The Fight Continues to Protect California’s Advanced Manufacturing Comeback

Will California pull the rug out from an advanced manufacturing renaissance before it even starts? Not if we can help it. The Bay Area Council is mounting a concerted campaign to sideline a misguided bill (SB 954, Blakespear) currently awaiting a vote in the Assembly that would effectively undo streamlining reforms the Legislature and Gov. Newsom approved just last year to help supercharge California’s advanced manufacturing comeback and the creation of the many good-paying jobs that would come with it.

For many months now, the Council has been leading an intensive campaign to amend and/or defeat SB 954 in its current form and remove the miles of red tape and litigation risk that it would heap on new manufacturing facilities. In addition to testifying in multiple committee hearings in both the Senate and the Assembly, we have held close to 100 individual meetings with the author, other legislators, and staff to voice our concerns and offer productive workable amendments.

Although the bill author and supporters claim it “cleans up” last year’s legislation, in fact, it will completely undo that legislation and eliminate streamlining benefits from so many industries as to make it effectively useless. This would be not only a huge hit to California’s efforts to reignite its advanced manufacturing industry around the exciting technologies now fueling our economy, from semi-conductors to electric vehicles, batteries and other clean tech. We lead the world in designing these great technologies, and we should be able to build some of them here, too.

The bill would also rob opportunity from the many hard-working Californians who would benefit from the good-paying jobs these industries support. California has watched manufacturing jobs disappear over many years (600,000 since 2000) because of high costs and heavy regulations. That’s why we worked so hard to pass the streamlining reforms last year and why we’re fighting so hard this year to ensure those reforms remain in place. To engage in the Council’s business climate policy work, please contact Senior Vice President Adrian Covert.