CalChamber dubs another ‘Job Killer’ + Burglary suspect caught + Director blasts Ricardo Lara
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CALCHAMBER NAMES ANOTHER ‘JOB KILLER’
The California Chamber of Commerce has added another bill to its feared “Job Killer” list: AB 1001.
AB 1001, introduced by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, would authorize mitigation measures under the California Environmental Quality Act to mitigate the adverse effects of a project on the air or water quality of a disadvantaged community, including measures for avoiding, minimizing or compensating for the adverse effects on that community, according to the Legislative Counsel’s Digest.
The bill will make it more difficult to build quickly and cost effectively in California, said CalChamber Senior Policy Advocate Adam Regele in a statement.
“Issues related to historical environmental injustices in the state should be addressed through more suitable areas of California law — but CEQA is not one of those areas. AB 1001 will impede local governments’ ability to approve new housing projects, depress jobs directly in and associated with the construction industry and further exacerbate California’s cost-of-living crisis already driving families, businesses, and jobs out of the state,” Regele said.
In a statement included in the Assembly floor analysis of the bill, Garcia said that her community of Bell Gardens continues to be overburdened by pollution due to both new projects and expansion of existing ones.
“CEQA is intended to help ease or completely eliminate the impact that new projects have on communities,” Garcia said in a statement. “Low-income communities and communities of color are perennially left behind with dirty air and water, which causes serious health impacts to the communities in which they live. AB 1001 will help ease the burdens those communities face by requiring direct mitigation within the impacted disadvantaged community”
POLICE NAB MAN WHO BURGLED DOWNTOWN LOBBYISTS
Via Lara Korte...
Sacramento Police on Monday confirmed they had arrested a 47-year-old man believed to have been involved in the December burglary of at least a dozen nonprofits and lobbying firms in the Forum Building in Downtown Sacramento.
Police told The Sacramento Bee that on Jan. 13, officers arrested 47-year-old Mario Luzier for an unrelated felony warrant. During the arrest, Luzier was found to be in possession of items stolen in a burglary that occurred on December 22, 2021, at an office building in the 1100 block of 9th Street.
Detectives who had been investigating the burglary have additionally booked Luzier on a felony charge related to the burglary incident and he currently remains in custody in the Sacramento County Main Jail.
The affected tenants included the California Federation of Teachers, California Strategic Advisors, Reeb, EdVoice, California Association for Adult Day Services, the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association, the California Association of Councils of Governments, the California Solar and Storage Association, Hispanic League of Colleges and Universities, Corbin & Kaiser, the Planning and Conservation League and Houston Magnani and Associates.
Rubicon Property Management, which manages the building, said in an email to tenants that the likelihood of getting stolen property back is “nil, unfortunately.”
FILMMAKER BLASTS RICARDO LARA
“Don’t Look Up” director Adam McKay publicly blasted Democratic Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara in a tweet on Tuesday, criticizing Lara for not doing more to force insurance companies to disclose their ties to oil companies.
“Insurance companies should have to disclose fossil fuel projects they insure. @ICRicardoLara failed to support this proposal in CA. Insurers that don’t disclose shouldn’t be able to cancel homeowner policyholders like me for ‘climate risk,’” McKay tweeted.
McKay’s tweet also shared a link to a Daily Poster article arguing that Lara has taken campaign contributions and gifts from the fossil fuel industry and “done almost nothing” to address climate change.
Lara’s Democratic opponent, Assemblyman Marc Levine, was quick to jump in to the conversation, releasing a statement pointing to his introduction of AB 1694, which would compel insurance companies to disclose their investments in the fossil fuel industry and affirm the insurance commissioner’s authority to take regulatory action to prohibit or restrict fossil fuel-related investments and underwriting.
“We can be aggressive in the face of the climate crisis if our elected leaders have the courage,” Levine said in a statement. “Transparency is the first and most important weapon in a financial regulator’s arsenal. Insurance companies want to raise rates due to climate risk, yet are investing in and underwriting the very projects that exacerbate climate change. Ricardo Lara won’t hold the insurance companies he is responsible for regulating accountable, but when I’m Insurance Commissioner, I will.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Even an out-of-touch Silicon Valley billionaire like Tim Draper has to realize that attacking the very front line workers helping us get through the pandemic alive was not only a non-starter with voters, but a sure way to drive working people to the polls in November. It’s long past time billionaires learned that picking on the people who actually do good in our communities is a losing strategy.”
– Bob Schoonover, president of SEIU California, in a statement following news that Draper has ceased collecting signatures for his ballot measure to end collective bargaining for public sector unions.
Best of The Bee:
A California lawmaker has introduced a bill to ban the sale of single-use tobacco or cannabis products – such as cigarette filters and vape pods – in the state, citing the damage those products do to both the human body and the environment, via Andrew Sheeler.
California political leaders on Tuesday announced plans to require businesses to provide up to two weeks of supplemental paid sick leave for workers who catch COVID-19 or have to take time off to care for a loved one, reinstating a policy they let expire in September, via Lara Korte.
Four days after a Sacramento judge rejected efforts by 28 California district attorneys to stop state prison officials from adopting new good conduct rules that could speed up release of some inmates, another judge has ordered the state to hold off on using the rules pending an appeal, via Sam Stanton.