The California Legislature Reconvened on January 3 to Begin Second Half of Two-Year Session

The California Legislature reconvened on January 3, 2022, to begin the second half of a two-year session. Legislators faced a large stack of work left from the first half of the two-year session. More than 1,000 proposals introduced in 2021 were designated “two-year” bills and had a narrow window to be approved in their house of origin by the end of January. 

CLFP opposed several two-year bills that would have had an adverse impact on the food processing industry and stopped them from advancing to their second house. However, just because a two-year bill did not make the January 31 deadline for passage, does not preclude the bill from being reintroduced in 2022.

• AB 1400/ACA 11 (Kalra) – Government-Run Health Care. Would have penalized employers, eliminated individual choice, and resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes on all Californians and California businesses by creating a new single-payer government-run, multibillion-dollar health care system.

• AB 1192 (Kalra) – Public Shaming of Employers. Would have placed a new onerous administrative burden on employers by requiring annual reporting of wage and hour data and employees benefits on an employer’s entire United States workforce that would have publicly shame employers for lawful conduct by publishing that data on the Labor Development Workforce Agency’s website, and subjected employers to frivolous litigation and settlement demands. 

• AB 1119 (Wicks) – Expansion of Duty to Accommodate Employees and Litigation Under FEHA. Would have imposed new burdens on employers to accommodate any employee with family responsibilities, which would have essentially included a new, uncapped protected leave for employees to request time off and exposes employers to costly litigation under the Fair Employment and Housing Act that any adverse employment action was in relation to the employee’s family responsibilities, rather than a violation of employment policies.

Some priority legislation from 2021 that was passed to the second house before the end of last session remain in play in 2022.

• SB 54 (Allen) – Single-use Plastic Packaging/Products. Reintroduction of SB 54 (2019) increases the cost to manufacture and ship consumer products sold in California and could increase food waste by providing CalRecycle with broad authority to develop and impose new mandates on manufacturers of all single-use plastic packaging and certain single-use plastic consumer products under a compliance timeline that fails to address California's lack of recycling and composting infrastructure.

• SB 260 (Weiner) – Increased Regulatory Burden. Imposes a mandatory climate tracking, auditing, and cap on climate emissions that will fall heavily on all California businesses, impacting competitiveness and increasing costs.

The deadline for new 2022 bill introductions is February 17. CLFP staff is currently reviewing thousands of new bills to assess their impact on the food processing industry. Several of these new bill introductions are “spot bills” which contain non-substantive language until they are amended with substantive provisions. Below are some key bills and emerging issues: 

• AB 1620 (Aguiar-Curry) Broomrape Control Program. SUPPORT

• Warehouse facility buffer zone in undefined “sensitive land use” areas

• PFAS bans in products

• California Coast Keepers Alliance Legislative Priorities to establish CII Statewide Stormwater Order Permit for unregulated sources of stormwater pollution

• Climate Change/Carbon Neutrality Proposals

CLFP is also engaging on the Governor’s 2022-2023 Budget Proposal. The priority issues include an extension of COVID-19 paid sick leave, unemployment insurance, drought resiliency, and energy efficiency funding.

 • Paid Sick Leave – The Legislature approved the Governor’s proposal to extend the temporary sick leave benefit for COVID-related illnesses for another nine months. The benefit will apply again to employees who have contracted COVID-19, are subject to quarantine or isolation, as defined by state or federal authorities, are getting the vaccine or recovering from side effects, or who are caring for sick family members or children unable to attend school. The extension is retroactive to January 1 and will continue to September 30.

.• Unemployment Insurance – CLFP strongly supports the Governor’s budget proposal to help reduce the record debt in the state’s Unemployment Insurance (UI) Fund. The Governor is proposing that $3 billion be paid toward UI debt over two years, covering the state’s responsibility for distributing fraudulent payments, as well as a partial but meaningful portion of the UI Fund’s outstanding $19.7 billion insolvency.

• Drought Resiliency – CLFP staff is reviewing the Governor’s $750 million drought response spending proposal. The Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) and a number of agricultural interests believe that the Governor’s proposal does not address the immediate needs of the drought because it won’t result in an immediate increase in the water supply or in a reduction in water use. The LAO claims that the majority of the proposed activities would focus on longer term efforts that might improve the State’s and local communities’ abilities to respond to future droughts through infrastructure projects. Agricultural organizations agree with the LAO that more emphasis on capturing water during wet years and getting it into storage is the most effective way to address immediate drought needs and dry years in the future. CLFP is working with several agricultural organizations to collaborate on efforts in the budgetary process on this issue.

 • Energy Efficiency – CLFP strongly supports the Governor’s proposal to allocate $85 million to the Food Production Investment Program (FPIP). Established in 2018, FPIP encourages California food producers to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The program, administered by the California Energy Commission (CEC), has been a tremendous success. The program has received a total of $124 million in funding and has awarded over $100 million in grants to 28 food processing companies to fund 42 projects. The FPIP did not receive funding in the 2021-2022 Budget cycle. Given the proven success of the program and the continued need for new and innovative projects to reduce energy use and GHG emission, CLFP is in strong support of continuing the program. Several CLFP member companies have received grant funding from the program for a variety of projects.