Significant EZ Legislative Push

I haven't provided an update on the status of AB 485 in a while. To make a long story short, it ended up being held in the suspense file in the Senate Appropriation Committee. This gives it very little chance of being passed this session therefore making it difficult to achieve the seamless transition from expiring enterprise zones to new ones that everyone is hoping for.

However, it seems that there has been some major activity in Sacramento this week. I received an email today from Toni Symonds explaining that two bills have been gutted and amended to match AB 485 including the recently proposed amendments. We now have AB 1550 which resides on the Senate Floor and SB 686 residing on the Assembly Floor. According to Ms. Symonds:

It has taken a joint effort by many members of the Legislature to get this far. Earlier in the week, Assemblyman Arambula and Senator Lowenthal met to coordinate a two-house response. They are being supported by Senator Machado and other Members who have been active on enterprise zone issues throughout the years including: Senator Duchney, Assemblyman Dymally, Assemblyman Houston, Assemblywoman Karnette, and Assemblywoman Garcia. We also needed various approvals of both the Speaker of Assembly and President Pro Tempore of the Senate in order to move forward on this issue. Next step is to move at least one of these bills to the Governor.

I think the most important part of this legislation is the provision that when a new zone is designated in place of an expiring zone, the designation date can be back dated to the expiration date of the prior zone. This will allow zones and their businesses to operate seamlessly even if it takes some time to finalize all of the conditions of the new zone application.