Web Version [link removed] | Update Preferences [link removed] CBRT in the News POLITICO: California Playbook December 17, 2019

THE BUZZ — BATTLE FOR BUCKS: Preparing for a fierce battle over what’s expected to be the priciest measure on the 2020 ballot, the business-led effort to “Fight for Prop. 13” has already enlisted some unusual soldiers: high-profile Democrats associated with progressive causes.

Glossy ads, starring endorsers like former Democratic Senate Pro Tem Don Perata and former SF Supervisor and civil rights leader Amos Brown of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church, have already hit mailboxes of voters around the state. And business leaders say the mailers are just part of the first salvos to challenge efforts to revise Prop. 13 — the landmark 1978 property tax measure — to allow for reassessment of commercial property.

“We are doing what we need to do to get factual information to the voters,’’ Rob Lapsley, president of the nonpartisan California Business Roundtable, told POLITICO Monday. His organization has been leading the charge to beat back efforts supporting “split roll” revisions of Prop. 13, and now, “we're going to have an incredible debate,’’ he says.

Read More [[link removed]] Business Climate and Job Creation Fed's Bullard Sees No Reason Now To Change Rates in 2020

One of the Federal Reserve’s strongest advocates of lowering interest rates in 2019 is content to keep them steady for now.

“I penciled in no rate increases for 2020,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “That’s appropriate in this environment. We made a fairly big adjustment to policy during 2019. Now, we should wait and see what the effects are in 2020 and see how the data come in, in the coming year.”

Mr. Bullard is upbeat about the year ahead and sees a pretty high bar to changing monetary policy. He said trade uncertainties are waning and firms are learning to operate in an unsettled environment that is likely to persist for some time.

He said he would want to see more inflation before he would call for rate increase. And he added, “I’m not putting a lot of weight” on the idea that inflation is going to be particularly high anytime soon.

Read More [[link removed]] The Demographic Threat To America’s Jobs Boom

The U.S. job market continues to blow through expectations, generating 200,000 new jobs month after month and driving unemployment far below what economists thought a decade ago was the lowest possible level.

The main reason is that the economy tends to keep creating jobs until interrupted by a recession. The current expansion has now lasted a record 10-plus years. So long as the usual recession triggers—rising inflation and interest rates, or financial excess—remain absent, job creation should continue.

Yet eventually it will hit a constraint: The U.S. will run out of people to join the workforce. Indeed, this bright cyclical picture for the labor market is on a collision course with a dimming demographic outlook. While jobs are growing faster than expected, population is growing more slowly. In July of last year, the U.S. population stood at 327 million, 2.1 million fewer than the Census Bureau predicted in 2014 and 7.8 million fewer than it predicted in 2008. (Figures for 2019 will be released at the end of the month.)

Read More [[link removed]] U.S. Home Sales Pick Up In Second Half Of Year, Aided By Low Rate

U.S. home sales are picking up in the second half of the year, a sign that low mortgage rates and a solid economy are helping to heat up the once-sluggish housing market going into next year.

Existing-home sales were up 2.7% in November from a year earlier, the fifth straight month of year-over-year gains, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.

While home sales were down 1.7% compared with October at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.35 million, economists said there are fresh signs that buyers are becoming more confident after a lethargic first half of the year. Sales sputtered through most of the spring selling season, when activity is normally high, falling annually every month until the summer.

Read More [[link removed]] Southern California Housing Market Is Heating Up. Median Price Rises 5.6%

After a sluggish start to 2019, the Southern California housing market is ending the year on an upswing.

The median home price for the six counties rose by 5.6% in November from a year earlier, to an all-time high of $549,000, according to data from DQNews. The percentage increase was also the largest in 15 months.

Sales, meanwhile, also rose 5.6% — the third consecutive increase.

“The California housing market will likely wrap up 2019 in slightly better shape than previously thought,” Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist at the California Assn. of Realtors, said in a recent statement.

Indeed, the warming housing market follows a slowdown that economists and real estate agents blamed on the lack of affordable housing after years of sharp price gains.

But as incomes have risen and mortgage rates have dropped, the market has shown signs up turning around.

Read More [[link removed]] Supporters Of Prop. 13 Make Case To Keep It As It Is, Have Gathered More Than 200,000 Signed Petitions

Supporters of a measure that limits property tax across the state have gathered more than 200,000 signed petitions in an attempt to educate others about the initiative.

