Regulation of Uber, Lyft Thrown Into Question by California DMV

As reported by the Sacramento Bee:

California’s burgeoning efforts to regulate ride-for-hire companies like Uber and Lyft have reached a fork in the road after the Department of Motor Vehicles issued an advisory that, in mandating commercial registration, threatens to upend the companies’ business model.

Conceived as an alternative to taxicabs, firms like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar allow people to use their personal vehicles to transport customers who have hailed a ride using a smartphone app. They tout their flexibility and potential for non-professional drivers to make some extra cash.

But the DMV said earlier this month that any time a car is used to transport people in exchange for compensation, that car must have commercial plates – an order that contradicts previous state regulations, according to the industry. …

 

CA Regulations Hatch Legal Food Fights

Have you noticed egg prices going up as much as 40 cents a dozen? Look to California voters.

In 2008, they passed Proposition 2, which mandated more comfortable hatching quarters for chickens. Because of the cost to farmers of expanding chicken coops, a grace period was allowed of six years, to Jan. 1, 2015.

As NBC reported, the extra time allowed farmers time to “invest in operations to make sure that every hen would have at least 116 square inches of space, or about a square foot. One thousand laying hens, for example, now require a facility measuring more than 800 square feet.” That’s about double the space egg-layers enjoyed previously.

Now that the clock has run out on preparation time, egg prices are poised to rise even higher. According to the Associated Press, the cost of breakfast will rise for consumers across the country, not just California:

“The new standard, backed by animal rights advocates, has been criticized by chicken farmers in Iowa, Ohio and other states who sell eggs in California and will have to abide by the same requirements. California is the nation’s largest consumer of eggs and imports about one-third of its supply.”

Nationwide, the market could eventually adjust. UC Davis economist Daniel Sumner told the AP “prices initially could rise sharply this year but he expected them to eventually settle 10 to 40 percent higher in California and return to their normal prices elsewhere in the country.”

That would leave Golden Staters paying a premium that other Americans, with less comfortable chickens, would avoid.

Foie gras

The egg price jump also ties into the ongoing foie gras controversy. As CalWatchdog.com previously reported, for now, foie gras is back on Californian menus.

In a brief ruling that skirted deep questions of constitutional law, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson held this week that federal poultry regulations “preempt” what was a statewide ban on the delicacy, a rich dish made from the liver of force-fed geese or ducks.

But as Daniel Fisher noted at Forbes, supporters of the ban swung quickly into action. “The Humane Society immediately urged California to appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, which has been friendly toward the state’s extraterritorial regulatory efforts in the past.”

Notably, the activist organization referenced another hot area concerning chickens: eggs.

According to Fisher, the “foie gras ban ran afoul of federal law controlling the ingredients in poultry products, the Humane Society said, while the egg ban involves the process of raising chickens.”

There, the important distinction concerns out-of-state production and in-state consumption. The Ninth Circuit’s ostensible treatment of the foie gras case will turn on its interpretation of the Interstate Commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Faced with a previous challenge to the ban, the Ninth Circuit did not object to the way that Sacramento’s ban on foie gras made it impossible under state law for out-of-state producers to import the food into California. Nevertheless, Wilson held that federal poultry law prevailed over California’s policy.

Different argument

So the Humane Society and other ban defenders want the Ninth Circuit to consider a different argument: California should be able to ban food production that requires what they consider cruelty to animals — even for out-of-state production.

In a case last fall, Judge Kimberly Mueller, of the Sacramento Division of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, held that out-of-state producers of eggs running afoul of California’s new rules lacked “standing” to sue — meaning  the capacity of a party to bring suit in court.

Now the Humane Society and its allies expect to show in-state standing before the Ninth Circuit.

All told, California’s food fight isn’t just set to expand. It’s set to escalate, perhaps even to the national level.

This article was originally published on CalWatchdog.com

New 2015 Laws: Hollywood Wins, In-Home Care Loses

New Year’s Day sure wasn’t a holiday from new regulations: 2015 brings 931 new laws Californians must obey. Some took effect on Jan. 1; others will later in the year.

State lawmakers — with the approval of Gov. Jerry Brown — have changed how consumers shop for groceries, how Hollywood blockbusters are funded and how much time you get off work when you’re sick.

