By far the most buzz is going to Assembly Bill 1842 by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, that is being framed as much different than Proposition 10, which lost by 18 percentage points in November. Chiu says his bill would prevent “rent gouging.”

Instead of the hard caps on rent increases seen in many local rent control ordinances adopted by California cities before 1995, Chiu’s measure would ban landlords from increasing rents each year by more than an as-yet-undetermined percentage more than inflation.

Oregon recently became the first state in the nation to adopt an “anti-gouging” rent law. The measure limits annual rent increases to inflation plus 7 percent for existing tenants in buildings that are at least 15 years old. Rents can go up by more than that when apartments are vacated, but the law contains additional protections meant to prevent landlords from seeking to evict tenants with solid records of timely rent payments solely so they can raise the rent.

UC Berkeley researchers concluded that if a similar law passed in California, 4.9 million homes, condos and apartments would be covered.

Some landlord and business groups didn’t oppose the bill as it moved through the Oregon Legislature – seeing it as preferable to the harder, smaller caps that some state lawmakers and activist groups preferred and that polls suggest are popular.

But stronger and more consistent opposition to Chiu’s bill looms in California. “We need to encourage new housing, not create policies that stifle its creation,” Tom Bannon, CEO of the California Apartment Association, told the Bay Area News Group. He said any state law capping rent increases would be counterproductive and ineffective at remedying the housing crisis.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has not taken a public stand on Chiu’s bill. Last month, however, he told lawmakers at his State of the State address, “Get me a good package on rent stability this year and I will sign it.”

Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, has also once again introduced a bill including more traditional rent control provisions. Assembly Bill 36 would allow local governments to mandate rent control on apartments and single-family homes as soon as they were 10 years old. Landlords with only a few units would not be covered.

Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, has also once again introduced a bill meant to make it significantly more difficult to evict tenants. Assembly Bill 1481 would set a statewide “Just Cause for Evictions” standard. Most cities already have such policies.

The least controversial measure affecting renters was proposed by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland. Assembly Bill 724 would set up a state housing information clearinghouse that would list all available units, their monthly rents, how long units were vacant and how many tenants are evicted. Landlords would be required to submit this information on a timely basis.

Wicks thinks this would lead to more informed decisions on housing by the Legislature and the Newsom administration.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The California Legislature’s determination to lessen the amount of sugary drinks consumed by state residents may never have been greater than now – at least if the metric used is the number of bills introduced. This session, five will be taken up, and more may be on the way.

For the third time, Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, has introduce a measure that would tax soda and other beverages sweetened with sugar.

The first two times, Bloom’s measure didn’t get out of committee after it faced intense, well-funded opposition from the American Beverage Association.

But Bloom told his hometown paper, the Santa Monica Daily Press, that the tax was urgently needed to nudge people to stop consuming so many unhealthy drinks.

“Everyone would acknowledge that health care costs are skyrocketing,” he said. “Diabetes and obesity are ongoing health-care crises and we need to get serious about prevention.”

Revenue from the tax – which has not been established yet but which was 2 cents per ounce in Bloom’s previous bills – would pay for programs meant to reduce diabetes and obesity. Bloom said 9 percent of state residents are diabetic and nearly half are at risk of developing diabetes.

Measure would ban Big Gulp-size sodas

Bloom’s bill will have plenty of similar company this year.

Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, proposes a ban on soda servings of larger than 16 ounces in seal-able cups sold at restaurants and grocery stores. A similar ban in New York City was thrown out by New York state courts – but not for a reason that has relevance in California. Judges repeatedly held that the New York City’s health board overstepped its powers in imposing the ban and should have deferred to the New York state Legislature.

Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, hopes to end the common practice of displaying sodas near the checkout stands of food, convenience and other retail stores.

Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, is for the fourth time proposing that sugary drinks sold in California have labels warning of their health risks. Monning said if tobacco products’ health risks are made plain with warning labels, so should the risks of soda.

Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, is touting a bill intended to prevent beverage companies from offering stores special deals with lower prices for sugary drinks.

Studies split on effect of Berkeley soda tax

Soda foes got good news on Feb. 21 when the American Journal of Public Health published a study saying that soda consumption plunged 52 percent in Berkeley in the first three years after the city adopted a soda tax. 

