Contributor

John Campbell

John Campbell (R-Irvine) is an Assemblyman representing the 70th District in Orange County. Mr. Campbell is the Vice-Chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee. He is the only CPA in the California State legislature and recently received a national award as Freshman Republican Legislator of the Year. He represents the cities of Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Woods and Lake Forest. He can be reached through his Assembly website and through the website for his California Senate campaign.

Bad Bill Parade
The legislation just keeps getting worse...
[John Campbell] 09/09/03

Over 100 pieces of legislation were passed by the Assembly between Wednesday and Friday last week. Only 2 bills actually failed. Did anything good pass? A few things. But most of them are narrow or industry specific. Another statistic that might interest you is that on a day when 225 bills were on the "file" to be taken up, only 12 of them were authored by Republicans. The rest were Democrat authored bills. That is proof that in Sacramento, the majority does rule. Here is a partial list of some of the bad stuff that passed and where it now lies in the process of becoming law:

AB76 (Corbett-D) - This bill makes employers liable for sexual harassment of employees by non-employees whether such harassment occurs in or outside of the workplace. An employer who does not "prevent" such occurrences will not only be subject to a lawsuit by the employee, but they may also be sued by the non-employee if the non-employee feels that their rights were interfered with. This is one of many blatant gifts to give trial lawyers lots more opportunities for fees and lawsuit abuse. I don't see any evidence that trial lawyers are shutting down and moving to Arizona. STATUS: Passed both houses. On the Governor's desk.

SB 162 (Alarcon-D) - There is currently a state-funded program that gives housing subsidies to teachers and administrators who work in schools that are low-performing. This bill extends that subsidized housing to other union employees at these schools including janitors, aides, secretaries and cafeteria workers. This is wrong on so many levels I don't have enough space to mention. STATUS: Passed Assembly. Back to Senate for concurrence.

AB 587 (Ridley-Thomas-D) - This bill will put a box on voter registration forms where a registrant can indicate their race or ethnicity. It is so unfortunate that Democrats feel that so many things must be tracked and categorized by race and ethnicity. They benefit politically from division by race rather than ideas and character so they will continue to foster those divisions. STATUS: Passed both houses. On the Governor's desk.

AB 879 (Koretz-D) - Creates a new task force to develop protocol on the use of preventive treatment after an HIV exposure in various cases including "accidental sexual exposure." When asked during floor debate, the author was unable to explain what constitutes "accidental sexual exposure. STATUS: Passed both houses. On Governor's desk.

AB 205 (Goldberg-D) - This bill gives virtually all the rights and benefits of marriage (except filing joint tax returns) to domestic partnerships. Almost all of these benefits are available now between any two people via contract. This bill, therefore, raises domestic partnerships in the law to a level above other relationships including mother/son, bother/sister and grandparent/grandchild and comes very close to equating them with the fundamental building block of civilized society, marriage. I do not believe that government should interfere with people's private relationships, nor do I think government should promote them. STATUS: Passed both houses. On Governor's desk.