from Kevin Pedrotti, Golden State Builders Exchanges
Legislation has been introduced for the 2013-14 legislative year. Actual numbers are down from previous sessions, but still many issues to attend to. The Assembly introduced 1376 regular session bills and the Senate 813. This does not include resolutions or Special Session bills on health care reform.
What happens with CEQA reform? With the sudden resignation of Senator Michael Rubio, who chaired the Senate Environmental Quality Committee and was set to take the arduous task of reforming CEQA, many are wondering where the effort will go. The Governor has been clear that he would like to see some changes in the law and some powerful forces around the Capitol do as well. On the same token, there are powerful groups on the other side (labor and environmentalist) indicating they will oppose any major changes to existing law. For this issue to get any legs there needs to a driving force to take up where Rubio left off. So far, that legislator hasn’t emerged. Senate President Steinberg has one of the 15 various CEQA bills introduced and could become the leader of the effort by default. Time will tell.
While we closely review the many bills that impact contractors, below are those we have identified this week that should be of interest.
- AB 44 (Buchanan) - Subletting and Subcontracting Fair Practices Act: bidding practices.
- AB 433 (Gordon) - Contractors: fire protection systems.
- AB 576 (Perez, V Manuel) - Centralized Intelligence Partnership Act: pilot program.
- AB 811 (Lowenthal) - Excavations: regional notification center system: contractor certification.
- AB 834 (Williams) - Energy efficiency standards: unfair business practice.
- AB 993 (Linder) – Contractors: arbitration.
- AB 1236 (Hagman) - Contractors: limited liability companies.
- AB 1353 (Linder) – Public contracts.
- SB 261 ( Monning) - Contractors: fraudulent use of license.
- SB 262 (Monning) – Contractors.
- SB 263 (Monning) - Contractors: unlicensed activity.
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