By HOWARD FINE
A coalition of statewide business groups has listed 32 bills making their way through the state Legislature as “job-killers” and is mounting a full-court press to stop them.
The Coalition for California Jobs,a group that includes manufacturers, major corporations, small-business owners and anti-tax groups,recently issued its fourth annual job-killer bill list.
The total doesn’t match the record 45 bills the coalition tagged last year. But it claimed that the state’s business climate could be seriously harmed if any of the bills pass.
“One piece of ‘job-killer’ legislation is bad, but all 32 bills directly target California’s economic development by putting up barriers that will make state businesses less competitive and drive up costs for consumers,” said Jack Stewart, president of the California Manufacturers & Technology Association.
The bills range from the perennial proposals for a single-payer healthcare system and raising the minimum wage (with annual cost of living increases) to a proposed cap on carbon emissions and an increase in the personal income tax paid by small-business owners.
Democrat lawmakers who authored these bills and their labor union allies dismissed the release of the job-killer bill list as a ploy to generate a climate of fear.
Fine is a staff writer with the Los Angeles Business Journal. For more on this story, see the July 17 issue of the Orange County Business Journal.
