An ideal bill to help businesses amid the COVID-19 pandemic needs help making it through a legislative process that’s been pared down due to the coronavirus, a former state Senate Minority Leader says.
AB 2457, introduced in February by then-Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, is designed to restrict penalties on employers and has since been amended to reflect the economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly its effect on small business owners.
The bill is slated to go before the state Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment in the next few weeks and will need help getting shepherded through, Bob Huff, former Senate Republican Leader, told the Northern California Record.
An Assemblywoman since 2012, Melendez won the special general election for California’s 28th Senate District on May 12.
“This bill would help clarify AB 5, and gives some certainty to businesses by allowing them to modify what they are doing and quell the trial attorneys trying to generate revenue through PAGA [Private Attorneys General Act],” Huff said.
“Covid added new wrinkles that we just haven’t seen,” Huff added. “All our business sectors have been hurt. Anything that helps us get through the greatest recession since the Great Depression would be welcome and helpful.”
But with committee hearings scaled back due to the coronavirus, and questions about how AB 2457 will proceed through the Assembly with its sponsor now in the Senate, the bill could face an uphill climb, Huff added.
“Small businesses are feeling some of the harshest consequences from the shelter-in-place orders in the wake of coronavirus,” Melendez said in a May news release on AB 2457. “We as lawmakers now need to make sure they are not frivolously targeted by civil actions, penalties and fines that result from the unintended consequences of employees filing for unemployment benefits.”
Jared Yoshiki, a spokesperson for Melendez, could not be reached for further comment.
The bill still needs to gain traction, Huff said.
“Unless the governor picked up the phone and said to legislative leaders, ‘Yes, I’d like to see this.’”
The seven-member Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment includes five Democrats and two Republicans.
“Small business is the backbone of the California economy,” Huff said. “They’ve been caught in a horrific, perfect storm of things, and this bill would address at least one component of their issues so they can focus and get their businesses going again.”