Currently, Proposition 13 limits how much homeowners and businesses in California can be taxed for property tax. It’s capped at 2 percent each year, which means there’s a control on any increases. It’s giving homeowners and business owners stability when it comes to their budgets.

Jason Paguio, president and CEO of the Asian Business Association of San Diego, said voters “need to understand what their costs are every single day. A slight increase if it’s unpredictable is going to affect who they employ or the prices that get passed down to the consumer.”

Read More [[link removed]] California Businesses Breathe Sigh Of Relief Over Deal To Update NAFTA Trade Pact

There is little overall difference between the old North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trump administration’s replacement. But California businesses are just relieved to finally have some certainty they can plan around.

Selwyn Joffe, chief executive of a Torrance auto parts manufacturer, had 3,000 workers in his Tijuana factories and was all set to add hundreds more this year. As he listened to President Trump, though, he got cold feet. Even as U.S. trade officials were renegotiating the 1994 agreement, which slashed tariffs among the U.S., Canada and Mexico, Trump continued to excoriate NAFTA as “the worst trade deal” ever made, threatening to kill any new treaty that failed to give the U.S. a “fair deal.”

“We felt it would be a bad thing to abandon NAFTA,” said Joffe, whose company, Motorcar Parts of America, has $493 million in annual revenue. “We didn’t know where things were going. So we slowed down our capital investments.”

Read More [[link removed]] New California Law Giving Consumers Control Over Their Data Sets Off A Scramble

n 2020, many Americans will get a powerful tool to protect their online privacy. A sweeping new law will require millions of businesses to tell consumers what data they have collected about them and, if asked, to delete it.

The law, known as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), could play havoc with the online economy, since so many companies—from tech giants to ordinary retailers—rely on targeted ads. If people demand that companies delete their data, those ads would be less effective.

Walmart, for example, could miss out on sales because its online ads wouldn’t be as personalized as before. Google, meanwhile, risks losing a big chunk of its revenue because generic ads command far lower prices than ones targeted using personal data.

The effect of California’s law, which is being copied in nearly two dozen other states, could therefore be enormous. But that’s only if people assert their new rights after the law goes into effect on Jan. 1—which is a big “if” considering that relatively few have taken advantage of a similar privacy law in Europe, called GDPR, that was implemented in 2018.

Read More [[link removed]] One-Third Of The U.S. Economy Is Jammed Into Just 31 Counties. L.A. Is The Biggest

While the nation’s economy has grown for over a decade, that growth is increasingly concentrated in 1% of the nation’s counties.

Just 31 counties, or the top 1% by share, made up 32.3% of U.S. gross domestic product in 2018, according to data released last week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis that included nearly 20 years of county-level GDP data. That’s despite these counties only having 26.1% of employed Americans and 21.9% of the population last year. Their combined GDP share is also up from a recession low of 30.1% in 2009.

The nation’s economy is becoming increasingly concentrated in large cities and by the coasts — and less so in rural counties — spurring the question of whether rural areas will be increasingly left behind. The growing concentration of the country’s economic activity could affect a variety of things from infrastructure spending to labor mobility, but it’s unclear how rural areas will fare as their share of economic output continues to dwindle.

Read More [[link removed]] Inland Empire Helps Drive California Economic Expansion

Like California’s other major metro areas, the Inland Empire’s economy is defying recessionary fears and, in fact, is helping to drive the state’s continued economic expansion, according to an analysis released today by the UC Riverside School of Business Center for Economic Forecasting and Development. Over the past year, the region has experienced a higher share of job growth than the nation, California as a whole, and neighboring Southern California metros.

“While employment growth in the Inland Empire, and across other geographies, has indeed slowed from previous years, it has not stopped or reversed and shouldn’t be interpreted as a sign of a downturn,” said Adam Fowler, Director of Research at the Center for Economic Forecasting.

The Inland Empire’s annual job growth stood at 2% as of October 2019, outstripping growth in the United States (1.4%), California (1.8%), the Los Angeles metro area (1.3%), Orange County (1.2%), and matching San Diego County (2%).

“For the Inland Empire, the key takeaways in these numbers are the region’s overall competitiveness with other urban metros amidst a tight labor market, and that job growth is coming from a wide, healthy range of industries,” said Fowler. Of 15 employment sectors, only five lost positions over the year in the Inland Empire.