Perhaps the most talked about new law, the country’s first statewide ban on single-use plastic bags, also is the least likely to go into effect. Under Senate Bill 270, by state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, grocery stores and markets would be banned from distributing plastic bags on July 1. Stores would also be forced to charge customers at least 10 cents for a recycled paper bag, the proceeds of which can go toward offsetting the cost of complying with the new regulation.

However, a manufacturing trade group, the American Progressive Bag Alliance, has channeled consumer anger over the new state regulation into a successful petition drive. Earlier this week, the group turned in more than 800,000 petition signatures to county registrars in an effort to qualify a referendum for the 2016 ballot. If the measure qualifies for the ballot, the law would be delayed until voters decided its fate in Nov. 2016.

Hooray for Hollywood handouts

While the outcome of the state’s plastic bag ban remains in doubt, there’s no doubt Hollywood will have its handout in the new year. Assembly Bill 1839, authored by Assemblymen Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, and Raul Bocanegra, D-Pacoima, would more than triple California’s corporate welfare program for film and television programs.

Under the state’s current subsidy program, the California Film Commission gives away $100 million in tax credits to big studios that keep production in California. The new law will increase that corporate welfare fund to $330 million per year for the next five years. It also changes how the funds are distributed, linking the size of the welfare to the number of jobs created by the project.

“In the last 15 years, film production has dropped nearly 50 percent in California,” said Senate GOP leader Bob Huff of Diamond Bar, a co-author of the corporate welfare bill. “When that happens, it’s the ‘behind the scenes’ workers who take a hit, as well the ancillary businesses that serve the production sites and teams. If California is going to get these jobs back, we must compete with other states and nations who are clamoring for that big movie business.”

Yet taxpayers often fail to see an adequate return on their investment, as CalWatchdog.com reported earlier this year, “A recent Legislative Analyst’s Office report concluded that the Golden State is actually failing to recoup its supposed investment in keeping the entertainment industry local, losing some 35 cents on the dollar.”

In-home workers excluded from new paid sick leave

As the state gives away hundred of millions of dollars to Hollywood studios, it simultaneously claims it can’t afford to extend a new perk to in-home care workers. AB1522, authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, requires all companies to provide their employees up to three paid sick days per year.

But the new law, which takes effect on July 1, excludes 365,000 in-home support service workers. The California Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill and included it in its list of 2014 “job-killers.”

Why did the Democratic-controlled Legislature abandon the state’s low-paid workers and exclude government from the new regulation?

“At the end of the day,” Gonzalez told the union-backed Capitol & Main blog, “we were forced to take that specific group out.  It was a condition of having the bill signed by Gov. Brown.”

Brown objected to the $82 million annual price tag to hold the state to the same regulations as private businesses. The cost of providing sick days to in-home workers was less than the current Hollywood subsidy program.

Other new laws in California

Redevelopment Revival

AB229, by Assemblyman John Perez, D-Los Angeles, allows local governments to create Infrastructure and Revitalization Financing Districts to revive old military bases. These districts could issue 30 years of debt with the approval of two-thirds of voters in the district.

SB628, by state Sen. Jim Beall, D-Campbell, revives redevelopment agencies under a new name, “Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts.” These districts would be allowed to “finance public capital facilities or other specified projects of community-wide significance” with the approval of 55 percent of voters in the district.

New Gun Laws: 

AB1964, by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, bans gun shop owners from selling single-shot handguns that can be altered into semi-automatic weapons.

AB1014, by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, D-Oakland, creates a new restraining order that allows the confiscation of firearms when a person is determined to be “an immediate and present danger of causing personal injury to himself, herself, or another.”

New Laws in the Bedroom: 

SB1255, by state Sen. Anthony Cannella, D-Modesto, expands California’s “revenge porn” ban against posting intimate images of unwilling or unaware people on the Internet, including selfies.

SB967, by state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, requires colleges to develop instruction manuals informing students that sexual activity requires affirmative consent.

This article was originally published by CalWatchdog.com

Obama Admin. Crams Over New 1,200 Regulations Just Before The New Year

The Obama administration is cramming like a college student trying to study for a final exam, publishing more than 1,200 new regulations in the last 15 days alone, according to data from Regulations.gov.

Energy and environment rules are the biggest category, with 139 published by the federal government in the last 15 days, according to Regulations.gov.

