Following his trip to the landmark Paris conference on climate change, Governor Jerry Brown is back in California, looking at more mundane matters like his impending move back into the Governor’s Mansion, rumored to take place by end of year. As the clock ticks down on 2015, a flight of new laws are poised to take effect at Midnight, January 1. Kathleen Pender, San Francisco Chronicle:
“About three dozen employment laws take effect in California next year, including ones that bolster equal-pay protections, help workers with chronic health conditions and give parents unpaid time off to research schools and deal with child care emergencies.
“The most significant law on an annual list put out by the California Chamber of Commerce is SB358, the widely publicized Fair Pay Act.
“Under existing law, employers must give men and women working in the same establishment equal pay for equal work. Under the new law, they must provide equal pay for ‘substantially similar work when viewed as a composite of skill, effort and responsibility.’”
With 2016 almost here, the governor’s Special Session on Transportation, launched last summer, is still going nowhere. Laurel Rosenhall looks at the reasons, plust the costs of gridlock for CALmatters:
“A recent report from the state Senate said 68 percent of California roads are in poor or mediocre condition, the 44th worst record in the nation. It also said the cost for all of the unfunded repairs identified by state and local officials in the coming decade is about $135 billion.
“State lawmakers are now meeting in a special session to find several billion dollars for the most urgent repairs, possibly with a higher gas tax.
“If more money isn’t found, ‘these roads will disintegrate to the point where they’ll have to be rebuilt, which is very, very expensive,’ said state Sen. Jim Beall (D-San Jose), co-chair of a special committee working on the issue.”
Congresswoman Grace Napolitano’s (D-Norwalk) re-election campaign just got complicated, with Assemblyman Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina) announcing Saturday that he will seek to unseat the 79 year-old incumbent. Javier Panzar, Los Angeles Times:
“Hernandez, a former West Covina city councilman who will leave his seat in the Assembly next year because of term limits, slammed the 79-year-old nine-term congresswoman for living outside the suburban district. Napolitano lives in Norwalk along the 5 Freeway corridor, about nine miles from the western edge of her district, which includes El Monte, Baldwin Park, West Covina and San Dimas to the east.
"’I stand before you as a hometown boy,’ he told supporters gathered at Galster Park in West Covina. ‘I am the only candidate in this race that actually lives in this congressional district, I am the only candidate in this race that actually owns property in this district.’"
Meanwhile, Central Valley Democrats are struggling with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee over who should call the shots in valley campaigns as Dem candidates fall - despite a strong voter reg advantage. John Ellis, Fresno Bee:
“The DCCC, local Democrats say, recruits congressional candidates with little local input. It imposes out-of-state staffers on these candidates, many of whom never have run a campaign in the Valley and instead rely on their knowledge from working other races – an approach that doesn’t work here. Worse, local Democrats say, those staffers don’t want local experience on how to run an effective campaign.
“Much of the anger and frustration centers on the 21st Congressional District, where Hanford Republican David Valadao has trounced two straight Democratic Party challengers, even though Democrats have a commanding 17 percentage point lead in voter registration over the rival GOP.”
A New York judge on Friday sided with the state’s Attorney General, labeling fantasy sports betting as “gambling” and ordering popular sites FanDuel and DraftKings shut down in the state. An appellate court later reversed the decision – for now. But what of California, where two assemblyman are fighting opposite sides of the battle? Dan Morain, Sacramento Bee:
“Assemblyman Marc Levine ...urged Attorney General Kamala Harris to shut down daily fantasy sports wagering sites.
“’These games should be shut down in California until California law is made clear and consumers are protected,’ Levine wrote in a Nov. 2 letter to Harris….
“Harris, our ever-cautious attorney general who’s running for U.S. Senate, is studying the issue. An aide issued a statement Friday, saying: “To protect the integrity of our investigation, we can’t confirm or deny investigations.” I guess that means there’s an investigation….
“Assemblyman Adam Gray, the Merced Democrat who chairs the governmental organization committee that is responsible for gambling legislation, will convene a hearing this week into fantasy sports. He has introduced a bill to regulate fantasy sports betting, though any protections in the bill would not take effect until 2017 at the soonest.”
Ah, term limits, how you have robbed us of so many of our favorite-to-cover capitol lawmakers. Case in point: Sheila “Zelda Gilroy” Kuehl. Lucky for us, Kuehl is still in public service, a Los Angeles County Supervisor – lucky, because that means the following exchange was caught on public access:
“Towards the end of Tuesday’s meeting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, a man named John Walsh came to the podium to chastise the board for their earlier vote to welcome Syrian refugees to Los Angeles County.
“But when he called Supervisor Sheila Kuehl an anti-semitic ‘scumbag,’ Kuehl punched right back.
“SUP. SHEILA KUEHL: ‘Listen, you asshole, I am a Jew! My mother was a Jew! And if you say that again, I will shout the entire time you are talking! Thank you.’
“Walsh continued yelling as his microphone was cut. Supervisor Hilda Solis, who was chairing the meeting, asked a sheriff’s deputy to remove Walsh before Kuehl intervened and asked him to continue his speech….”
As Maynard G Krebs might say, “Sheila, baby, you’re the most!”