Read More [[link removed]] How California's New AB 5 Law Will Impact The Gig Economy

Gig economy workers are about to get a major revamp in California, as a new state law taking effect on January 1 will force businesses to reclassify contractors as employees. Aquent CEO John Chuang joins Yahoo Finance's Zack Guzman and Kristin Myers, along with Payne Capital Management Financial Advisor Courtney Dominguez, to discuss.

(Video)

Read More [[link removed]] Freelance Journalists Challenge California Law That Restricts Their Work

Freelance journalists filed suit this week against California in federal court in hopes of striking down an unusually restrictive and possibly unconstitutional state employment law that outlaws independent contracting with very narrow exceptions.

Layoffs blamed on the law, known as AB5, which was pushed by organized labor to crack down on the hard-to-unionize so-called gig economy represented by companies such as Uber and Lyft, have already been announced at media outlets across the United States.

After previously praising the legislation as “a victory for workers everywhere,” left-leaning Vox Media canceled the contracts of more than 200 freelancers working for its SB Nation sports platform and replaced them with 20 new part-time and full-time staffers, Reason reports. AB5 “makes it impossible for us to continue with our current California team site structure because it restricts contractors from producing more than 35 written content ‘submissions’ per year,” according to SB Nation’s John Ness.

Read More [[link removed]] Halting 737 Max Production Hits Suppliers In Southern California And Nationwide

As Boeing Co. prepares to shut much of a huge factory near Seattle that builds the grounded 737 Max jet, the economic hit is reverberating in Southern California and across the United States.

When the company announced this week that it will temporarily halt production of the 737 Max — the nation’s largest manufactured export, analysts say — with no timetable for production to resume, it cast a cloud over the hundreds of companies that make the plane’s parts.

The Southland’s aircraft supply chain is taut, full of small companies that have synced their operations to the needs of midsize and large manufacturers, said Ivan Rosenberg, head of the Aerospace and Defense Forum trade association.

“I’ve got clients wondering how fast this is going to work its way down the supply chain to them,” Rosenberg said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty right now, and business hates uncertainty. It would be nice to know how long this is going to last.”

Read More [[link removed]] Why California Restaurants Can't Take The Heat From Another $1 Minimum Wage Hike

With minimum wage jumping by a whole dollar in 2020, a number of Sacramento eateries have decided they can no longer take the heat and are closing up shop.

Sacramento mainstays like Opa Opa! and Fat City Bar and Café both closed their doors in 2019, citing pressure from the minimum wage increase.

“A dollar a year every January is a lot of pressure for a lot of small businesses like myself, including, but not limited to, the restaurant industry,” Phil Courey, owner of Opa Opa! told ABC10 in November. “Any service that employs minimum wage is suffering, I can tell you that.”

Business owners aren’t just looking at a $1 increase in January. They’re looking at a nearly 50% increase in wages over five years heading into 2022, and most of those businesses are in the restaurant industry, an area already burdened with staffing costs, dominating budgets, and notoriously thin profit margins.

Read More [[link removed]] Energy and Climate Change Southern California City Presses Forward On Climate Change Lawsuit Against Fossil Fuel Companies

The state of New York may have suffered an emphatic defeat in a legal battle against ExxonMobil last week, but that has not deterred the city of Imperial Beach from pursuing its own lawsuit looking to force 18 energy companies in the oil and coal sectors to pay for damages associated with rising sea levels.

"We're going full-speed ahead," Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina said Monday. "The reality is the fossil fuel industry has caused climate change and they need to pay for it."

On Dec. 10, a New York Supreme Court Justice ruled the state's attorney general "offered no testimony from any investor who claims to have been misled" by ExxonMobil in a lawsuit that claimed the oil giant deceived investors about the impacts of climate change.

Justice Barry Ostrager's 55-page ruling not only rejected the state's claim the company committed fraud but said there "was not a single ExxonMobil employee whose testimony the Court found to be anything other than truthful" while the testimony of the state's expert witnesses was "eviscerated on cross-examination and by ExxonMobil's expert witnesses."

Read More [[link removed]] Cobalt Lawsuit Against Tech Giants Over Child Labour A ‘Global Flashpoint Of Corporate Social Responsibility’

The shocking state of child labourers mining for cobalt in Africa has been thrust into the global spotlight after tech giants Apple, Google, Microsoft, Tesla and Dell were sued this week for their role in how this essential element ended up in their products.

In a landmark case that may have far-reaching consequences in an age of greater consumer awareness about the environment and child labour after human rights lawyers International Rights Advocates filed a lawsuit in Washington DC on behalf of 14 parents and children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). "The lawsuit accuses the companies of aiding and abetting in the death and serious injury of children who they claim were working in cobalt mines in their supply chain," The Guardian reported, breaking the news.