One of the most contentious new regulations is the Environmental Protection Agency’s coal ash rule. The rule has been critcized by the coal industry and environmental groups — though for entirely different reasons — and has a price tag of up to $20.3 billion. The rule was finalized last Friday.

Before that, the Obama administration finalized a new ozone standard that could become the costliest rule ever proposed by the EPA. The EPA released the rule while millions of Americans were getting ready to eat some turkey and pie for Thanksgiving.

Regulations listed on Regulations.gov include “Notices from the Federal Register; Proposed Rules; Final Rules.” The government website shows that 309 rules were proposed or finalized in the last 15 days and 892 notices from the federal register were received — some of which could lead to new rulemakings.

So far this year, the Obama administration has proposed or finalized  more than $200 billion in regulations when the coal ash rule’s costs are factored in, according to the American Action Forum.

But that’s not all, the Obama administration will be unleashing a slew of new regulations in 2015 aimed at hydraulic fracturing, energy production on federal lands, methane from oil and gas drilling and carbon dioxide from power plants.

President Obama has been criticized in the past by environmental groups for not going far enough to fight global warming and promote green energy. But activists may quiet down in 2015 when the administration finalizes a slew of new energy regulations that will cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars.

The energy experts at ClearView Energy Partners have a list of some new regulations for next year that include “the fracking rule for federal lands due to be finalized by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM)… BLM’s rule governing flaring from oil and gas wells on federal lands… an advance notice of proposed rulemaking regarding federal royalty rates for federal onshore oil and gas leases… EPA’s proposal of effluent limitation guidelines (ELGs) for pre-treatment of oil and gas wastewater; and further details regarding the Administration’s Methane Strategy.”

The EPA is also set to finalize new power plant regulations in 2015 that limit carbon dioxide emissions from new and existing electric generating units.

First the agency must finalize carbon emissions limits for new power plants. Their proposed rule has already come under intense criticism from utilities, coal country and federal lawmakers because it essentially mandates that coal plants use carbon capture and storage technology — an unproven technology.

The EPA will then finalize rules for existing power plants, which requires states to submit plans to the agency on how they will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector. This rule has already been subject to legal challenges by states and the coal industry.

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This article was originally published on the Daily Caller News Foundation

California Business Needs to Go Small or Go Home

NO ESCAPE FROM THE TAX VICE-Here’s the bitter reality for business in much of California: there’s no cavalry riding to rescue you from the state’s regulatory and tax vise. The voters in California have spoken, and with a definitive, distinctive twist, turned against any suggestion of reform and confirmed the continued domination of the state by public employee unions, environmental activists and their crony capitalist allies.

You are on your own, Southern California businesses, and can count on very little help, and, likely, much mischief, from Sacramento and various lower orders of government. To find a way out of stubbornly high unemployment and anemic income growth, the Southland will need to find a novel way to restart its economic engine based almost entirely on its grass-roots business, its creative savvy and entrepreneurial culture.

This shift poses a great challenge, both for California’s interior counties and parts of the coastal region. Unlike Silicon Valley and its hip twin, San Francisco, no one is investing much in the Southland. Among the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, the Los Angeles region has become a corporate stepchild, trailing in new office construction not only to world-beaters like Houston, but also New York, the Bay Area and even slower-growing Philadelphia or Chicago. In fact, although the second largest metro area in the country, LA-Orange County does not even make the top 10 regions for new building.

Nor can we expect much in the way of residential housing growth, particularly single-family homes, as the state’s planners continue their jihad against anything smacking of suburban expansion.

Traditional industries like aerospace, manufacturing and logistics face enormous regulatory barriers, ruinous taxation levels and huge energy price increases that will slow any potential growth, and could lead to yet more departures by existing large firms. Virtually all the region’s former major established aerospace companies have relocated their headquarters elsewhere, which hurts efforts to get them to expand or maintain facilities here.

Despite all this, the Southland is not without considerable assets. Perhaps most promising is the region’s status as the nation’s No. 1 producer of engineers – almost 3,000 annually. This raw material is now being somewhat squandered, with as many as 70 percent of graduates leaving the area to find work.

