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.

More Bad Law to Sign
Maybe the Governor will get writer's cramp and stop before it's too late...
[John Campbell] 09/19/03

A week ago, I wrote a quick update of the biggest issues that would come before the legislature in the final 48 hours of the session. We were in session until about 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning. I'll write next week on many of the bad laws that were made, about which you may have not yet heard. But this week, I want to close the loop on 4 very important pieces of legislation that we previously touched on, but were unresolved at that time:

Worker's Compensation Insurance: A package of bills was passed relative to worker's compensation insurance. The main parts of the package received no Republican votes in either house. That is because this system has a gaping wound and these bills are only Band-Aids. They do some reform of medical costs, but they do nothing about the definitions of disability, about employer control or about changing the perverse incentives that exist in the system which reward attorneys, medical providers and workers for staying out of work longer. There is no mystery about what to do. The only mystery is why more members of the legislature don't have the political will to stand up to labor union bosses and trial lawyers. And because the legislature and this Governor won't do that, your worker's comp rates are likely to go up again on January 1st, even with these so-called reforms bills. It appears that true reform will have to wait for a new Governor or legislature.

SB2 (Burton -D) Pay or Play Health Insurance: This miserable bill passed with 71 of the 72 Democrats present voting for it. This has become the union bosses number one priority nationally. John Sweeny, head of the AFL-CIO, is said to have made calls personally to legislators to get them to vote for this. It forces employers to provide health insurance for their employees or pay into a state-run system. It is a step towards socialized medicine, and the unions hope to use this as a model for future federal legislation. The law will likely be challenged in court as being a disguised tax increase. There will be lots more on this issue over the next few years. "Hillary-care" is back.

SB796 (Dunn-D) Gift to Trial Lawyers: This legislation expands the ability of trial lawyers to sue businesses for technical violations of complex codes when there is no plaintiff demonstrating harm or injury. With this bill, they can do it for any violation of the 6-inch thick labor code including such things as the font size of notices. We thought we had killed this one, until Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) cast the deciding vote to pass it out. A couple of years from now, people will be screaming for "reform" of this system because of the abuse it will cause. Like worker's comp, it wouldn't need reforming if Democrats had not messed it up in the first place by pandering to their special interests.

SB18 (Burton-D) Tribal Sites: This was our one big victory Saturday morning. This bill would have given Indian Tribes veto rights over development of private property all over the state merely by their claiming the site to be "sacred." No physical evidence of its "sacred" nature need be provided and any property nearby may be affected. Then the tribe could demand "mitigation" from the landowner. Wouldn't you like to control huge chunks of property all over the state without owning them? Fortunately, this blatant land grab was defeated in the Assembly.

[Ed. - woe is us... there is more to come from John Campbell]