Cobalt is needed in the lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric cars and production has grown three times over the last five years – now just as essential to the global economies as the companies implicated. Over 60% of the world's cobalt comes from the DRC, which has been ravaged by civil war and is one of the poorest countries on Earth.

Read More [[link removed]] Eliminating Natural Gas For Electricity Carries Risks

Climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time. And in California, we have felt the brunt of both the economic impacts of climate-driven disasters, as well as aggressive technology innovation that is trying to address it.

Communities of color, in all parts of the state, feel this pressure even more because of the challenges of poverty, stagnant household income growth and the on-going housing crisis. In fact, a report this summer from the California Latino Economic Institute, a nonprofit that includes a broad cross section of business, education and government leaders, chronicled the struggle of Latinos to keep up.

Now, California is moving forward with even more aggressive plans to address climate change and achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. State policymakers and regulators must carefully consider the consequences and impacts of their plans to the minority communities in this state.

Read More [[link removed]] How California's Pension Fund Is Confronting Climate Change

Climate change is upending life around the world. Flooding, fires, and freezes, droughts, tornadoes, and disasters once thought to be extraordinary seem to have become commonplace.

A prime example: the recent California blackouts.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the state’s largest for-profit utility, cut power to millions of customers in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the state’s devastating 2018 firestorms. Those wildfires propelled PG&E into bankruptcy, sinking its stock price and costing investors millions.

Among the casualties are pension funds including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, which rely on investment returns to fund the majority of people’s retirement income.

Read More [[link removed]] Climate Change Threatens Billions in CalPERS Pension Fund

California’s massive Public Employees’ Retirement System has released the first climate risk assessment of its $394-billion pension fund.

The draft report, which was submitted to the CalPERS board this month, found that one-fifth of the fund’s public market investments were in sectors that have high exposure to climate change. Those include energy, materials and buildings, transportation, and agriculture, food and forestry.

“It underscores what a big challenge we have on our hands,” said state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), who wrote the 2018 law that mandated the report. “There’s a lot of money at stake.”

Read More [[link removed]] Workforce Development Too Far Away: Distance Is A Barrier To Bachelor's Degrees For Rural Community College Students

When it comes to transferring from Barstow Community College to the nearest public university 70 miles away, Karla Magana is more worried about the commute than the academics.

The 32-year-old mother of four is concerned about the distances and driving expenses to CSU San Bernardino, where she hopes to transfer to earn a bachelor’s degree and teaching credential. She is steeling herself for weather barriers through the mountains and the infamously clogged Cajon Pass.

“If it snows or there are fires, that will stop you from going to school. So yes, it would be nice to have a university nearby,” she said.

Read More [[link removed]] California Considers Building New CSU Campus

It’s been nearly two decades since the California State University opened a new full-service campus. That was its 23rd, CSU Channel Islands, built in Camarillo north of Los Angeles on the sprawling grounds of what used to be a state mental hospital.

Now, with many CSU campuses overcrowded and demands from some regions for better access to higher education, the Legislature has funded a $4 million study to see whether — and where — a 24th campus for 8,000 students may be built. Possible locations for a new billion-dollar campus include Stockton in the San Joaquin Valley; Concord, east of Oakland; Chula Vista, south of San Diego; Palm Desert or another spot still to be named. Or the university system and state government may decide to avoid that massive investment and expand other options like online learning to enroll more students.

A CSU planning document outlining the study says it will seek to find “the least costly solution to most quickly deliver education to drive economic development and recovery.”

Read More [[link removed]] As California Launches Preschool Expansion, Federal Government Seeks To Limit Data

It could soon get a lot harder to find out how many preschoolers were suspended more than once in California or how many children of different racial and ethnic groups have access to preschool.

In the past, researchers, advocates and policymakers who wanted to know this kind of information about any school district in the country could look it up in a massive database of civil rights data collected every two years by the U.S. Department of Education. That data can be used to show educational disparities between genders and racial and ethnic groups.

Now, the U.S. Department of Education is proposing to stop collecting a wide range of data, including information about young children, such as how many children have access to preschool and kindergarten, broken down by race, sex, disability and English learner status. In addition, the department wants to stop separating out the number of preschoolers who received more than one suspension from those who only received one.