But there’s no reason for unmitigated despair; overall, Los Angeles-Orange has increased its ranks of new educated workers ages 25-34 since 2011 as much as ballyhooed New York, San Francisco and much more than Portland, Ore. For its part, the Inland Empire ranked fourth among 52 large metropolitan areas in terms of increased presence of bachelor’s degree-holders in this age group, adding almost 19,000 college-educated people since 2011.

There’s also a case to be made for Southern California as an emerging tech hub. As venture capitalist Mark Shuster points out, the region ranks third, just behind the Bay Area and New York, for its percentage of the nation’s tech startups, and is now the fastest-growing. The overall tech base, which includes aerospace, is still the largest in the country, with more than 360,000 employees. As tech moves from basic infrastructure to application, Shuster argues, the Southland’s time may come.

Despite producing MySpace, the region may have lost out in the social media wars, but shifts in tech trends could turn out to be far more advantageous. This relative optimism is remarkable given the losses in so many key engineering-driven industries over recent decades, from electronics and energy to aerospace.

Southern California’s technology community could well benefit from such things as growing demand for content among tech firms, as well as attempts to reboot space exploration. Indeed, investor Peter Thiel recently suggested that the region’s technology industry is the most “underestimated” in the nation.

“I’d definitely be short New York and long LA,” Thiel told the Los Angeles Times, citing both commercial space pioneer SpaceX and Oculus, the Irvine-based maker of virtual-reality headsets.

The case for a grass-roots rebound of tech in Southern California depends heavily on one key asset – the presence of the nation’s largest community of people in the arts. Roughly half of these workers are self-employed, according to the economic forecasting firm EMSI.

The Silicon Valley may be ideal as a place to nurture digitial technologies, but “nerds” as a whole are not cultural mavens or trend-seekers. They are better at transmitting messages than putting something worthwhile in them. In contrast, Southern California excels in filling messages with product.

The large existing base of television, movie and commercial producers has nurtured skills that are sought worldwide. Yet at the same time, with the studio system clearly in decline, as large productions go elsewhere, digital players such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple, as well as Los Angeles-based Hulu, have become more important. Indeed, when my Chapman students, many of them film majors, discuss their futures, it is increasingly these intermediaries, not the studios, that they identify as critical to a successful career.

This suggests a very different picture of the Southland’s industry than the one normally associated with large companies, studios and deep concentrations of talent. In the future, more production will be done by individuals, sometimes working out of their homes, scattered across the region. According to Kauffman Foundation research, the LA area already has the second-most entrepreneurs per 100 people in the U.S., just slightly behind the Bay Area. By necessity, Southern California’s economy will become more entrepreneurial and grass-roots; even as we have been losing large companies, our percentage growth in self-employed is among the highest in the country.

Not surprisingly, this activity appears concentrated not in the traditional bailiwicks in the San Fernando Valley, or in the hyped Downtown-adjacent areas, but along the coastal strip from Santa Monica to Irvine that some promoters have christened “the tech coast.” This epitomizes the growing role of young individuals and startups – as opposed to veteran engineers – in shaping the Southland’s emerging tech economy.

This pattern, however, is not just restrictive to digital entertainment. Southern California’s network of tested aerospace engineers – which, at 5,000 people, is second only to Seattle’s – is one reason why companies like SpaceX have located here. In an economy that relies more and more on individual expertise, this is a critical advantage.

One powerful caveat: We are not likely to see much blue-collar spinoffs of tech here, due largely to high land, regulatory and energy costs. Space X, for example, may have its key brain power in Southern California, but has chosen to construct its spaceport in lower-cost, business-friendly Texas. Another aerospace firm, Firefly Systems, this year decamped entirely for Texas, moving its headquarters to the Austin area and rocket engine facilities to rural Burnett County.

This pattern suggests that many of our emerging firms may remain somewhat limited in scope and largely focused on high-end functions, which reduces the positive impact for the region’s struggling local middle class and working class.

But the new grass-roots economy does not apply only to tech. Los Angeles has seen a huge rise in the number of people working from home, a percentage that since 1980 has more than tripled even as transit’s ridership share has dropped. Small, home-based businesses are common not only in such fields as real estate, but also in business consulting and even trade.

