Key Bills Opposed by CLFP Stopped in Final Days of Legislative Session

The 2019-2020 California Legislative Session adjourned at midnight on August 31. CLFP was successful in helping to stop some of the bills it opposed in the final days and hours, while others made it out of the Legislature and are on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. Veto request letters have been sent on all CLFP opposed bills that moved out of the Legislature. Governor Gavin Newsom has until September 30 to sign or veto these bills.

Plastic Recycling Mandate Bill Stopped

Senate Bill 54 and Assembly Bill 1080, mirror bills that would have required single-use plastic packaging to be recyclable and compostable by 2030, as well as required onerous new recycling rates to be met, failed passage on the final few minutes of the legislative session on August 31.

CLFP and a large coalition strongly opposed these bills as they would have created an unworkable product regulation in California that would have increased the cost to manufacture and ship consumer products sold in California by providing CalRecycle with broad authority to develop and impose costly and unrealistic new mandates on manufacturers of all single-use packaging and certain single-use plastic consumer products. The bills requirements also would have created an unrealistic compliance time frame to implement these requirements and failed to address California’s lack of recycling and composting infrastructure.

This issue will resurface again in the 2021-2022 legislative session. CLFP will engage with stakeholders over the interim to hopefully develop a more workable proposal.

Ratepayer Funded Wildfire Prevention Bill Stopped

Assembly Bill 1659, which was amended in the final days of the legislative session and strongly opposed by CLFP and other ratepayer groups, failed to move out of the Legislature. The bill would have created a new $3 billion fund for “wildfire prevention” paid for by ratepayers.

Last year the Legislature enacted AB 1054, which authorized almost a $1 billion dollars in infrastructure improvements to be funded by a permanent, non-fixed volumetric charge to ratepayers. Ratepayers knew they would be paying for these rate increases for decades to come. However, California’s ratepayers reluctantly acquiesced to this substantial cost because it was directly tied to improvements in utility infrastructure that were to be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and necessary to address utility-caused wildfires. This bond will not be paid off, nor will charges be removed from ratepayers’ bills until the year 2035.

As a last-minute “gut and amend” with only five days left in the legislative session, AB 1659 would have created another $3 billion bond fund paid by ratepayers, which would not be paid off until the year 2050. Although some of the funding was directed toward the service territory of the state’s largest utilities, the proposed bond was not tied to utility infrastructure improvements to prevent wildfires, nor was it to be directed by the CPUC. Instead, the money would have been directed to various agencies and issues, including workforce development, the creation of career pathways to the air resources board for greenhouse gas reduction programs, cooling centers, water infrastructure upgrades and settlement of litigation with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Protected Family Leave – Passed to the Governor

Senate Bill 1383, which significantly burdens employers by requiring them to provide eligible employees with 12 weeks of mandatory family leave, passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk. SB 1383 allows this leave to be taken in increments of one to two hours and threatens employers with costly litigation if they make any mistake in implementing this leave.

CLFP and the business coalition argued that this 12-week leave of absence on employers cannot be viewed in isolation. It must be considered with regard to all of the other California-specific leaves. Even though the leave required in SB 1383 is unpaid, that does not mean the employer will not endure added costs. The leave is “protected,” meaning an employer must return the employee to the same position the employee had before going out on leave. This means holding a position open for three months or more.

The bill is enforced through a private right of action that includes compensatory damages, injunctive relief, declaratory relief, punitive damages, and attorney fees. Any employee who believes an employer did not properly administer the leave, interfered with the leave, or denied the leave, can file litigation.

The Governor has made it clear that this issue is a priority of his Administration and will most likely sign the bill.

Workers Compensation for COVID-19 – Passed to the Governor

Senate Bill 1159 passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk. CLFP opposed this bill as it establishes a largely unworkable rebuttable workers’ compensation presumption for COVID-19 that will “trigger on” based on the number of infections at a specific place of employment over a rolling 14-day period. The complexity of this presumption mechanism is overly complex and burdensome, will lead to litigation, increase costs across the entire workers’ compensation system and will be on the books for four years.

Reallocation of CPUC Energy Efficiency Funds – Passed to the Governor

CLFP opposed AB 841, which passed the Legislature and is on the Governor’s desk. The bill inappropriately strips funds from ratepayer-funded energy efficiency programs at the CPUC to pay for school infrastructure projects.

Ratepayers have been paying into these energy efficiency programs for years while developing projects that would qualify for funding under this program but would not have the opportunity to access a large portion of these funds going forward if AB 841 passes.

Further, the expansion of this program called for by the bill would result in approximately half a billion dollars in rate increases during a time when ratepayers can least afford it. California’s electricity rates are already, on average, more than double the national average and rising five times faster than other regions of the country. These high costs not only impact food processors and other businesses’ ability to compete in regional, national and international markets, but greatly harm employees and their families.