Payments affecting particular financial sectors are, in some respects, the bread and butter of state legislative periods, as a result of they have an inclination to have hefty monetary penalties and once they pop up, the battle traces are typically fairly predictable.
Typically they’re efforts by one company or enterprise group to cripple a rival. This yr, for example, noticed profitable laws sponsored by casino-owning Indian tribes to sanction authorized assaults on rival cardrooms.
Extra usually, the payments pit enterprise and employer pursuits in opposition to unions, private damage attorneys, shopper activists and/or environmentalists. These payments are so widespread that the California Chamber of Commerce yearly points lists of “job killer” payments sponsored by a number of of these 4 pursuits.
The ultimate hours of this yr’s legislative session, nonetheless, produced a late-blooming invoice setting new design and siting requirements for warehouses and different “logistics use” services in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, the epicenter for dealing with items flowing by the dual ports of Los Angeles and Lengthy Seashore.
Meeting Invoice 98 culminates years of debate over the environmental and well being impacts of the sprawling array of warehouses and different services that make use of tens of 1000’s staff, are serviced by immense fleets of diesel-powered vehicles and freight trains and, with the ports, are one in every of Southern California’s most necessary sectors.
“For more than a decade, the Legislature has heard outcries from communities where local governments have prioritized economic development over the quality of life and health of their communities,” the measure’s authors, Democratic Assemblymembers Eloise Gomez Reyes of San Bernardino and Juan Carrillo of Palmdale, declared of their presentation to legislative flooring.
“AB 98 is the product of months of discussion and collaborations from environmental advocates, leaders in industry, labor, and dedicated public health advocates to raise the standards of warehouse development (and) a necessary compromise for communities and business entities alike.”
“We have tried to do as best we can, remembering that it’s the health of the residents of California that has to be the state’s top priority,” Reyes instructed CalMatters after the invoice handed. “Everything else is secondary.”
One would possibly count on that environmental and public well being teams would strongly assist the invoice whereas the logistics trade and enterprise teams would simply as strongly oppose it. However that’s not the case. As an alternative there are unusual bedfellows on either side.
Constructing contractors and labor unions comprise the key supporters, and the California Chamber of Commerce has given its blessing, calling AB 98 “a valuable compromise” that’s preferable to extra restrictive laws and/or litigation to cease warehouse initiatives.
Two years in the past Legal professional Basic Rob Bonta sued the Metropolis of Fontana for finding a warehouse too shut to a faculty.
And the opposition?
The California Middle for Jobs & the Financial system, an adjunct of the California Enterprise Roundtable, issued a report on the immense measurement of the logistics trade and warned that limiting its development may negatively impression the Southern California financial system.
Nonetheless, a coalition of 35 environmental teams despatched a letter to Newsom, complaining concerning the invoice’s eleventh-hour emergence with little alternative to remark and declaring, “The bill sets dangerously low standards for warehouse siting and operations that would fail to protect the people who will be the unenviable neighbors of new and expanding facilities.”
Many different enterprise teams, native governments and environmental and well being teams additionally declared opposition when the ultimate model of the invoice turned identified.
The ground votes on Saturday, the final day of the session, mirrored the blended bag of supporters and opponents. It handed, however by pretty slim margins in each homes.
Now Newsom should kind by the conflicting claims and resolve whether or not AB 98 lives or dies.