These home-based businesses, and small ones tucked into strip malls or small industrial centers – for example, in food processing – represent the last, best hope for a revived Southland economy. Our corporate community seems destined to continue shrinking, but this does not necessarily mean that the overall economy has to follow suit. Unable to rely on local officials to make things better, our best chance lies with relying on the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity of our people – the very thing that made us such an economic beacon in decades past.

This article was originally puslibhed on City Watch L.A.

(Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study,The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA. This piece was posted most recently at newgeography.com.)

California: The Land of Double Taxation for Small Businesses

Just think: You run a business. Your partner embezzles from you and you are reeling – you feel like you’ve been punched in the gut. Next, California’s state government shows up and slaps you around. When you object, Sacramento offers no apology, no comfort. You’re on your own.

Farfetched? Read on to see what happened to a California Limited Liability Company (LLC) that tried to play by the rules.

First, an LLC is a form of business that permits the owner to avoid double taxation. In California, such companies must pay an annual minimum franchise tax of $800, which is the highest of any state (in 40 other states the fee is $100 or less) and may be subject to additional fees based on revenue.

An article by Mike Dazé in Bloomberg BNA – Corporate Close-Up: The Burden of California’s Taxes and Fees on Limited Liability Companies – points out that the State Board of Equalization “illustrates the challenges businesses face when trying to reduce their liability for taxes and fees in California. A company filing two-short period returns in tax year 2010 unsuccessfully protested the imposition of the minimum tax and LLC fee in each short period.”

In short, they objected to double taxation.

The company, Bay Area Gun Vault, LLC, converted from a two-member entity into a single-member LLC after one of the two members was caught embezzling money and was removed. So the company filed two short-period returns for 2010, one as a two-member LLC and the second as a single-member LLC.

In the first return, the company timely paid the annual tax of $800 and an extra LLC fee on profit. In the return for the second period, the company did not pay the LLC annual fee, but did pay the tax.

Despite two tax returns, the company clarified that the income was for the same business with the same tax ID number and assets and was operating in the same location. So the company should owe only $800 in tax and an LLC fee of $6,000.

But the removal of the embezzler caused a “technical termination” of the original LLC because 50 percent or more of the interests changed hands. Hence, the resulting single-member LLC was a “new entity for tax purposes” and owed the minimum tax and LLC fee during the same year.

Mr. Dazé wrote, “The logic of the company’s argument is appealing: LLC taxes and fees should not be imposed twice in the same year on the same business.”

The Board claims there is no statutory support for that position.

Well, if the Board is correct, why did legislators let an unfair law stand? Do Sacramento lawmakers use no foresight in determining whether technical provisions in business-oriented laws might cause future injury?

Actually, I know the answer to my own questions. Here is why the legislature doesn’t care how its actions harm the business community:

  • First, the Franchise Tax Board (California’s version of the Internal Revenue Service) has projected revenue from LLC taxes and fees to be $753 million in fiscal year 2014-2015. Sacramento wants to collect every single penny of that revenue.
  • Next, California’s legislature is packed with people who will use taxpayer funds to support the latest half-baked ideas. But they routinely turn a deaf ear to requests from the business community for fair taxation and regulatory policies.
  • Finally, most Sacramento politicians are clueless about what it takes to run a business.

To amplify on that last point – only “18 percent of the Democrats who control both houses of California’s full-time legislature worked in business, farming or medicine before being elected,” wrote former California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. “The remainder drew paychecks from government, worked as community organizers, or were attorneys.”

In business-friendly Texas, “Democrats are more than twice as likely as their California counterparts to claim private-sector experience outside the field of law,” continued DeVore, and “75 percent of the Republicans earn a living in business, farming, or medicine….” All of that can be found in his book, The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America.

The analysis was for a couple of years ago, but the makeup of both legislatures remains virtually the same.

California is replete with demands for “environmental justice,” “social justice,” “income justice,” “sexual justice,” “workplace justice” – oh, the list goes on and on. What California needs more of is “entrepreneurial Justice,” “business justice” and “tax justice.”

Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders should reverse tax-confiscatory policies and refund overpayments to that LLC and others in similar positons. If not, California will perpetuate its mean-spiritedness towards corporations – even the one-person kind.

The Irvine-based Principal of Spectrum Location Solutions helps companies plan and select ideal sites for new facilities across the U.S. and internationally.