But other research into Berkeley’s soda tax is far less encouraging, according to University of Southern California professor Michael Thom. He told the Santa Monica newspaper there was no evidence that residents reduced their caloric or sugar consumption and asserted there is little, if any, proof that soda taxes have a positive effect on human health.

A Harvard Business Review study based on an analysis of millions of transactions at California stores by Duke University professors Bryan Bollinger and Steven Sexton was also skeptical of claims of success in Berkeley. Published in January 2018, it noted that since most residents worked outside of Berkeley, they could readily buy cheaper soda elsewhere. The study also pointed to a factor not mentioned in any recent newspaper coverage of soda taxes:

“We found that much of the cost of the tax is not being passed along to consumers,” Bollinger and Sexton wrote. “Fewer than half of supermarkets changed the price of soda in response to the tax, and prices at chain drug stores did not change at all.”

SACRAMENTO – California’s redevelopment agencies were a fixture on the local political landscape for six decades, as they guided development policies and grabbed “tax increment financing” that localities used to pay for infrastructure improvements, downtown renovations and affordable-housing projects. They had some notable successes but generated enormous controversy before Gov. Jerry Brown shuttered them in 2011.

They were designed in the 1940s to fight urban blight. But the agencies were criticized for their use of eminent domain on behalf of private companies; for running up debt without a vote; for the subsidies they ladled out to developers; and for financing big-box stores and auto malls rather than helping inner cities spruce up. The governor ultimately killed them because these agencies had become a drain on the state’s general-fund budget, consuming 12 percent of the budget.

It was a shock to see such a powerful sector dry up, as local agencies morphed into “successor agencies” that had nothing left to do other than pay off existing debt. But the redevelopment industry – the developers, lobbyists, city officials and low-income housing advocates – never really went away. Each year since 2011, lawmakers have proposed and sometimes passed measures that incrementally bring back the redevelopment process.

The way that complex process worked in the past involved city councils essentially creating agencies that target “project areas” for subsidy. The agencies would float debt to fund infrastructure and pay subsidies to developers who build things within those areas. Cities often would subsidize retail projects because of the sales taxes they provided. The gain in the property taxes from the new development was designed to pay off the debt.

But those taxes often come out of the hide of other public services, such as schools and public safety. The state budget had to backfill the losses and the result was the budgetary drain that the governor plugged. But with the state’s fiscal situation having improved markedly since 2011, legislators have been less concerned about any financial impact of revived agencies.

In 2015, the governor signed Assembly Bill 2, which created Enhanced Infrastructure Finance Districts (EIFD) that have many similarities to the old redevelopment project areas. Under the old law, redevelopment officials would simply declare an area blighted before gaining new powers of subsidy and debt funding within that area. Under what some called Redevelopment 2.0, those borrowing and spending powers were limited to infrastructure projects.

To prevent some of the old fiscal abuses, the new EIFD process bans the newly created agencies from unilaterally creating project areas that would steal tax revenue from counties, fire authorities or school districts. Instead, they would have to gain the approval of the other districts, thus providing incentive for a less controversial project. These projects also lacked the affordable-housing requirement that was found in the old redevelopment law.

This year, affordable housing is the Legislature’s pet issue in its final week of session. The governor and Democratic leaders have promised a legislative package to deal with the state’s housing crisis. Lawmakers also are considering Assembly Bill 1568 by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, which would add a housing component to those infrastructure districts. Critics say it’s creeping redevelopment, combined with an expanded ability for local governments to raise taxes.

“Local governments have been without a reliable financing mechanism to invest in economically depressed, transit-rich areas since the demise of redevelopment agencies in 2011,” Bloom said in a Senate Rules Committee analysis. This proposal “provides local jurisdictions with the authority to finance infrastructure and affordable housing using new sales and use taxes in addition to property tax increment within qualifying districts.”

Lawmakers are expected to make technical amendments Friday and then send it to the Senate floor for a vote Monday. The bill requires that the Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts use the new taxes to fund affordable housing on infill sites. The measure has passed its committees on a largely party-line vote, with most Democrats favoring it and most Republicans opposing. It’s backed by several planning and local-government organizations, and has a high likelihood of making it to the governor’s desk by the Sept. 15 deadline.

