A Legislative Update

Most contentious was the debate over AB 5 (Gonzalez), which marks a major shift on how employers classify workers as independent contractors or employees. While we advocated for a number of exemptions that were not included, we were successful on others — in particular, an exemption for AAA tow truck contractors. The Governor signed the bill this week. We will continue to advocate in 2020 for solutions for others, particularly with regard to the gig economy issue.

 

A major Chamber victory was the passage of SB 150 (Beall), which we co-sponsored along with John Burton Advocates for Youth. Recognizing the strong connection between our state’s ability to sustain a thriving economy and the educational success of our most vulnerable students, this bill aims to increase the rate of college success among California’s foster youth by improving access to the Chafee Grant program, which provides up to a maximum of $5,000 in state financial aid for current and former foster youth who are enrolled in a postsecondary education or training program.

 

Housing continues to dominate our priority list and while we had hoped for more success this year in policies that would help to achieve Gov. Newsom’s goal of 3.5 million units by 2025, there were a few bright spots. SB 330 (Skinner) would block local municipalities from downzoning or imposing new prohibitions on housing construction, while AB 1197 (Santiago) would enable Los Angeles to build homeless housing projects more expeditiously to address our homelessness crisis.

 

We will be spending the next month advocating the Governor’s team on our remaining bills. You can see our Legislative Status Report for a full list of legislation HERE.