This article was originally published at Fox and Hounds Daily

Obama’s attempt to regulate private colleges rejected

The Obama administration has suffered a rebuke in its effort to regulate private-sector colleges, after a federal judge ruled that a proposed rule restricting bonuses for college recruiters was enacted without any proper evidence or justification for its existence.

The ruling is the second setback of its type for Obama’s Department of Education in three years.

Federal law has for decades banned educational recruiters from receiving compensation based on the number of students they enroll, in order to discourage aggressive sales tactics, fraud and other harmful behaviors. However, during the Obama administration a major push has been made to tighten this rule in order to prevent what the administration says are evasive practices.

In 2011, the Department of Education eliminated 12 “safe harbors” that allowed bonus compensation for recruiters in certain circumstances, including one that allowed for recruiters to receive bonuses based on how many students they recruited who graduated, rather than merely enrolled. The Association of Private Sector Colleges (APSCU) and Universities promptly sued, arguing the restrictions were illegal and offered without justification. In 2012 a federal court ruled on their behalf concerning the graduation bonus and ordered the Department of Education to provide better reasoning for its rules.

In its second attempt, the Obama administration argued that the graduation bonus was an effort to evade the ban on enrollment bonuses, since all students must enroll to graduate.

That reasoning doesn’t fly, wrote Judge Rosemary Collyer of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“If accepted, this rationale would allow the Department to ban all incentive-based compensation in higher education, as enrollment is always a necessary predicate to any assessment of program,” wrote Collyer in her ruling.

The Department of Education also attempted to justify the rule by claiming that recruiters were driving students towards shorter, less rigorous programs that they were more likely to graduate from, but which would help the students less than other programs. That might be true, Collyer said, but if it is, the federal government has provided no evidence that is the case.

“The Department does not identify factual grounds in the record for its concerns,” Collyer says. Even though it would have been “a simple matter” for the Department of Education to back up its claims more substantively, Collyer said, it failed entirely to do so, dooming its case.

Collyer also pointed out that federal laws concerning higher education are written with the explicitly stated goal of boosting graduation from postsecondary institutions. Incentivizing graduation would appear to help that goal, not hinder it, said Collyer, and the government had totally failed to explain how that was not the case. Nor had the government responded to an argument made by for-profit colleges that its rules would hinder the college graduation rates of minority students by prohibiting certain incentives to recruit them.

APSCU released a statement after the ruling saying it was “pleased” and requesting that the Department of Education to start its proposed for-profit college regulations from scratch.  The Department of Education has not said what is planned response is.

This article was originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

Toyota driven out of CA

James Lacy, author of “Taxifornia: Liberals’ Laboratory to Bankrupt America,” explains how high taxes and onerous regulations drove Toyota to uproot and move its headquarters to Texas.

Wynn: ‘Frightened to Death’ for Future of U.S. Business

Legal Reform = Job Creation

We all agree that the number one priority in this state and nation should be job creation. However, it seems like some people are more focused on spending money than saving money, at the expense of job creation.

A new study published by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform called Creating Conditions for Economic Growth: The Role of the Legal Environment sheds some light on how the high cost of tort systems in the United States is raising the cost of doing business and hurting job creation. This study is based on a data set of state liability costs never before made available to public policy researchers, which provides an excellent basis for a reliable state-by-state comparison of costs.

I have often cited the Pacific Research Institute’s U.S. Tort Liability Study, which stated that just one tort reform in California would create 141,000 jobs. This study, looking at updated data, concludes the same thing: improvements in states with the costliest legal environments could increase employment between 1% and 2.8%. In California, that could mean more than a quarter million jobs.

Will this latest study simply be placed on a bookshelf with all the other studies and rankings or will someone (in the Legislature or Governor’s office) clue in and get it? We need to make legal reform part of California’s jobs package and thoroughly examine our regulations so we can get California back on track.

It is pretty clear that if we want people to invest or expand businesses in our state, we need to make the business climate more inviting. Right now, it is fair to say (and many CEOs agree) California’s business climate is among the worst in the nation. Legal and regulatory reform will create a positive business climate where investors will come and build.

Are you listening California? Legal reform = Jobs. Don’t just take my word for it – there are plenty of materials you can read to back it up.

(Tom Scott is the Executive Director for California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse.  This article was first featured in Fox & Hounds.)