California legislators return to the State Capitol today to face a busy agenda with just four weeks left before their interim recess.
Hearing schedules for the Senate and Assembly Appropriations committees list dozens of pending bills that the California Chamber of Commerce is tracking on behalf of our members and the business community.
Bills on the Senate Appropriations schedule for today include a CalChamber-supported Cost Cutter establishing a state-funded program to help small businesses recover from economic or operational disruptions due to local or state emergencies, AB 265 (Caloza; D-Los Angeles).
Also on the Senate Appropriations calendar are a few of the CalChamber-opposed Cost Driver bills that remain undecided:
• AB 446 (Ward; D-San Diego), which would burden customer reward programs with a new private right of action.
• AB 858 (Lee; D-San Jose), an onerous return to work mandate.
• AB 1018 (Bauer-Kahan; D-Orinda), sharply limiting the use of automated decision systems, including by small businesses.
• AB 1234 (Ortega; D-San Leandro), creating a new penalty and revising wage claim procedures.
• AB 1331 (Elhawary; D-Los Angeles), restricting workplace safety and security tools.
CalChamber priority bills on the Assembly Appropriations agenda for Wednesday, August 20 include three CalChamber-opposed Cost Drivers:
• SB 7 (McNerney; D-Pleasanton), imposing impractical requirements on employers of every size restricting the use of automated decision systems in employment.
• SB 295 (Hurtado; D-Bakersfield), prohibiting a person from using or distributing pricing algorithms that use, incorporate, or were trained on “nonpublic competitor data.”
• SB 384 (Wahab; D-Hayward), prohibiting the use of technology to help set prices or help manage supply levels.
See the CalChamber status update report in the August 15 Alert newsletter for a more comprehensive list of major bills for California employers.
