Bar bill likely dead + Another ‘Job Killer’ + Lawmakers meet with gun control advocate
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!
STILL NO LATE-NIGHT BARS FOR CALIFORNIANS?
Via Lindsey Holden...
It looks like last call will stay at 2 a.m. after a bill allowing extended alcohol-serving hours in three cities didn’t get enough Assembly votes on Wednesday.
The measure, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, would have created a pilot program allowing bars in San Francisco, Palm Springs and West Hollywood to serve alcohol until 3 a.m. on weekdays and 4 a.m. on weekends and certain holidays.
The three-year pilot would have started in January 2025 and ended in January 2028.
The cities included in Senate Bill 930 would have been required to create a task force and submit a plan to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control before bar owners could apply for additional hours licenses.
This is Wiener’s third attempt at convincing state leaders to allow more local decision-making around last call . He carried similar measures that failed in 2018 and 2019.
The Legislature passed his proposal for a similar pilot program in 2018, but then-Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it.
“California’s laws regulating late-night drinking have been on the books since 1913,” Brown wrote in his veto message. “I believe we have enough mischief from midnight to 2 without adding two more hours of mayhem.”
This time around, a large contingent of Assemblymembers spoke against SB 930, with most raising concerns about an increase in drunk driving and other criminal behavior.
Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove, brought up the Sacramento shooting that killed six people on K Street in April around 2 a.m., right when bars were closing.
But Wiener said the bill merely would have given the three cities the ability to determine whether to extend alcohol-serving hours.
“We are disappointed that SB 930 came up short on votes today on the Assembly floor after a series of misleading speeches by members representing areas that would not have been impacted by the bill,” Wiener said. “We are assessing whether there is a path to pass the bill off the Assembly floor.”
CALCHAMBER TAGS GUT-AND-AMEND BILL AS ‘JOB KILLER’
With just days before the end of the legislative session, the California Chamber of Commerce has added another bill to its “Job Killer” list: AB 2133.
The bill, by Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, was gutted and amended Tuesday so that it would dramatically reduce state greenhouse gas emissions; the amended bill requires reductions to 55% below the 1990 level by Dec. 31, 2030. The current state goal is 40%.
“CalChamber supports climate change laws and regulations that are cost-effective, technology-neutral and promote the use of market-based strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” CalChamber President and CEO Jennifer Barrera said in a statement. “However, AB 2133 does not take any of these into account and will lead to excessive costs, hurt California residents and businesses, and severely damage the state’s economy.”
CalChamber sent a letter to Sen. Ben Allen, chair of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, warning that the bill undermines the existing process at the California Air Resources Board, where hundreds of stakeholders have been involved in a month-long scoping plan review.
“At a time when Californians are suffering from high prices and the threat of a recession looms, increasing costs is the wrong approach to take,” Barrera said. “Rushed consideration of this proposal robs everyone of the chance for thoughtful consideration about costs and consequences.”
CALIFORNIA LAWMAKERS MEET WITH ‘MOMS DEMAND ACTION’ LEADER
The chairs of the California Legislative Gun Violence Working Group, Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel, D-Woodland Hills, and Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, met Wednesday with Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, a group advocating for stronger gun safety laws.
In a statement, Watts praised the members of the working group as “gun sense champions” who are working on “innovative new laws to tackle our gun violence epidemic.”
The meeting comes amid a national crisis of gun violence, with mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas; Buffalo, New York; Highland Park, Illinois; and right here in Sacramento.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings in America, as of Wednesday there have been 431 mass shootings — four or more victims shot in a single incident — in 2022. Gun violence has claimed more than 28,700 lives in the U.S. this year.
“Our number one job as legislators is to keep our communities safe — and on the issue of gun violence, our country is failing horrifically,” Wicks said in a statement. “While we have strong gun violence prevention laws here in California, there’s still so much more that can be done.”
The gun violence working group is shepherding a number of bills through the Legislature, including AB 1621, a ban on ghost guns which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed earlier this year.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“While President Biden’s cancellation of some student debt for borrowers is welcome news, we have to do more and do it quickly. We must work to cancel all student debt and make all college tuition free.”
- Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, in a statement Wednesday.
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