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 Signatures
And Vetoes
Redskins, tolerance
and legislating lunch...
[John Campbell] 10/11/05
Over the
last two weeks, I told you all about a bunch of bad bills
that had passed and were on the Governor’s
desk. I suggested that he would veto them. Here is what
has happened on them so far. The Governor had until close of
business
Sunday to sign or veto all bills passed by the legislature
this year.
AB 13 (Goldberg):
Prohibited schools from using the mascot “redskins” and
would require any school which currently has such a mascot
to change it despite cost to schools or desire for such a change
by local communities. The Governor correctly vetoed the bill
citing concerns about adding yet another non-academic administrative
burden on schools and suggesting that decisions regarding such
things as mascots should remain at the local level.
Contributor
John
Campbell
John
Campbell (R-Irvine) is a California State Senator representing
the 35th District in Orange County. He represents the cities
of Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Huntington
Beach, Seal Beach and Cypress. He can be reached through
his Senate website and
through the website for
his California Senate campaign. [go to Campbell index] |
AB 723 (Chu):
Required “intergroup relations and tolerance” to
be taught in schools. The Governor vetoed the measure citing
the numerous programs already in existence with the education
system to address human rights and tolerance for all persons.
Among these, current law already establishes a Center for the
Excellence on the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights
and Tolerance to provide teachers the training and resources
to effectively teach and address these subjects in the classroom.
The State Board of Education makes available to all schools a
Model Curriculum for Human Rights & Genocide. In addition,
the California Department of Education maintains on its website
model policies for the prevention of bullying and hate-motivated
behavior.
AB 769 (Horton): Required residential property owners who failed
to comply with an order to repair to attend a 15-hour seminar
on how to obey the law. The governor recognized how useless such
a requirement would be and vetoed the measure.
AB 875 (Koretz): Automatically
triggered a tax audit of companies when any violation of the
12-inch thick labor code occurred.
Current law already provides the Labor & Workforce Development
Agency with the authority to engage in enforcement activities
related to the underground economy. Hence, forcing the Agency
to audit every company for the tiniest of violations will take
away from their efforts at going after companies who are truly
engaged in unscrupulous employment practices. This was just a
union/trial lawyer collaborative effort to line their collective
pockets at the expense of us all. Needless to say, the Governor
vetoed the measure.
AB 1184 (Koretz): Prohibited mandatory overtime for nurses employed
by the state. Currently, there is a nurse shortage in this state.
The nurses union would have you believe that it is due to lack
of wages, poor working conditions and of course the lack of respect
for their profession. The truth of the matter is that the Nurses
Board, run largely by practicing nurses, will only allow for
a limited number of nursing certificates to be issued by the
various nurse training facilities throughout the state. Thus,
the amount of nurses coming out of our academic institutions
will continue to be insufficient to meet our nurse staffing needs
and thus the cost of qualified nurses will continue to be increase.
This is exactly the goal of the nurses union.
The cost to bring
in qualified nurses combined with the nurse-to-patient ratios
required by law are already devastating California’s
public hospitals and health care facilities. Prohibiting the
mandatory overtime that is needed to keep many of these facilities
operating given the union created shortage will simply mean fewer
health care options for the sick. For this reason, the Governor
had no choice but to veto the legislation which he did.
AB 1310 (Nunez): Prohibits early retirement programs for groups
of 25 or more employees unless the employer provides the employee
with extremely detailed financial disclosure information and
provides for a lengthy rescission period. As I indicated earlier,
this is nothing more than an attempt by the trial lawyers to
add to their arsenal of reasons for suing innocent employers.
Recognizing that it did little to benefit employees and a lot
to hurt small businesses, the Governor vetoed the bill.
SB 780 (Ortiz): Required
the UC system to consider community and family background in
admissions to medical school. Given
the fact that the UC system already has broad leeway in determining
admission policies, the need for the measure is clearly unnecessary.
While the Governor indicated his support for the author’s
claimed intent, increasing the number of physicians in underserved
communities, he did not see how the admission criteria called
for in this measure would further that purpose. Neither do I.
For that reason, he vetoed the measure.
Now, the Governor did not agree with me on everything. Signed
by the Governor was a measure that recognized that current state
regulations on employee mealtime requirements are unworkable
and thus costing us jobs. It sounds good except that the measure
AB 1734 (Koretz) only allowed employers within the movie industry
who were union to be exempt from the current state regulations.
Too bad if you are a developer with union workers or a trucking
company with union employers. You must still comply with unreasonable
and costly state regulation. CRO
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