Council Announces Position On Two State Bills
The Commerce Industrial Council’s August 28th meeting of the Board of Directors saw the group take a stand on two separate California bills, supporting the California Chamber of Commerce’s stand below on SB 71 and supporting AB 540.
*SB 71*
As California businesses struggle to pay soaring energy bills, the last thing our economy needs is a multibillion-dollar increase in the cost of workers’ compensation insurance.
SB 71 (Burton) would increase benefits to injured workers, but the legislation contains no cost-saving improvements to the workers’ comp system. Without systemic changes, a benefit increase can mean only one thing_higher workers’ comp bills. Many businesses are already facing double-digit increases in workers’ comp costs. The cost of the benefit increase in SB 71 would be in addition to those increases.
Business leaders understand that benefits to injured workers have lagged behind those in other states, but benefits can be fair without saddling businesses with huge new cost burdens. Here’s how:
* Fight workers’ comp fraud. Employers should be authorized to dismiss workers who fail to disclose a criminal record of workers’ comp fraud on their job applications. Penalties should be tougher for criminals who entice people to file fraudulent claims.
* Ensure quality, affordable medical treatment. Unnecessary treatment that delays an employee’s return to work must be subject to prompt review and stopped if the treatment isn’t helping the worker recover from his/her injuries.
* Ensure prompt and fair payment of benefits. Develop objective guidelines to promote uniform decisions on the degree of permanent disability. Allow electronic deposits of benefit payments or other means to accelerate the delivery of benefits.
* Improve the efficiency of the system. Workers’ comp judges should be held accountable for following legal timelines, procedures and professional conduct. Workers deserve clear information about how to navigate the system.
* Reduce litigation. Hold physicians accountable for treatment decisions by removing the legal presumption of correctness. Allow employees and employers to agree on an independent medical examination.
*AB 540*
AB 540 would allow California immigrants to attend California community colleges and universities. AB 540 guarantees in-state tuition to those qualified graduates that meet the following criteria: that they attended a California high school for three or more years and graduated from a California high school.
AB 540 is necessary to make higher education affordable and accessible to some of California’s best and brightest students. Only immigrant students who are long-time California residents benefit from AB 540. AB 540 puts a college education within reach for those students by allowing them to pay the in-state tuition rate.
Congress has recently introduced legislation that will allow states to set its own residency rules without being required to subsidize out of state residents. States would be able to determine which immigrants, if any, they want to exclude based on immigration. It is a bipartisan measure: Cannon-R/UT, Berman-D/CA, Roybal-Allard-D/CA.
Governor Rick Perry (R-Texas) recently signed a bill that allows long-time immigrants to pay in-state tuition in Texas public colleges and universities if they attended and graduated from a Texas high school. These students must have been enrolled at the high school for three years.
The kids who will benefit from AB 540 come from “mixed families.” The majority of beneficiaries live in families where some members are undocumented, some are “green card” holders and others are United States citizens. They are the same group of students whose rights to public education in the K-12 system were protected by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plyler v. Doe (1982). They have played by the academic rules and have met our academic expectations for high school graduation and college eligibility.
These families have already paid into the system. As many of these children are the children of “green card” holders and U.S. citizens, their parents work and pay taxes in this state and, therefore, should reap the benefits of California residency for their children. An investment in their education will, in turn, reap long-term benefits for the state’s economy and productivity in the future.