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Health & Fitness

The Legislative Year is Over: I Need Your Help

Late Thursday night the legislative year ended, and the next morning I left Sacramento to return to my district.

While this year has been personally and professionally satisfying for me and by all counts a legislative success for this freshman member of the legislature, I am concerned with the direction of our state.

Thursday night, the Democrat-controlled legislature passed bills to give licenses to undocumented immigrants, opened the door for businesses to leave our state by increasing the minimum wage, and targeted our 2nd Amendment rights to “keep and bear arms.”

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The overall theme of this legislative year was gun control. I saw pieces of legislation passing off the Assembly Floor that attacked 2nd amendment rights like I’ve never seen. Legislation such as SB 374 will ban semi-automatic rifles that don’t have a fixed magazine, making a vast majority of rifles illegal. AB 48 will allow the government to track you if you are purchasing what they feel is too much ammunition. AB 711 will ban lead ammunition under the guise of being “environmentally friendly”.

Even more concerning were bills AB 10 and AB 60. AB 10 will raise the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour next July and then to $10.00 an hour in January 2016.  It will do nothing to improve the business climate in California and will more likely cause the loss of 40,000 to 50,000 jobs. In a state with an already unprecedented high unemployment rate, this bill will crush the hopes of those desperately in search of employment and greatly impact already cash-strapped small businesses. 

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AB 60 will allow undocumented immigrants to have driver’s licenses and make it illegal for businesses to refuse to hire an individual based on immigration status. This bill puts California’s businesses directly at odds with the federal government. Federal law dictates a business cannot hire undocumented immigrants. The dilemma is either a business complies with the federal law and gets sued or complies with California law and gets fined.

I urge you to contact the governor’s office and express your concern with these bills, or any other that you are concerned with becoming law.

As I look forward to spending more time in the district in the coming months, I hope to hear from and see many of you and thank you for taking the time to reach out to the governor.  Our state is headed in the wrong direction with some of these bills, and I need your help.

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