Latest News

• WAREHOUSE/LOGISTIC CENTER BAN
• INDUSTRY WIDE LEGISLATIVE MEEITNG - REGISTER
• CALCHAMBER IDENTIFIES JOB KILLERS
• JOB KILLER LIST REALITY CHECK FOR LEGISLATURE
• CALIFORNIA EXTENDS RESIDENTIAL RENTAL RELIEF
• CBPA 2022 CALENDAR

WAREHOUSE/LOGISTIC CENTER BAN

A bill has been gut-and-amended targeting warehouse and logistic centers in the Legislature that will stop many projects, stall redevelopment in some areas, and kill jobs.

AB 2840 (Reyes) would place a ban on certain warehouse/logistics facilities, over-riding local authority and despite/in lieu of all environmental processes.

In the plainest language, AB 2840 would ban the building of any facility 100,000 s.f. or more within 1,000 ft of a “sensitive receptor,” which has a broad definition but is basically most non-industrial uses. Additionally, all projects that are not banned due to proximity to a sensitive receptor must have a PLA to be approved.

Even if your company doesn’t build/own these types of facilities, the precedent set by this bill will have a huge impact on all commercial real estate projects in the future.

We know this is an extremely bad bill that will have a huge impact on your businesses. This bill will have our full focus and attention and we hope to work closely with local affiliate member chapters and other impacted stakeholders to stop this bill again. 

Stay tuned for updates on this industry priority in the coming weeks.

INDUSTRY WIDE LEGISLATIVE MEETING – REGISTER

On behalf of CBPA Legislative Chair Stan Lamport you are invited to participate in the Commercial Real Estate Industrywide Legislative Meeting to help set final priorities and positions for the 2022 Legislative Year.

This meeting will bring together representatives from individual companies and all the major real estate associations including ICSC, BOMA California, NAIOP California Council, IREM California Chapters, and AIR CRE to assure our industry is coordinated in our response to important legislative issues:

Industry Wide Legislative Meeting (Via ZOOM)

Thursday, April 7, 2022

10:00 am – 1:00 pm

In order to receive a zoom link and materials prior to the meeting to prepare, please click here to register for this meeting via Zoom by Tuesday, April 5. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting and a follow-up email from Rex W. with the bill list. 

This is a crucial part of our legislative process. Your feedback on how legislative measures will impact your businesses/properties is an imperative part of the process.

Your Sacramento staff at CBPA review every bill and have been coordinating with allied business/association partners in Sacramento. We have identified hundreds of bills impacting our industry – and we are seeking your input to review and prioritize. 

Thank you to all the volunteers that have provided input so far to help make this complicated and time-consuming review possible. Our members’ expertise is the backbone to our lobbying and advocacy efforts, and we are more effective representing your interests in the Capitol whey you participate.

We look forward to seeing you there and thank you again in advance.

CALCHAMBER IDENTIFIES JOB KILLERS

Earlier this week, our friends at the CalChamber released their first set of bills that were identified as “Job Killers”. This is a list that identifies legislation that will decimate economic and job growth in California. We are working in concert with CalChamber and large coalitions to advocate against the passage of this bad legislation.

With more expected to be added, the 2022 CalChamber Job Killer List includes the following bills:

Labor and Employment

AB 2095 (Kalra; D-San Jose) Unfair Denial of State Opportunities. Places new onerous administrative burdens on employers by requiring annual reporting of wage and hour data and employee benefits on an employer’s entire United States workforce that will unfairly criticize employers for lawful conduct by publishing that data on the Labor and Workforce Development Agency’s website and using such data to rank employers and deny them state opportunities, and will subject employers to frivolous litigation and settlement demands.

AB 2182 (Wicks; D-Oakland) Expansion of Duty to Accommodate Employees and Litigation Under FEHA. Imposes new burdens on employers to accommodate any employee with family responsibilities, which will essentially include a new, uncapped protected leave for employees to request time off and exposes employers to costly litigation under the Fair Employment and Housing Act by asserting that any adverse employment action was in relation to the employee’s family responsibilities, rather than a violation of employment policies.

SB 1044 (Durazo; D-Los Angeles) State of Emergency. Allows employees to leave work or refuse to show up to work if employee subjectively feels unsafe regardless of existing health and safety standards or whether employer has provided health and safety protections and subjects employers to costly Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) lawsuits if they dispute the employee’s decision or need to have another employee take over any job duties.

SB 1162 (Limón; D-Goleta) Publication of Pay Data. Encourages litigation against employers based on the publication of broad, unreliable data collected by the state. Undermines employers’ ability to hire, imposes administrative and record keeping requirements that are impossible to implement, and subjects employers to a private right of action and penalties under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA).

