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Healthcare, Workers’ Comp Bills Pass Legislative Deadline




By Howard Fine

Business interests once again are playing defense in Sacramento as dozens of bills that could harm businesses have cleared a key deadline.

While the bills are fewer in number than last year, business lobbyists say they still could wreak considerable damage to employer pocketbooks.

Topping the list are two healthcare reform bills by the leader of each chamber, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nu & #324;ez, D-Los Angeles, and Senate President Don Perata, D-Oakland. Assembly Bill 8 and Senate Bill 48 would require employers to provide healthcare for workers or pay 7.5% of payroll to the state for coverage for the uninsured.

“It’s SB 2 all over again,” said Michael Shaw, legislative director for the California chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, referring to a bill four years ago that required employers to provide healthcare or pay into a state fund.

Gov. Gray Davis signed the bill days before he was recalled. The next year, business groups placed a referendum on the ballot and overturned it.

There’s a competing proposal on the table from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which would set the employer fee at 4% of payroll while requiring insurers, hospitals and medical groups to pay their own fees.

Schwarzenegger’s plan suffered a setback recently when legislative counsel Linda Dozier ruled that the fees on insurers and healthcare providers are taxes that need two-thirds approval from the Legislature.

Talks over the various healthcare bills are expected to intensify during the closing weeks of the legislative session later this summer.

Legislative leaders Nu & #324;ez and Perata also are pushing bills that would increase workers’ compensation benefits to injured workers.

Perata’s SB 936 would double permanent partial disability payments. Nu & #324;ez’s AB 1212 would require the head of the state Division of Workers’ Compensation to determine how much to raise permanent partial disability payments.

Another bill,SB 942, by Carole Migden, D-San Francisco,would allow injured workers to sue their employers under antidiscrimination laws if their claims are denied or they deem their benefits inadequate.

Employers contend all of these bills would roll back the 2003 and 2004 reforms that have sliced workers’ compensation premiums in half for most businesses.

Labor groups and lawyers claim the reforms shortchange legitimately injured workers. They hope to qualify a ballot initiative that would increase access of injured workers to their own doctors and limit the right of employers or their insurers to reject treatments.

Initiative proponents must gather 434,000 signatures by Sept. 10.

Hoping to ride the environmental wave from last session’s passage of the landmark greenhouse gas reduction bill, several bills are targeting industrial chemicals deemed to have harmful health or environmental impacts. Passing the Assembly were:

– AB 515, by Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, would require state regulators to set permissible exposure limits for workplace hazardous substances.

– AB 558, by Michael Feuer, D-Los Angeles, would assess fees on businesses for the use of chemicals the state deems toxic and also require industries to develop their own plans to reduce use of the chemicals.

– AB 1108, by Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, would ban a class of chemicals called phthalates that are found in many baby toys.

Other bills would place limits on development or increase the costs by imposing environmental standards.

Two bills would punish local agencies that approve developments in floodplains: AB 5, by Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Vacaville, and AB 70 by Dave Jones, D-Sacramento.

Several other bills would require environmental analyses of the “carbon footprint”,the amount of fossil fuel use generated by proposed developments.

“What we’re seeing here is the environmental community trying to wrap the whole climate change thing around land use,” said Dominic DiMare, vice president of government relations for the California Chamber of Commerce.

Another bill drawing opposition from statewide business groups is SB 974 by Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach,yet another attempt to pass a $30 per container fee on cargo containers that pass through the ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles and Oakland. The money would go toward programs to reduce emissions and congestion at the ports.

Business groups say this would increase the cost of shipping and violate international commerce laws. Last year, Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill.

There are a handful of bills being pushed by business groups.

AB 1696, by Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, hopes to cut down on runaway film production by authorizing the California Film Commission to give out an as-yet-unspecified amount in incentive grants to film producers who shoot in California.

AB 1152, by Roger Niello, R-Sacramento, would give a 5 cent sales tax exemption on the purchase of most manufacturing equipment.

“California is one of only four states that taxes the purchase of manufacturing equipment, which contributes to the state’s high cost of doing business,” said Jack Stewart, president of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, which is sponsoring the bill.


Fine is a staff writer with the Los Angeles Business Journal.

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