If that’s so, then it will be interesting to see whether Gov. Brown, who fought so hard to eliminate redevelopment agencies, is willing to let them return incrementally, albeit with a different name and somewhat different rules.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Analysts have separated into two camps around Golden State real estate, one more bullish than the other. “Two recent reports — from Fitch Rating, a Wall Street credit reviewer, and Arch MI, a seller of mortgage insurance — attempt to gauge the stability of regional housing markets by tracking changes in real estate metrics vs. other economic measurements,” the Orange County Register reported. “Using a California prism, the studies draw wildly different conclusions. Fitch concludes California housing is among the most overvalued housing markets in the nation. Yet California is not on Arch MI’s list of riskiest places to own.”

“California was one of 10 states with overvalued housing by Fitch’s standards. Four states had the same pricing mismatch as California: Florida, Hawaii, Oregon and Utah. Next states on the dicier scale — 10 percent to 14 percent overvalued — were Arizona, North Dakota, Nevada and Texas […]. Idaho was in the worst shape at 15 percent to 19 percent overvalued. But Arch MI saw California with riskiness below the norm. California’s risk of falling home prices is ‘minimal’ or a 2 percent change of depreciation in the next two years. National risk by this math is 4 percent.”

Searching for answers

Along with an analytical split surrounding a possible housing bubble, residential options in California have been opening a gulf of their own. “California is one of the most unequal states in the country, and its housing market is similarly bifurcated, offering both multimillion dollar houses and rent-controlled apartments, but less and less of a foothold for people in the middle,” the American Interest observed. “This is a key reason so many working class families have left the Golden State in the past 25 years.” In a recent report issued by Bankrate.com analyst Claes Bell, “California ranked as the toughest state in the nation for first-time home buyers, who typically would be in the millennial age bracket of 18 to 34,” according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Policymakers grappling with the state’s compounded housing challenges have no shortage of plans to pore over — over 130 bills touching upon the issue, the Times noted. “Reams of statistics support the depth of the problem: California’s homeownership rate is at its lowest since World War II, a third of renters spend more than half of their income on housing costs and the state has nearly a quarter of the nation’s homeless residents — despite having 12% of the overall U.S. population,” the paper noted in a breakdown of some leading legislative contenders — which range from proposals to expand low-income rent-controlled units to increasing tax credits to pushing easier and less traditional permitting. 

Back to rent control?

The push toward increased rent control has been spearheaded by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica. “Bloom wants to repeal the state law known as the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, named after a moderate-leaning Democratic former state senator from the Central Valley and a short-time Republican assemblyman from Orange County,” the Sacramento Bee recalled. “During 1995, Jim Costa, now in Congress, and Phil Hawkins, who served just two years in the state Assembly, became the face of a disputed political campaign lodged largely by landlords and real estate interests to weaken – statewide – the ability of cities to pass strong rent-control laws. It came nearly two decades after the rent-control movement, born in cities like Santa Monica, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Berkeley, was spreading across the state.”

In core metro areas across California, rents have risen dramatically — in part reflecting an influx of wealthier residents to downtown urban neighborhoods, but also fueling a domino effect of hikes further down the affordability chain. “Statewide, average rents have increased 60 percent over the past 20 years. In 2016, median rents in the Bay Area and Los Angeles area ranged from $2,427 to $4,508, according to a housing report from the California Department of Housing and Community Development,” the paper added. “Nearly half of California’s households rent, and 84 percent of them are considered ‘burdened,’ spending 30 percent to 50 percent or more of annual income on rent.”

Capping off a protracted political battle focused around animal rights and aquatic entertainment at SeaWorld, the San Diego’s longstanding tourist attraction, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that will bring California’s iconic relationship with captive orcas to an end.

Wave of criticism

Authored by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, the law has banned “orca breeding and captivity programs like the one formerly run by SeaWorld theme parks,” as well as “featuring the marine mammals […] in performances for entertainment purposes,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Starting in June next year, orcas in captivity can be used for ‘educational presentations’ only.”

For the activists who spearheaded the legislation, inspired by the 2013 documentary Blackfish, victory in California has been seen as critical to codifying new nationwide norms. “Attendance has plunged, and company shares have fallen in half” at SeaWorld, the San Francisco Chronicle noted last year, after the film “made a compelling case that the confinement and exploitation of killer whales inflicted physical and psychological stress on creatures that thrive on socialization and vast expanses of the ocean.” The Animal Welfare Institute, which co-sponsored the bill, helped ensure that practices banned in California could not spread to other locales after the fact. “Besides outlawing orca breeding and theatrical performances, the so-called Orca Protection Act also bans the transportation of orcas to entertainment facilities in other states and foreign countries,” National Geographic noted. But it “does permit the transport of orcas to other facilities in North America,” as Dr. Lori Marino, president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, told NatGeo. “This will facilitate ongoing efforts to develop seaside sanctuaries for these animals as an alternative to living in tanks.”

