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Congresswoman -----
Briefing Memo (Shortened for Sample) Staff: Lexi Karbelnig Date: 01/23/2019 Meeting Start & End: 8 AM - 9:45 AM Subject: ----- Chamber of Commerce Legislative Action Forum Meeting Summary: The ----- hosts a Legislative Action Forum for members of the Chamber and community members to hear about legislative actions that will affect local businesses. The Chamber has members from local governmental and business bodies/agencies like the School District, -----, City of -----, ----- Recs and Parks, etc. come and give briefings on legislation that could impact that specific entities business or the community at large. A Field Representative from Congresswomen ------ office, -----, was in attendance to brief the panel about the Congresswomen’s work. -----, Assemblywomen ----- District Director was in attendance to do the same. -----, gave the update for the ----- Recs and Park District, which just recently moved headquarters and is working on finishing their move. The Chamber update was given by ----- and ----- and involved new legislation that could affect business in -----. The first piece of legislation will affect a considerable amount of businesses in ----- and involves sexual harassment policy. The second piece information covered is not legislation but a court case that could affect local businesses. SB 1343, which was signed in to law by California Governor Brown in 2018 and will take effect this year requires all business with five or more employees to have new employees undergo one hour of mandatory sexual harassment training and supervisors undergo two hours, within six months of employment and every two years thereafter. This is a change to the previous law which only required companies with more than fifty employees to have their supervisors undergo two hours of mandatory training. The businesses have until January of 2020 to have their current employees hired before the new law, undergo this training, and must henceforth follow these new requirements. Troester V. Starbucks is a California Supreme Court Case that, in short, found Starbucks owing employees compensation for work activities that fall before and after clocking in that are work-related duties. Examples of these work-related duties are, for openers and closer, opening/locking the door, signing in/out of all computers in the store. The case found, abbreviated, that these procedures may not seem to take a considerable amount of time but is work time not paid, and, can add up to a large accrument of unpaid work time. The Chamber wanted to make members aware so that they can watch this case and the possible law change that could come out of it, or further lawsuits against businesses for the accruement of lost wages. ----- from ----- gave a brief update about ----- working on recent wildfire mitigation, and grid protection. He also informed the panel once again about the upcoming switch to the Clean Power Alliance (see City Council Memo from 1/14 for further info) in the City of ----- and nearby cities starting in February. -----, the Superintendent for the ----- Unified School District informed that panel that the 1989 bond fund will be falling off this year leading to a decrease in taxpayers contribution. Prop 51, the California Public School Facility Bonds Initiative from 2016 is being used to revamp and improve 26 public school facilities in -----. The improvements have been already put in to affect and are expected to finish in ten to twelve years. Public schools are receiving new furnishings intended to help students learn and participate in school better, along with new technology improvements in the classrooms and academics. ----- did note that there is a constraint to what the ----- can do, other than these cosmetic and technological advancements from the bonds because the district's budget is on a three-year cycle. The three-year cycle is impactful because a lot of the funds coming from the State and Federal government are one time or short term funds that can only be counted for short periods of time. |
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