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Southwest California Legislative Council 2012 Vote Record Released
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his report for the second year of the 2011–2012 legislative session focuses on California legislators’ floor votes on the Southwest California Legislative Council’s priority bills. This is the 7th vote record the SWCLC has compiled. The SWCLC publishes this report in response to numerous requests by member firms and coalition members that would like a gauge by which to measure the performance of their legislators. In 2012 the SWCLC adopted positions on 85 bills. Of these, just 29 wended their way through the legislative process and made it to the Governor’s desk. Each bill was a priority for the SWCLC, a position had been adopted by the SWCLC and that position had been communicated one or more times to the author of the bill, the appropriate committee and to our local legislators. No vote record can tell the entire story of a legislator’s attitude and actions on issues of importance to business. Each year, legislators cast thousands of votes on thousands of proposed laws. Many anti-business bills were rejected by legislators in policy or fiscal committees, thus stopping proposals before they reached the floor for a vote. The vote record does not capture these votes. For the past four years our local legislators have scored a perfect 100% voting record on SWCLC business issues. This year we did not expect that result and, in fact, did not repeat it. Does this indicate our legislators have grown less business friendly? Not at all. It does reflect the fact that the SWCLC took positions on nearly three times as many bills in 2012 as in prior years. We expanded our focus to a broader spectrum of bills in keeping with our strategic initiatives of budget & tax reform, job creation & retention and environmental reform. Within that framework, the SWCLC took positions on CEQA reform, workers compensation, healthcare coverage, global warming initiatives and issues of local concern like returning Vehicle License Fees to local cities (AB 1098 - LOSS) and
limiting frivolous lawsuits on ADA compliance (SB 1186 - WIN). It would be statistically improbable to garner 100% agreement on such a broad range of issues. While our legislators did not agree with the SWCLC 100% of the time this year, the reasons they did not were (mostly) understandable. For example, AB 369 (Huffman) and AB 1000 (Perea) were health care bills intended to control certain costs for prescription drugs and cancer treatment. While the bills might have conflicted with SWCLC goals to contain costs for businesses, from a humanitarian perspective the bills might have represented good policy. Senators Emmerson and Anderson and Assemblyman Nestande disagreed with our position on AB 369, Senator Emmerson and Assemblymen Jeffries and Nestande disagreed with us on AB 1000. In both cases the Governor agreed with us and vetoed the bills. Assemblyman Jeffries broke ranks to vote YES on AB 278 (Eng) and SB 900 (Leno), the Attorney Generals Homeowners Bill of Rights. While these measures were initially opposed by the SWCLC and the California Association of Realtors, the amended version that was finally passed was far superior to the bill as introduced. CAR had switched to a neutral position but the bill passed too quickly for the SWCLC to react to the final version. Senators Joel Anderson and Bill Emmerson each scored 100% votes on the 10 Senate bills evaluated by the California Chamber of Commerce. Assembly members Kevin Jeffries and Brian Nestande each scored 100% on the 11 bills rated by CalChamber. The Southwest California Legislative Council considers it a privilege to advocate on behalf of business interests in Southwest Riverside County. We would like to thank our dedicated Legislators and their local staffs for their support and cooperation in 2012. The SWCLC recognizes that there are many bills supported or opposed by business that may not be included in this vote record and analysis. A full list of bill positions for SWCLC is available at http://southwestca.biz/
SUPPORTED SWCLC position
OPPOSED SWCLC position
Vote Record %
State Senator Joel Anderson
25
2
93%
State Senator Bill Emmerson
25
3
89%
Assembly Member Kevin Jeffries
25
4
86%
Assembly Member Brian Nestande
25
3
89%
Governor Jerry Brown
18
10
64%
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