Taxation

AB 2289/ACA 8 (Lee; D-San Jose) Wealth Tax. Seeks to impose a massive tax increase upon all forms of personal property or wealth despite California already having the highest income tax in the country. This tax increase will drive high-income earners and job creators out of the State as well as the revenue they contribute to the General Fund.

AB 1771 (Ward; D-San Diego) Targeted Tax on Certain Home Sellers. Seeks to impose a tax—in addition to the capital gains tax—of 25% on the profits from a home resold within three years after it is purchased. The tax rate is reduced on a sliding scale for seven years thereafter. This will worsen housing unaffordability and constrain the already limited housing supply.

SB 1301 (Becker; D-Menlo Park) Fossil Fuel Investment Surcharge. Arbitrarily raises taxes on companies that invest in fossil fuel businesses based upon the financing amount. This adds another layer of expenses onto the fossil fuel industry that will significantly increase the costs of doing business, thereby increasing prices paid by consumers for goods and services in California.

CEQA

AB 1001 (Garcia, Cristina; D-Los Angeles) Expands CEQA and Hurts Housing. Creates new highly subjective, non-quantifiable and litigation-bait standards in CEQA that will threaten California’s economic recovery and ability to construct much needed housing. It also removes local government discretion regarding how to analyze and mitigate proposed project impacts, thereby making projects more expensive, harder to build and more likely to be thrown into courts by NIMBY opposition. 2021 carry-over bill.

Privacy and Cybersecurity

SB 1189 (Wieckowski; D-Fremont) New Private Right of Action for Biometric Information. Creates legal liability for businesses large and small, potentially in the millions to tens of millions of dollars, while not providing any exceptions, such as for the use of biometric data for safety, security, or other reasonable purposes. Also imposes new, untenable restrictions on the use and disclosure of biometric information in a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) limited private right of action for data breaches.

Workers’ Compensation

SB 213 (Cortese; D-San Jose) Workers’ Compensation Presumption: Hospital Employees.Expands Costly Presumption of Injury. Significantly increases workers’ compensation costs for public and private hospitals by presuming certain diseases and injuries are caused by the workplace and establishes an extremely concerning precedent for expanding presumptions into the private sector.2021 carry-over bill.

Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources

AB 2764 (Nazarian; D-Van Nuys) Livestock Ban. Bans new or expanded commercial animal feeding and processing operations for meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy. Will increase food prices for Californians and force food to be imported from out of state to meet consumer demand.

JOB KILLER LIST REALITY CHECK FOR LEGISLATURE

After the release of the CalChamber’s Job Killers, Dan Walters published a piece in Cal Matters diving into the importance of identifying when the Legislature pulls further left than even the State is currently at. 

With a “Giga-Majority” in the Legislature, the ideology in the Capitol needs a counterweight, and Dan Walters dives into this saying,

“For a quarter-century, the list has served as a guide to the Capitol’s ideological temperature because it generally includes the highest-priority legislation of those on the left, such as labor unions and environmental and consumer protection advocates.” 

Walers continued,

“Although the Legislature has trended to drift leftward since the list was first issued in 1997, the chamber and its allies have rung up an impressive kill ratio. Typically, several dozens bills are placed on the list and it’s rare for more than one or two to be passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor.”

The CalChamber stops these identified bills at a rate higher than 90%.

To read Walters’ full article, click here.

CALIFORNIA EXTENDS RESIDENTIAL RENTAL RELIEF

California extended residential rental relief for access of funds to protect them from eviction – to those that apply by the end of the day.

The program started back in March of 2021, and the extension was due to some backlog.

The rent relief program had many issues including a backlog that made it difficult for many to receive the funds they applied for. Today, the legislature voted to approve AB 2179 (Grayson) to extend rental relief through June 30 for those who have already applied or apply by today.

We are keeping a close eye on all bills of this nature, including AB 2179, to make sure it doesn’t apply to commercial, and will continue to do so. We have made it quite clear that residential and commercial issues are in no way or shape the same beast and must be handled as such.

To read more on this in the Sacramento Bee, click here.

CBPA 2022 CALENDAR

Thursday, April 7

CBPA Industrywide Legislative Meeting
Zoom

Tuesday, June 7 – Wednesday, June 8

California Commercial Real Estate Summit
and CBPA Annual Board Meeting
Sacramento

Tuesday, November 15

CBPA Board Meeting
Sacramento

For more information on any of our events, please contact Melissa Stevens at 916-443-4676 or mstevens@cbpa.com.