Multiple challenges

The route taken through Sacramento by the captivity ban was an unusual one. After the passage of this year’s budget package, “the Assembly approved a natural resources budget ‘trailer bill’ that includes a provision with the new restrictions,” the Sacramento Bee recalled. “The orca provision is part of a budget-related bill that would be wrapped into the $171-billion state budget the governor signed in June,” as U-T San Diego observed as the state Senate cleared the legislation. Bloom’s bill, with similar wording, advanced simultaneously. 

Looking ahead

Given SeaWorld’s timing in shuttering its beleaguered orca programs, the bill’s completed journey into law ruffled few feathers. In a March op-ed at the Times, Joel Manby, SeaWorld president and CEO, revealed that public sentiments the company had ironically helped change in orcas’ favor had doomed its traditional offerings. “We are proud of contributing to the evolving understanding of one of the world’s largest marine mammals,” he wrote. “Now we need to respond to the attitudinal change that we helped to create — which is why SeaWorld is announcing several historic changes. This year we will end all orca breeding programs — and because SeaWorld hasn’t collected an orca from the wild in almost four decades, this will be the last generation of orcas in SeaWorld’s care. We are also phasing out our theatrical orca whale shows.”

Opposition had been closing in around SeaWorld throughout this year and last. The California Coastal Commission had approved a plan to expand SeaWorld’s orca enclosures, but only on the condition that the park stopped its breeding and transfer programs, effectively forcing the changes Manby announced in March. In Washington, D.C., meanwhile, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had authored a bill imposing a federal ban on the captive breeding of orcas. “SeaWorld is certainly feeling the bite of public opinion,” ecological author Carl Safina told NatGeo. “Though they could carry on elsewhere with breeding and trans-shipping, they’d be wise to emphasize other aspects of their entertainment.”

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

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @MelodyGutierrez

Doubts overcome

After sailing through the Assembly in May, AB888, introduced by Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, languished in Sacramento’s upper chamber. As the Sacramento Bee reported, “it was blocked by a vote of 19-16 in the Senate, where a similar bill died last year.”

Although granted reconsideration, the bill was dogged by the abstention of some Democrats leery of going too far and too fast toward the elimination of the popular cosmetic and hygienic additives. Suggesting the scope of the uncertainty, state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento — co-author of the state’s recent closure of vaccination exemptions — withheld his vote, arguing that technology should be given a chance to lower the risk posed by the beads to the environment, according to the Bee.

Sure enough, tweaking the bill’s allowance for microbes alternatives won enough support to put it over the top. Originally, Bloom’s language required “that only natural products, such as ground walnut shells, could be used as alternatives to microbeads,” as the Huffington Post noted. “When proponents of the bill agreed to remove those provisions, the legislation was granted reconsideration and passed in the Senate the following day.”

Pushing for a trend

Bloom swiftly hailed the bill’s passage by a 24-14 vote. In terms now becoming typical of legislation passed in Sacramento, he framed the regulations as a model the rest of the country was ready to embrace. “California is a national leader on environmental issues. It is my hope that this legislation, which will create the strongest protections in the country, will be used as a nationwide standard for eliminating harmful micro-plastics from personal care products,” he said, according to the Santa Monica Mirror. “We cannot afford to wait any longer to stop this pervasive source of plastic pollution.”

Key environmental groups echoed Bloom’s predictions. In a blog post, the 5 Gyres Institute, a co-sponsor of the bill, pointedly referenced a pending bill in Congress. “Since CA is by far the largest market for consumer care products in the country, it is likely that Federal Legislation currently under consideration (H.R. 1312) will follow the CA model,” 5 Gyres said.

“Unlike bans in states like Colorado, Maine, New Jersey, Illinois and Indiana, AB888 bans all types of plastic microbeads, including so called “biodegradable plastics,” many of which do not biodegrade in the marine environment. The bill will encourage companies to shift towards more sustainable, naturally derived alternatives like sea salt, apricot pits and walnut husks. AB888 would ban the sale of products containing plastic microbead by 2020.”

