from Kevin Pedrotti, Legislative Advocate for the Golden State Builders Exchanges
The 2009-2010 legislative session concluded on August 31, 2010 with some excellent outcomes for GSBE. As with most successful legislation, these measures went through countless meetings with supporters and opposition, amendments that were amended again and near defeat any number of times.
The big win for GSBE was passage of AB 2036 (Bill Berryhill). If signed, AB 2036 would require all public agencies taking bids for the construction of public work or improvement shall upon request from a contractor plan rooms service, provide an electronic copy of a project’s contract documents at no charge to the contractor plan room. In the past several months, some cities have started charging up to $500 per set of plans. AB 2036 was amended during last month of session and amended a number of other times to address local government opposition, before gaining legislative approval. This legislation was a big uphill push and completed within a very short period of time. Thank you to all who have sent letters to the Governor requesting a signature.
GSBE’s co-sponsored effort, AB 2060 (Calderon), was sent to the Governor. GSBE along with others in the construction industry made a two-year effort to establish a fair process by which fixed price contracts are to be adjusted before and after the adoption of sales tax increases or decreases in California. AB 2060 allows contractors who are party to a fixed price contract to be reimbursed in the event of a future increase in the state sales and use tax rate, subsequently requiring them to reimburse the government entity which is also party to the fixed price contract in the event of a future decrease in the state sales and use tax rate. AB 2060 is needed to ensure that as tax rates go up or down that contractors are treated fairly by the law and will not be further harmed by the fixed-price contracts they entered into prior to the change in sales tax rates.
AB 569 (Emmerson) was sent to the Governor as well. AB 569 exempts employees in several industries, including unionized construction, from complying with current law that requires employees not work more than 5 hours in a workday without being provided a 30 minute meal period. Various interpretations of this section by enforcement officials have led to confusion and litigation. Meal period disputes are currently 40% of all California class-action lawsuits and approximately half of all employment-related lawsuits filed in California. AB 569 will provide relief from some of the burdens created by the lack of flexibility in the current meal period provisions for the construction industry. Construction employees are only exempted if they are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, and that agreement:
- Expressly provides for the wages, hours of work, and working conditions of employees, and expressly provides for meal periods for those employees;
- Provides final and binding arbitration of disputes concerning application of its meal period provisions; and,
- Provides a premium wage rates for all overtime hours worked, and a regular hourly rate of pay of not less than 30 percent more than the state minimum wage rate.
Similar legislation has been vetoed in the past because the Governor wanted similar relief for all employers, not just those in selected, unionized industries.
And in the “why did that happen?” category, AB 2216 (Fuentes) became part of a last hour political pay-back. AB 2216 reduced the time for payment of progress payments from general contractors to sub contractors and limits retention for public works projects to 5% in most cases. AB 2216 failed passage on the last night of session purely because of politics and not because of policy. Speculation is that the inability of key senators to secure the passage from the Assembly Appropriations Committee for SB 691 (Steinberg) relating to teacher lay-off policies led to an act of retribution minutes later against the committee's chair and the author of AB 2216, Assembly Member Fuentes. The result was the death of AB 2216 (Fuentes) on the Senate Floor. After the situation was assessed as an "author problem", there was a valiant attempt to transfer the contents of AB 2216 into AB 2390 with Buchanan - then Nestande - then Torrico -- as the new author in time for the new bill to be considered on both the Senate and Assembly Floors. The bill was successfully amended and onto the Senate Floor by 11:30 p.m., however, due to procedural issues the clock ran out at midnight.
And lastly, this marks the second longest budget delay in history. While some assumed a special session would be called to address the budget, deliberations will continue in the regular session since 2/3’rd vote measures are not constrained by the August 31 legislative deadline. Hopefully a budget is agreed to before the year ends.
We will be keeping you updated on the Governor’s actions with respect to legislation during the next 30 days. A new laws summary will be completed at that time.
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