The San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce brought together a panel of statewide leaders on March 8 to discuss numerous timely, hot button issues during the second annual State of the State event.
Local business leaders were given the opportunity to hear the insider perspective and get answers about how the Affordable Care Act, pension reform, the Democrat supermajority in Sacramento and other statewide issues could possibly impact them on a local level.
The event line-up included California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones; state Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff; hedge fund founder Tom Steyer and California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility President Marcia Fritz.
“It is easier to disconnect from the decisions in Sacramento than it is to engage. But their decisions affect our local community,” explained Ermina Karim, Chamber president and CEO. “That’s why we want to bring Sacramento to our members.”
Steyer – identified by some as a strong contender for statewide office – opened with an assessment of the state initiative process.
“We’ve been using the proposition system for the past 15 or 20 years as a public referendum on the major issues of the day,” Steyer said. “And I think that if you went around the United States they would view that system somewhere between folly and insanity….to the extent that it is either folly or idiocy then I would have to be one of the chief fools or idiots.”
Steyer gained widespread attention for his intricate work co-chairing the successful Yes on 39 campaign, which changed how out-of-state businesses calculate tax liabilities. He also co-chaired the successful No on 23 campaign, which would have suspended AB 32, California’s Clean Energy Act.
Citing his work on the two initiative campaigns, Steyer spoke of propositions as an opportunity for the citizens to become educated on numerous topics and have a voice in the decision-making process.
“I actually think that in many ways it was a true step towards direct democracy,” Steyer said. “I think we’d rather all have a representative democracy but this was actually extremely involving and I thought in many ways that we came out with some pretty good results.”
Referencing the “logjam” in the state legislature and the partisan fight in Sacramento, Steyer spoke of the bipartisan support behind the campaigns he has worked on, and said that consensus is still the best way to get a proposition passed and work done at the Capitol.
“As a Democrat I don’t believe that this is healthy for California,” Steyer said of the Democratic supermajority.
“I don’t believe it’s good for the United States of America. I’m hoping we’re going to get back to a place that’s much more contested and even.”
Senate Minority Leader Huff gave an insider’s view of the divide at the Capitol.
“I have good relationships with all of them, but we don’t get together and collaborate,” Huff said. “I don’t think that’s good for the state. It’s very compartmentalized, it’s very parochial, it’s very partisan.”
He noted that there are no longer meetings between the governor and the four top legislative leaders, known as the Big Five, in Sacramento and that Republicans are significantly outnumbered on many important Senate committees.
The real change in Sacramento, according to Huff, came in 2010 when Proposition 25 passed requiring a simple majority to pass the state budget instead of a supermajority.
“It was at that point that our Democratic colleagues stopped collaborating with us,” Huff said. “What you have now is a one-party budget that drives one-party principles and you don’t have a balance in there.”
When asked about a viable energy plan that Republicans could get behind, Huff, a Republican from the Los Angeles County town of Diamond Bar, stressed the importance of timing and the cost to businesses and employers.
“A lot of times we try to accelerate things and make it a lot more costly on businesses,” Huff said. “Are we going to make a difference if we accelerate something by three years or five years or quicker? There comes a point where you lead by example, but we don’t want to lead by example by bleeding all our jobs into neighboring states.”
Fritz, who serves as the president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, spoke about working with both campaigns in the last gubernatorial election on their stance on public employee pension reform.
As a result of working with both sides, a lot of attention was paid to employee pension and reform during many of the debates, shining more light on the problem and eventually leading Gov. Jerry Brown to sign AB 340 in September 2012, she said. The legislation capped benefits, increased the retirement age and required state employees to pay at least half of their pension costs.
“Bottom line is, it’s going to save us $70 billion over the next 30 years, conservatively,” Fritz said.
Attendees also heard from Jones on the implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act, which he described as an immense undertaking that will have a complicated impact on small local businesses.
“We have a big, big task ahead of us as we set this thing up,” Jones said.
Elected as insurance commissioner in 2010, Jones is now responsible for guiding the rollout of the Affordable Care Act.
“The Affordable Care Act is about trying to get everybody insured,” Jones said.
Along with the requirements and obligations on employers, Jones was quick to point out the benefits of the new law, including a provision allowing parents to keep their children on their plans until age 26, closing the donut hole for prescriptions and ending co-pays for certain preventative care.
As for the implementation of the act and the new requirements, responsibilities and obligations for small businesses, Jones stressed that it was the number of employees that made the difference.
Jones referenced the website healthlawguideforbusiness.org as a resource for small businesses on new requirements.
Another important feature, according to Jones, is the creation of a new marketplace called Covered California, where small businesses and individuals can go to shop for prices. Every HMO in the exchange is required to provide a comparison across products and across carriers based on price.