Compound fears

Activists have long complained of microbeads’ quiet, cumulative impact, which falls disproportionately on the coastal ecosystem especially beloved of Santa Monica’s environmentalist constituents. As Mother Jones observed, “the particles are so small that they aren’t caught in wastewater treatment plants and end up in waterways and oceans, where they don’t biodegrade and are frequently mistaken for food by fish and other marine animals. There are an estimated 300,000 microbeads in a single tube of face wash.”

At the same time, opposition to microbeads arose from Californians with more of a culinary interest in marine life. “Fish species that humans harvest have been known to eat micro-plastic particles and the toxins absorbed in those plastics transfer to the fish tissue,” the Mirror noted. “Humans eat fish and bivalves that have eaten microplastics which carry known dangerous toxins.” Bloom and others have also expressed concerns that microbeads can “pose a threat to humans when used in toiletries such as toothpaste, potentially sticking in gums and causing disease.”

Denise Cross / flickr

Unexpected bipartisan opposition has formed against a piece of legislation designed to cut down on California’s sometimes outrageous ballot initiatives.

In addition to the left-leaning Consumer Watchdog organization, citizens’-rights groups like the California Taxpayers Association and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association have mustered their members against the bill. Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, told the San Francisco Chronicle “that only six of the 26 states that allow citizen initiatives have filing fees and that the highest is $500, in Mississippi and Wyoming.”

Hoping to stave off a shift in fortunes, Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, has already tweaked Assembly Bill 1100 in an effort to calm the drama. Co-authored by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, the bill originally proposed a massive increase in the fee charged by the state to file an initiative. Currently just $200, Low and Bloom set out to hike the fee to $8,000 — a daunting number for some, but calculated to just about cover what it costs the state to pay the attorney general’s office for drafting each initiative’s title and summary.

Low was inspired to push for the reform by a contentious recent effort that would have created a so-called Sodomite Suppression Act. “Huntington Beach attorney Matt McLaughlin submitted a ballot measure in February that would have ‘any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method,'” as the Sacramento Bee recalled. “Determined to prevent the measure from moving forward, Attorney General Kamala Harris took the measure to court and was relieved of the official duty to write the title and 100-word summary necessary before signature-gathering.”

A checkered past

Proponents of Low’s reform insisted that the bill was about more than shutting down such lurid proposals. California’s ballot initiative system has seen its fair share of half-baked ideas over the years, drawing criticism from more conservative analysts concerned that the state’s view of direct democracy was too romantic and naive.

As the Chronicle noted, initiatives have now been filed that would ban alimony, create a secession commission, eliminate private power companies, fly the state flag above the national flag, “and call the state’s top elected official ‘president of California.'”

Another ongoing challenge, some critics noted, was guiding voters away from voting in favor of unaffordable but otherwise appealing measures.

In fact, Low’s efforts to curb crazy initiatives have not been the first — nor the first to do so by jacking up the price of admission. “Given the sheer number of proposals that have been submitted recently, the Legislature has actually already tried to make filing fees more expensive,” Civinomics noted. “Laws were submitted in 2009, 2010, and 2011 to raise the fee, but two of them were vetoed by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the other was dropped by the bill’s author.”

GOP opposition

For now, Republicans have recently tended more toward supporting a permissive initiative process, concerned that California lacks many other effective hedges against the state’s near-one-party rule and its more liberal judges, who largely dominate the courts. So when AB1100 came to a vote in the Assembly, votes for and against split almost exactly along party lines. Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, put forth a popular argument on the right, warning “the higher fee would make it difficult for individuals and nonprofit groups to file for an initiative,” as the Los Angeles Times reported. “She said that if the increase in the cost of living since the fee was implemented was figured in, it would now be $2,700.”

Then, as the bill made its way to the Senate, reality set in. In committee, “the filing fee was trimmed from $8,000 to $2,500 and then to $2,000,” the Chronicle recounted. “The plan to hike the charge in lockstep with increases in the Consumer Price Index also disappeared.” Nevertheless, the changes weren’t enough to satisfy critics, who will likely have to count on Gov. Jerry Brown to stop the bill from becoming law.

Source: 5Gyres

After a near miss last year, a new push to ban so-called microbeads has gained momentum, clearing the California Assembly.

