While we've been working on publishing a Re-Opening Toolkit providing necessary information for businesses in our community, we are also involved in a coalition that is fighting some very erroneous pieces of legislation. One bill in particular- a recent add to CalChamber's Job Killer list- is AB 398 from Assemblyman Chu. AB 398 will issue a head tax of $275 per employee for companies with over 500 employees. To give you some perspective, this would mean Adventist Health Lodi Memorial, the local Waste Management branch, Pacific Coast Producers, and MORE would be on the hook for this new head tax. In the middle of this pandemic, this bill will discourage employers from creating more jobs within their companies, as well as hurt California's economic competitiveness for outside businesses coming to our state. Why would Amazon want to open another plant in California - creating hundreds and hundreds of jobs- if there is an additional bill? We say additional because regulations in our state are already much more invasive than others.
CalChamber has designated this bill to be "catastrophic" during an economic crisis, one that would hinder our state from pulling ourselves out of the recession we inevitably are facing. According to the bill's verbiage, funds would go to K-12 education. But we have seen this type of language before- and without a thriving business community to provide jobs for those entering the workforce, where would California be? It saddens us that bills like these keep coming to the table in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time where businesses are at risk of not surviving.
Here are a few other bills and issues your Chamber is keeping an eye on in the coming weeks:
Printed courtesy of www.lodichamber.com/ – Contact the Lodi Chamber of Commerce for more information.
35 S. School St., Lodi, CA 95240 – (209) 367-7840 x100 – frontdesk@lodichamber.com