.

— Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Senator Todd Young (R-IN) lead the roundtable for Republicans and discussed Research & Development, Section 179 expensing, and the 20% Small Business Deduction (Section 199A, which expires at the end of 2025, NFIB’s top legislative priority).

— The Main Street Tax Certainty Act, which would make the 20% Small Business Deduction permanent, will be the other issue that NFIB members advocate for at the DC Fly-In this week.