California’s farcical Fast Food Council perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong with this state’s governance. Wasteful, performative and overreaching, it’s time to abolish the thing entirely.
In 2022, the California Legislature approved the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act (Assembly Bill 257) by then-Assemblyman Chris Holden of Pasadena.
Among other things, that law, overwhelmingly approved in both the state Assembly and state Senate, authorized the establishment of a fast food council with the authority to set the minimum hourly wage for fast food workers as high as $22.
After the Save Local Restaurants coalition responded with a signature gathering effort to put the matter before voters via referendum, a compromise was made. Assembly Bill 1228, also carried by Holden, was approved in 2023.
Under AB 1228, the minimum wage for fast food workers was set at $20 an hour as of April 1, 2024, with the Fast Food Council tasked with overseeing the “hourly minimum wage for fast food restaurant employees and develop[ing] standards, rules, and regulations for the fast food industry.”
The council is to consist of two representatives from the fast food industry, two from franchisees or restaurant owners, two of fast food employees and one member of the public. In addition, the council must include a representative from the Department of Industrial Relations and a representative from the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. It is also supposed to meet at least every six months.
The absurdity of ceding so much power to such a Soviet council aside, recent reporting from KCRA 3’s Ashley Zavala indicates the full council hasn’t met at all this year and hasn’t had a leader since May.
Nick Hardeman left his post as chair of the council to accept an appointment by Gov. Gavin Newsom California Housing Finance Agency’s Board of Directors and hasn’t been replaced since.
This leaves at least a few problems, one being that the council isn’t free. “California’s Department of Finance confirmed this year’s state budget included $1.1 million for the council to fund four staff positions,” reported Zavala.
Meanwhile, as part of the mess made by AB 1228 and AB 257 was the uproar known as “Paneragate.”
It was Zavala who reported in 2024 that the negotiations over the law were subject to nondisclosure agreements.
Zavala uncovered this as she tried to figure out why the law exempted restaurants that make and sell their own bread.
This raised concerns that perhaps this was included to aid billionaire Greg Flynn, a friend of Newsom’s who happens to own dozens of Panera Bread restaurants in California.
Even now, businesses have relied on the Fast Food Council for guidance on how to navigate the law in light of all of this. Zavala notes one Handel’s Ice Cream Parlor franchisee in Southern California has tried to get clarity from the council for a year. But it’s AWOL.
It all raises the question: What’s the point of all of this?
Just scrap the thing and let fast food operators do their jobs.