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]

My Bills
Life in Sacramento's minority party...
[John Campbell] 10/5/04

Today is the last day for the Governor to sign or veto bills. So after today, no more legislation (unless the Governor calls a special session, which I do not think he will do) until after January 1st. Hooray! The people are safe for a few months.

So you may wonder what happened to legislation that I authored last year. As a member of the minority party, I have never measured myself on legislation passed. Instead, I measure myself on issues moved or killed, whether I am the author or not. For example, I championed the cause of repealing the horrible SB 796 Sue Your Boss legislation that was passed in 2003 and signed by Gray Davis. My bill to repeal the law was killed in the first committee on a party-line vote. (This happens a lot) But, we were able to keep the issue alive. In the end, the bad law was substantially repealed/modified as part of the budget agreement, but that bill was authored by Senator Joe Dunn, who had authored the original piece of terrible legislation. It is interesting to note that Senator Dunn fought against repeal or modification of this law all year, and then wound up being the author of the changes he had opposed. But I don't care who the author is, if the result moves us forward. And this result moved us forward in reducing abusive junk lawsuits.

Anyway, here's the brief summary of the fate of legislation I authored:

Passed and Signed into Law:

• AB 1733 - Requires cell phone companies to get your permission before they publish your cell phone number in any public directory.
• AB 425 - Provides the City of Newport Beach and the County of Orange increased flexibility in the management of the upper Newport Bay tidal lands.
• AB 135 - Extends an existing program to help the development and installation of solar energy for homes and businesses.
• AB 2480 - Delays the implementation of a penalty for not filing your tax return electronically. I do not like electronic filing requirements at all for privacy and taxpayer protection reasons.
• AB 2701 - Saves the state $13 -$15 million per year by eliminating various internal reports and allows state agencies to produce reports electronically instead of on paper.
• AB 1990 - A technical/clarification bill related to trusts that allows a trust instrument to reduce the statute of limitations on a challenge to a trust accounting as long as that statute is at least 180 days.
• AB 283 - The annual bill by which the legislature authorizes the payment of money to people who have won lawsuits or judgments against the state.

Vetoed by the Governor: None

Killed in Committee:

• AB 1966 - Would have created regulations for hydrogen vehicle fueling.
• AB 2241 - Would have clarified the qualifications of the appointments to the Building Standards Committee.
• AB 2421 - Would have given taxpayers more rights against abuses of them by the Franchise Tax Board
• AB 2460 - Would have reduced the number of holidays that state government employees get annually from 14 at present to 12 in the future.

Bills that Didn't make it to Committee: These bills were dropped because it was clear they weren't going anywhere in the next committee or because a compromise was made. They include the Governor's original pension reform proposal which was dropped in a budget compromise (AB 2903); local government reform which was dropped in favor of the compromise, which will appear on your November ballot as Proposition 1A (ACA30 and AB3105); reforms to personal property tax depreciation and unitary tax allocation (how's that for scintillating stuff? - (AB 2590, 2592); Judicial review of PUC decisions which was pulled in favor of a legislative audit of the activity (AB2419); and the repeal of a bunch of anti-job, anti-enterprise, pro-union boss bills passed under Davis (AB 2034, 2124, 2195, 2221 and 2379).

You can see that much of what we do is pretty technical, not very sexy stuff. But it usually has a major impact on some or oftentimes many people.

And I'll have a whole new set to pursue next year. CRO

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