Everyone is CA could have savings soon

Good morning. TGIF. As we trudge through the few days left in the legislative session, each day brings plenty of action. On Thursday, a savings-for-all plan passed the Assembly that, if signed into law, will automatically enroll many employees into a state-run individual retirement system.

Secure Choice would require employers of five or more people to automatically enroll employees into portable retirement accounts, with an opt-out clause for the individual.

Proponents of the measure say that while everyone already has the option of investing in a wide variety of retirement accounts, they aren’t — the approximately 7 million people in the state who don’t have employer-based retirement accounts need to be nudged into planning for the future.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• “In a dramatic public escalation of the political dispute over a bill to give farmworkers more overtime pay, the leader of the California Assembly vowed to laborers massed outside the legislative chamber Thursday that he would champion the issue after an expected vote failed to materialize,” writes The Sacramento Bee.
• “Bad news for ferret lovers: Your pet is still illegal in California. But change may be coming. On Thursday, the California Fish and Game Commission continued reconsideration of the ban on domestic ferrets that’s been in place since 1933 until its next meeting after staff has had time to review new documents.” CalWatchdog has more.
• “A measure to expand incentives for developers who agree to build low-income housing cleared the state Senate on Thursday. The bill from Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, strengthens the state’s rules requiring local governments to approve housing projects that allow developers to build at higher densities, have lower parking requirements or receive other concessions if they reserve a portion of their projects for low-income residents,” writes the Los Angeles Times.
• “The Santa Clara County judge who faces a recall threat for giving a light sentence to a Stanford student convicted of sexual assault will no longer handle criminal cases — at his own request,” reports The San Jose Mercury News. 

Assembly:

• Gone ’til Monday

Senate:

• In at 9 .m.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog

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Actually, it’s probably really a ferret.

And as Walter says later on, it’s not legal. To which the Dude replies, “What are you, a … park ranger now?”

Ferrets really are illegal in California. Back when I was at the Orange County Register editorial page, every couple of years I would write an editorial backing ferret legalization.

A big push was in 2004, when a legalization bill was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — who, come to think of it, resembles the nihilists. “I love ferrets. I co-starred with a ferret in ‘Kindergarten Cop,’ ” he said in his veto message. “However, this bill is too bureaucratic and it legalizes ferrets prior to conducting an environmental impact report.”

Except there were, and are, at least 500,000 illegal ferrets already in the state.

Now the Bee reports 2015 brings another ferret-legalization push.

Ferrets already are legal in 48 states, with no real harm. According to a legalization site:

The contention is that ferrets may get out and reproduce, creating feral populations and impacting the environment in the process. There are several problems with this argument. For staters, nearly all (and I mean at least 99 percent) of pet ferrets are spay/neutered. Reproducing would be quite a trick. When ferrets get out, unlike domestic cats, they sadly are ill-equipped to hunt on their own. The California Fish & Game Commission (they’re the group blocking legalization) say they’re worried about ferrets hunting chickens. Thing is, that’s not happened in any other state. Outdoors on their own, ferrets are far more likely to become prey than to act as predators, if they don’t actually starve to death.

Whether legal or not, the ferrets abide.