Read More [[link removed]] Infrastructure and Housing Three Months In An Oakland Homeless Encampment

Of the dozens of people we interviewed at an Oakland homeless camp over the three months I spent getting to know its residents, Gilberto Gonzalez Rojas stood out for his sartorial selections.

As we discuss in the article about the camp, which was published today, conditions are tough. Yet every time I saw Mr. Gonzalez, he was wearing a tuxedo or a suit.

“I am poor but I want people to say, ‘He’s in the streets but he hasn’t let himself go,’” Mr. Gonzalez said.

In all of the reporting I’ve done on homelessness in recent years the notion of dignity has been paramount.

Mr. Gonzalez, a former construction worker, nearly died in a traffic accident more than two decades ago. It derailed his life.

Read More [[link removed]] Homeless Moms Who Took Oakland House Head To Court

Homeless mothers in Oakland, who are part of the advocacy group, "Moms 4 Housing," have to appear in court later this month after moving into an empty house without permission.

The women, who have been living at the house on Magnolia Street, were scheduled to be evicted on Tuesday. But a judge granted them a 15-day reprieve and ordered them to appear in court on Dec. 30.

“I claim right to possession of this home because housing is a human right,” 34-year-old Dominique Walker wrote in a legal filing in Alameda County Superior Court. “This home has been vacant for over two years during the worst housing crisis in California history.”

Read More [[link removed]] There's No Housing Shortage In California, Chapman Forecast Suggests

Chapman University’s economic forecast has a decidedly different warning for the California economy: There may be no housing shortage.

The school’s semi-annual forecast has a relatively upbeat outlook for the state’s real estate market in 2020. After that, says Chapman economist Jim Doti, he sees a chance of “severe weakness” for the state’s real estate markets as demand for housing dries up as California’s population growth comes to a near halt.

The cooling is already here. Just look at construction staffing statewide, for example. Bosses will hire 17,000 workers in 2020, Chapman forecasts. That’s down from 27,000 this year and 50,000 in 2018.

One key reason for that chill is residential building is stagnant.

Read More [[link removed]] Getting More Housing Built

California is in the midst of a housing crisis. For decades, we have not been building enough homes to meet demand. In fact, by some estimates, we’ve produced only 40% of what is needed since 2007.

To help increase the number of units built, I’m excited to share that two of my housing bills will take effect on January 1. AB 68 will make an immediate impact by making it easier and faster for property owners to build Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). ADUs are also commonly known as in-law units, granny flats or backyard cottages and are built within or near existing residences.

Aside from being one of the quickest ways to ramp up the state’s housing supply, I love that ADUs can help keep multi-generational families together. For example, they allow aging parents to have some privacy, but still live close by so their adult children can, in turn, keep an eye on them.

Read More [[link removed]] Blue-State Voters Feel Squeeze From Soaring Home Prices

Democratic presidential hopefuls accustomed to viewing the housing crunch as a back-burner issue will be in one of the epicenters of the crisis on Thursday.

Indeed, a drive around California may be an eye-opener for some of the candidates taking the debate stage in Los Angeles. The housing crisis is so severe in Oakland that a city council president has proposed turning a cruise ship into temporary housing, while a Sonoma County homeless camp with hundreds of residents stretches more than a mile along a hiking trail. In many major cities, public parks and freeway overpasses serve as homeless compounds.

While its cities face legendary housing hurdles, home ownership is a challenge in all 53 of California’s congressional districts, according to U.S. Census Bureau and Bankrate.com data compiled by Bloomberg. The typical worker in California’s 18th congressional district, which includes parts of San Jose, must earn about $159,000 more per year to comfortably pay the mortgage and taxes on a median-priced home of $1.3 million, the data show.

Read More [[link removed]] Editorial and Opinion Joe Biden’s ‘Modest’ Tax Proposal

The best news about Joe Biden’s tax proposals so far is what’s absent. There’s no confiscatory and constitutionally dubious “wealth tax” on personal net worth. No income-tax rate of 70%. No complicated “mark to market” scheme for taxing unrealized capital gains.

As a result, reporters have characterized Mr. Biden’s tax agenda as “more modest,” “less aggressive” and “less dramatic” than those of his 2020 rivals. This is true as far as it goes, but it’s also like calling Trump Tower a more modest residence than Buckingham Palace. The comparative framing conceals the gilt.

