Welcome to the April 17-21 edition of the NFIB California Main Street Minute from your NFIB small-business-advocacy team in Sacramento.

• NFIB California’s Small Business Day at the Capitol (to be held virtually) on Wednesday, April 19, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. is shaping up to be quite an event with the California State Treasurer and two legislative leaders as guests. Register here and invite a guest.

• Senate Bill 525 is the minimum wage bill to watch this session. It seeks to boost the starting wage for health-care workers to $25 an hour.

• But wait. It also “would require any ‘covered health care facility’ to pay a minimum of $25 an hour to all workers on their premises, regardless of employer. Beneficiaries would include nurses and caregivers, as well as housekeepers, security guards, groundskeepers, food preparers and even gift shop workers, so long as the services they provide directly or indirectly support patient care,” reports The Sacramento Bee.

• As odd of bedfellows as you’ll find, NFIB California and the California Nurses Association are both opposed to SB 525. “The nurses union argued that most registered nurses in California make more than $25 an hour, and a wage floor of $25 could tempt employers to actually decrease pay during contract bargaining,” reports The Bee. “According to the latest available data from the EDD, in the first quarter of 2022, the median wage for registered nurses in California was $62.43 an hour.”

• Sen. Maria Elena Durazo doesn’t have all her fellow Democrats on board with her legislation, either. Reports CalMatters, “Sen. Sen. John Laird, a Salinas Democrat, said he was concerned struggling rural hospitals could not afford the hike, pointing to the closure of the Madera hospital and the precarious financial status of several others. He noted hospitals in wealthy coastal communities in his district already pay at least $25 an hour.”

• SB 525 passed the Senate Labor, Public Employment, and Retirement Committee April 12 and now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

• “$30 an hour proposed for hotel, LAX workers”

• So ran the above headline in a Los Angeles Times story last Thursday (April 13).

• “Two city laws require larger hotels to pay more than $18 an hour to workers, higher than the city’s minimum wage of $16.04 … Hotels with a unionized workforce are expected to be exempt from paying the higher wage if workers agree in their contract to relinquish that opportunity.”

• The proposition boosting the state’s minimum-wage rate to $18 an hour was to have been on the 2022 ballot, but its backers missed by a day getting all the required signatures into the secretary of state’s office, so it was placed on the November 2024 ballot instead.

• But, given the madness mentioned above, will it have any relevance? Cities in California are already allowed to set their own minimum-wage rates. At $17.48 an hour, little Emeryville (across the bay from San Francisco) has the highest rate in the state, except for hotel workers in West Hollywood who start out making $17.64 an hour.

• There were 470 local ballot measures on the minimum wage in 2022, according to Swing Strategies, 70% of which passed. It will be interesting to see if backers yank their initiative from the 2024 ballot, which they have until next August to do.

• As a reminder, NFIB California has this single page of bulleted information on what the minimum wage really is, who earns it, and what raising it does NOT do. Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones also has an interesting take on the issue on the latest NFIB California podcast.

• The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is holding two “virtual community meetings to hear an overview of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program and provide input on potential future LCFS changes with CARB staff.” The meetings will be on May 2 and May 4 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. This link has more information and the registration links.

• Catch State Director John Kabateck’s comments on the results of NFIB’s latest Small Business Economic Trends Report (aka the Optimism Index) in the Lassen County News here.

• Last Tuesday (April 11), we released the latest Small Business Economic Trends report (aka the Optimism Index).

• Should you have missed it, we produced, on one graphically pleasing page, our problems with the White House’s proposed federal budget.