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. [go to Campbell index]

We Don't Need To Change, We're Liberals
Up against a immovable object: Democrat ideology...
[John Campbell] 5/10/04

Governor Schwarzenegger has been methodically achieving the goals he set out in the recall campaign. He has successfully lowered the car tax, repealed the illegal alien driver's license bill, reformed worker's comp insurance and begun the process of balancing the budget with no tax increases to dig us out of the budget hole. To accomplish these things, the Governor has once gone to the people with an initiative, twice used an initiative threat and once done the action by executive order. So, the majority Democrats in Sacramento have not changed. It seems they have to have direct threats to go around them before they will agree to even negotiate, much less act. They do not understand the will of the people, the mandate of the Governor, or the corrupting influence of their public employee unions and trial lawyer supporters. As examples of this, I present to you two bills,(one this week and one next) both sponsored by Governor Schwarzenegger, which were killed in the first committee on straight party line votes:

AB 2181 (Campbell-R) - This bill which I authored, proposed to repeal the miserable SB796, authored last year by Senator Dunn (D-Santa Ana) which has become known as the "bounty hunter bill". This bill created a right for any employee or former employee to sue their employer for any discrepancy from the 2400 page labor code. They do not have to show any harm. The "violation" could be technical. But the "damages" are set in statute as a multiple of the number of employees you have and the time over which the "violation" occurred. This formula results in very substantial fines, and the attorneys and the plaintiff get 25% of that fine.

Amgen Corporation has been sued for tens of millions of dollars for posting a sign in the wrong font size and for having a poster not be "conspicuous." Seven movie production companies have been sued for millions by one law firm and the same 4 plaintiffs (some of who worked for as little as 12.5 hours for any one studio) on the same day for "overtime violations." These overtime violations amount to as little as $8.63, but SB 796 allows the fine and the attorney's fees to potentially be millions. This bill is a trial lawyer's dream and a taxpayer's nightmare. But the Governor's bill to repeal this law (and two other similar republican bills) received no Democrat votes in committee.

The bill does not just apply to businesses. It applies to any employer. That means school districts and churches and charities can and will be next. Or maybe the legislature. Can the legislature itself comply with its own law? After the committee hearing, a state labor workforce expert and I roamed the capitol for about an hour and discovered violations by the legislature that would result in fines of $249 million. The legislature had failed to post current inspection certificates in the 12 elevators in the capitol building plus numerous other "violations." Our "bounty" for that crime and lawsuit would be over $62 million. Not bad for an hour's work. Any wonder that the trial lawyers and their subsidiary Senator Joe Dunn love this legalized extortion?

Do any of you readers know of lawsuits that have been filed against employers under this law? If so, please e-mail me the details. You can leave in or leave out the employer's name if you want. These examples of what is happening will give the Governor more leverage to get this law repealed this year, with retroactivity, before it destroys more businesses, impacts schools and kills more jobs.

Next week, I'll have another example of a bad bill the Governor wants repealed. This one costs school districts hundreds of millions of dollars per year. CRO

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