Mr. Biden has previously promised to spend $1.7 trillion over 10 years on a Green New Deal, $750 billion on health care, and $750 billion on higher education. To pay for it all, he’s set out $3.4 trillion in tax increases. This is more aggressive, for the record, than Hillary Clinton’s proposed tax increases in 2016, which totaled $1.4 trillion, per an analysis at the time from the left-of-center Tax Policy Center. In 2008 Barack Obama pledged to raise taxes on the rich while cutting them on net by $2.9 trillion.

Read More [[link removed]] Naysayers Are Wrong: California's Economy Just Keeps Humming

A new report from the UCLA Anderson School shows that even as national economic growth is set to slow in 2020, California is still set to continue to outpace the country as a whole. This comes at the end of a year when we saw the continuation of a historic economic expansion, record job growth and when we maintained our lead as the state with the most new business starts and venture capital investment. It also comes at the end of a year when headlines across the state suggested that without lowering our standards and diminishing our ambitions for inclusive, sustainable growth, Sacramento is going to drive away every last business in our state.

First, let’s look at the facts:

• Since 2014, the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development has allocated $1.04 billion to 1,043 companies through the California Competes Tax Credit program. The return on that investment is the promise of more than $20 billion in new investments across the state and over 108,000 new, high-quality jobs — thousands of those jobs in innovative industries and thousands more going to our inland communities.

Read More [[link removed]] Another California Job Buster

Democrats in California have banned plastic bags, foie gras and fur coats. Come January, tens of thousands of jobs in the state could also become illegal thanks to a new state law that restricts independent contracting.

On Monday the sports website SB Nation, which is owned by Vox Media, alerted 200 or so free-lancers in California who blog about college and professional sports that their gigs are up thanks to a law known as AB 5. That law mandates that independent contractors perform work that is strictly “outside the usual course of the hiring person or entity’s business” and are “free from control and direction.”

This would sweep in most existing contractors save white-collar professionals like lawyers and doctors who won exemptions. All others must be classified as employees covered by state labor laws including overtime pay, rest breaks, workers compensation and payroll taxes. Democrats wanted to make it easier for unions to organize workers and for plaintiff attorneys to sue businesses.

Read More [[link removed]] How A Law Aimed At Uber And Lyft Is Hurting Freelance Writers

In September, the left-leaning media website Vox.com ran a triumphant headline about a bill that had just passed the California legislature: “Gig workers’ win in California is a victory for workers everywhere.” Assembly Bill 5, or AB5, would go into effect on Jan. 1, essentially making the gig economy illegal in the state.

AB5 forbids businesses to use contractors unless the companies can pass a stringent requirement known as the “ABC test.” It’s designed to ensure that all workers are classified as employees unless they perform their work independent of supervision, have an established business doing the same sort of work for multiple customers and are doing work that isn’t part of the company’s core business. Meeting one or two of these requirements isn’t enough; you must meet all three.

At the time of AB5’s passage, I noted that its aim was a mite quixotic, given that its primary targets, such as Uber and Lyft, were still unprofitable. If they couldn’t make a profit using drivers as contractors, it was hard to see how they could afford to turn the drivers into staffers with regular schedules, hourly pay and benefits. AB5 seemed more likely to drive these firms out of the state, taking their part-time jobs and their useful services with them. And not just gig-economy companies; in passing, I also noted that AB5 seemed to ban most freelance journalism.

Read More [[link removed]] Contract Workers In California Should Be Protected. Assembly Bill 5 Doesn't Do It

Vox Media announced it is cutting ties with about 200 California freelance writers because of AB5, the state’s new law governing independent contractors. Writers, independent truckers and freelance photographers have filed suit, saying the law will wreck their livelihoods. More court cases are anticipated.

The supposedly benevolent law was intended to help the very people who are suing. It prevents companies from staffing up with gig workers who receive no job protection or benefits, setting stiff new restrictions over who qualifies as an independent contractor.

Unfortunately, it’s also a prime example of lawmaking by people who make big salaries and never bother finding out what life is like for the everyday workers who make a living in the gig economy. It offered blanket exemptions to groups with strong lobbying capabilities – doctors, lawyers, real estate agents and the like – and left most of the rest gasping for air, including nurses, musicians, stand-up comedians and interpreters. Tutors, who can be college students who work just a couple of hours a week for established companies, must become employees with assigned shifts. Psychologists are exempted but not marriage and family therapists. Veterinarians were given an out but not dog walkers.

Read More [[link removed]] California Business Roundtable 1301 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 916.553.4093 | [[link removed]] Web Version [link removed] | Update Preferences [link removed] | Unsubscribe [link removed]