The Legislature is back in session after the holiday break and lawmakers are busy developing their 2025 legislative agendas. Before we look at incoming ideas, it’s best to review their handiwork from last year. As CalMatters reports, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 1,000 bills into law. Most “are technical, fix previous laws or are narrow in scope,” it noted, but a few could affect our lives, wallets and sanity.
Perhaps the most significant change involves crime policy. In the face of public frustration over a retail theft wave, Newsom OK’d 10 anti-crime measures that create stricter penalties for smash-and-grab robberies, combine the values of stolen items to allow them to meet the felony threshold, and make it easier to arrest shoplifting suspects. Voters also approved Proposition 36, which guts a 2014 initiative that lessens penalties for low-level offenses.
We supported the legislative package but thought Prop. 36 threatens to bring back the bad-old days of over-incarceration. Nevertheless, the new measures might offer some relief to the public’s largely justified crime frustrations. We wish we could say other new laws were as understandable.
The state approved several “pro-worker” laws that will only add to the burdens faced by California’s business community. Some are small, but the new costs and paperwork requirements add up. One boosts the minimum wage to $16.50 for all categories of worker. Another expands paid sick leave to victims of crime or abuse. Another forbids employers from requiring driver’s licenses (except for driving jobs). Yet another requires employers to provide contracts to freelance workers.
Some new laws seem well intentioned and designed to help people who are victims of abuse or suffering from illnesses, but they amount to little more than posturing. Assembly Bill 1966 would require entertainment ticket-sellers to include a purchase notice “electronically to the buyer that contains information relating to commercial sex and labor trafficking.” It also requires transit systems and truck stops to post information about nonprofit organizations that can help human-trafficking victims.
A new law (Senate Bill 1061) forbids medical providers and collection agencies from reporting medical debt to credit bureaus. We’re sympathetic toward people who are dealing with debilitating medical debts, but hiding this information won’t really help consumers or companies that offer credit. The state also banned some “forever chemicals” from clothing and cosmetics. Legislators lack the kind of scientific expertise needed to impose such mandates.
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Newsom wisely vetoed a far-reaching regulation about Artificial Intelligence, but he signed some limits on AI, including one that, per The New York Times, “makes it illegal to create and distribute lifelike depictions of real people in images that cause serious emotional distress.” That sounds reasonable when it comes to sexually explicit images, but we share critics’ concerns that the way it’s written the law may run afoul of the First Amendment and Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act.
On a good note, the state has allowed Amsterdam-style marijuana cafes, where cannabis retailers can sell food, non-alcoholic drinks and host live performances. We’re not quite sure why California banned octopus farming given that there are no such farms here, but as Winston Churchill famously said, “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”