The tiny plastic orbs, especially prevalent in cosmetics and personal care products, like facial scrubs, became the target of environmentalist scorn over recent years. Instead of quickly biodegrading, the microbeads slip through natural and artificial filtering mechanisms, showing up in oceans, animals and, ultimately, in the food we eat.

Industry opposition

Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, introduced Assembly Bill 888 this year, hoping to avoid a repeat of his unsuccessful effort in 2014. On that occasion, the state Senate rejected Bloom’s bill by a single vote.

Although energized activists worked to build a broader coalition the second time around, AB888 retained a key component from last year’s bill that contributed to its failure. “If the California bill becomes law,” the New York Times reported, “the state would ban not only synthetic particles but the biodegradable ones that many companies have been developing as alternatives.”

That starkly contrasted Bloom’s legislation with successful bills, in states like New Jersey, that permitted other biodegradable materials to be used in microbead-like fashion. Stiv Wilson, associate director of the anti-microbead 5 Gyres Institute in Santa Monica, told the San Francisco Chronicle that provision placated worried manufacturers.

“Wilson said California’s bill met fierce industry opposition, while a bill in New Jersey sailed through. He said the difference came down to a loophole in the New Jersey bill, which allows for bioplastics made from polylactic acid to replace the polyethylene and polypropylene plastic currently used.”

As New Jersey legislators have struggled to decide whether to ask Gov. Chris Christie for a “conditional veto” that would wipe out that allowance, Bloom’s bill has added California to a relatively short list of states reckoning with the impact of microbeads. As the Times noted, in addition to New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois and Maine have legislated restrictions on their use, “while bills are pending in others, including Michigan, Minnesota, Washington and Oregon.”

Shifting science

The turn against microbeads hasn’t just come from environmentalists, however. Some big corporations using microbead technology have announced they’ll soon phase in alternatives still in research and development. As Vice News reported, Colgate, Johnson & Johnson and L’Oreal have “promised to rid their products of the stuff, though the adjustment could take several years to complete.”

Johnson & Johnson, for instance, explained in a statement that microbeads will be eliminated “by the end of 2017,” while the development of new products with microbeads has already been ceased. “Our goal is to complete the first phase of reformulations by the end of 2015, which represents about half our products sold that contain microbeads,” the statement concluded.

Initially, microbeads were seen by sellers and shoppers as a beneficial innovation. “Manufacturers initially turned to the tiny plastic particles because they are cheaper and generally don’t cause allergic reactions while giving consumers the feeling of a deep clean,” as the Chronicle recounted. But health concerns about microbeads have mounted since their use dramatically spread. “I have been warning my patients away from plastic microbeads for years,” one member of the American Academy of Dermatology told Vice. “They are horrible. Initially it wasn’t known that they were so harmful. It was definitely a case of unintended consequences.”

Wait and see

For now, industry interests have not coalesced as powerfully against Bloom as in the past. Giving manufacturers more lead time to adjust, AB888 “would prohibit the sale of microbead-containing products beginning in 2020,” as the Sacramento Bee noted; a leading industry group has “adopted a neutral position” as amendments to the bill have specified its scope and reach.

The Democrats now have had a change of heart. Reported the Times:

“SACRAMENTO — Proposed legislation aimed at providing more tax credits to attract so-called runaway movie and television productions back to the industry’s birthplace in California won initial approval from a legislative committee Tuesday.

“The proposal would renew and increase a state tax credit — amounting to as much as $400 million a year — to better compete with generous tax subsidies available in more than 40 states, including New York, Louisiana, New York and Michigan, as well as studios in Canada and Britain.

“The tax credit would allow most film and TV production companies to reduce their tax liability by 20% of the cost of many production expenditures.”

So Democrats actually admit that high taxes drive away business. And although Prop. 30 mainly was taxes on rich folks, $1 billion comes from a sales tax increase. So the poor and the middle-class effectively will be paying for that $400 million tax break for Hollywood investors, movie moguls and stars.

Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, gave this explanation:

“This is our industry to keep or lose. We need to send a message to New York, England and other states competing for our jobs and say, ‘It stops here.'”

But what about the rest of us? What about workers in manufacturing, or construction, or retail or lumber? Can’t we cut taxes for them and say to “states competing for our jobs,” such as Texas, “It stops here”?