by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist (read the original in Noozhawk by clicking here)
Whether you consider laws as over-reaching regulations or justice-inspired protections, every year’s cohort of new ones is a funky amalgamation of legislation.
Some implement recent election results. Some are long in the devising, their various compromises producing a patchwork or tatter of their original selves. Many are playouts of previous years’ laws realized over a period of years.
This year’s cohort is noteworthy in being largely driven, either directly or indirectly, by the pandemic. Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center, reports that 2020 “was a year that started out with lots of aspirational plans,” for state legislators, “but it became a year about saving lives.”
The leadership tabled almost any bill that wasn’t COVID-related, according to Heath Flora (R-Ripon), vice chair of the California Assembly’s Labor and Employment Committee.
The laws directly related to COVID reflect a century having passed without a pandemic. Hospitals, nursing facilities, and employers are affected by the new legislation if they hadn’t already upped their games.
As a sampling, hospitals are now required to maintain a minimum three-month stockpile of PPE (personal protective equipment). Skilled nursing facilities must report communicable disease deaths within 24 hours. Employers must inform workers in writing of workplace exposure to COVID-19. California’s anti-price gouging laws now cover pandemics.
Another workplace protection begun as an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom has been by the Legislature. The law creates a “disputable presumption” that front-line workers who contract COVID-19 were infected on the job unless proved otherwise. It applies to businesses with more than five workers if they were on the job during an outbreak of four or more employees.
Other new workplace and social justice laws reflect the effect of the pandemic on workers and the economy. One that took effect Jan. 1 relates to unpaid job-protected leave. Employees can take such a leave to care for not just a COVID-afflicted family member, but also a newborn, newly adopted child, or any sick family member.
The bill originally intended to cover all workers, but the compromised version applies to companies with five or more employees.
California’s minimum wage increased, though this was part of a previous legislation. The minimum wage rose to $14 per hour ($13 for companies with fewer than 25 workers). In Santa Barbara, companies holding contracts with the city already pay $18.74 per hour minimum.
A housing bill that survived the journey to law was inspired by the Oakland activist group Moms 4 Housing. Corporations are now prohibited from bundling and buying groups of foreclosed homes during foreclosure auctions. Instead, tenants and families have a 45-day opportunity to buy them individually.
This temporary protection, expiring in 2026, is a move to keep intact neighborhoods and the families at a time when COVID-19 is pushing national mortgage default rates higher.
Legislation inspired by George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement affects policing policy in several ways. Chokeholds or any restraint that compresses a person’s carotid arteries are no longer permissible by police. When an officer-involved shooting results in the death of an unarmed person, California’s attorney general must investigate.
To make such occurrences rarer, counties can name a civilian oversight board or inspector general to independently oversee the work of a sheriff and issue subpoenas.
In all, Gov. Newsom signed 372 laws in 2020. This sounds like a bucketload whether you favor the label “regulation” or “protection.” However, that number is the lowest since 1967, according to Al Seib for the L.A. Times. The pandemic cancelled weeks of legislative hearings, so bills were drafter over a much shorter time period than usual.
My pie-in-the-sky hope is that someday laws like these will be as archaic as laws forbidding running your sheep on State Street, because who would think to do otherwise?
Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist
Karen Telleen-Lawton is an eco-writer, sharing information and insights about economics and ecology, finances and the environment. Having recently retired from financial planning and advising, she spends more time exploring the outdoors — and reading and writing about it. The opinions expressed are her own.