Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed several bills into law. Consumers, workers and voters are the beneficiaries of Newsom’s and the Legislature’s actions.

Consumers

First among these new laws is Senate Bill (SB) 478, which takes effect July 1, 2024. This legislation makes it an unlawful business practice to advertise, display or offer a price for a good or service that does not include all mandatory fees or charges a customer is required to pay as part of the transaction. Optional fees and charges, such as for premium movie channels in one’s cable TV subscription, or for gift-wrapping an online purchase, would not have to be included.

In effect, it requires retailers to provide the true, and whole, price of a service, product or ticket whenever they advertise or display a price. Many people see the price of a ticket for an entertainment or sports event and purchase it online. However, the amount to be charged to the credit card is higher for “service charges.”

Hotel “destination” fees or broadband network “termination” fees are examples of other hidden costs. In the future, the public price of the ticket must also include these service charges, thus showing the full price of purchase to the customer.

The exceptions are generally special cases such as taxes or fees imposed by a government on the transaction or the cost of postage that will be incurred to ship a physical good to the consumer. Another broader exception includes fees and charges assessed by governments of airlines, automobile dealers, broadband internet providers, car rental companies and other institutions.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta was one of the bill’s sponsors. He even held a May news conference in San Diego to advocate for its passage. Upon approval, he said in a news release, “California is eliminating hidden fees. These deceptive fees prevent us from knowing how much we will be charged at the outset. They are bad for consumers and bad for competition … With the signing of SB 478, California now has the most effective piece of legislation in the nation to tackle this problem. The price Californians see will be the price they pay.”

Several existing California laws, such as the Consumer Legal Remedies Act and the Unfair Competition Law, address parts of this problem. But SB 478 brings them altogether and enables enforcement and remedies for this increasingly frequent act of hiding true costs.

Following Newsom’s signature, Sen. Nancy Skinner, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, posted the following statement on X: “With SB 478, the days of bait-and-switch pricing practices are over. Starting Jan. 1, Californians will know up front how much they’re being asked to pay, and no longer be surprised by hidden junk fees when buying a concert or sports ticket or booking hotel rooms.”

Also, President Joe Biden’s administration proposed action at the federal level in February. In an accompanying news release, Biden proposed and asked for Congressional action to eliminate fees. His proposed bill was titled, “Junk Fee Prevention Act.”

The president’s release argued, “This will not only save Americans billions a year, but make our markets more competitive — creating a more even playing field so that businesses that price in a fair and transparent manner no longer lose sales to companies that disguise their actual prices with hidden fees.”

Workers

SB 616, which Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) introduced, guarantees workers at least five paid sick days per year, up from the current three days, and also requires that employers allow the accrual of at least 10 days of sick leave. Its effective date is Jan. 1, 2024.

In February, Gonzales submitted the bill, which would have authorized seven days of sick leave. It was modified during the legislative process. It also increases the accrual and carry-over amounts.

“All workers in our state deserve to take the time off they need to recover and take care of themselves and their families when they get sick,” said Gonzalez when she introduced the bill. “During the pandemic we saw the immensely positive outcomes of having COVID-related sick leave, preventing more outbreaks in workplaces, averting prolonged illness amongst employees and maintaining workplace productivity … Three days of sick leave is just not enough …”

After signing the bill into law, Newsom said, “Too many folks are still having to choose between skipping a day’s pay and taking care of themselves or their family members when they get sick. We’re making it known that the health and well-being of workers and their families is of the utmost importance for California’s future.”

Newsom’s news release noted, “Two days of unpaid sick time is nearly the equivalent of a month’s worth of groceries.” Also importantly, allowing an employee to rest and to recover at home will reduce potential requests for sick leave from other staff and health care costs for the public.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, California and the federal government took emergency measures to ensure that most workers for mid-to-large sized employers had temporary access to 10 days of supplemental paid sick leave.

The California Chamber of Commerce opposed SB 616. After its signing, CalChamber President and CEO Jennifer Barrera issued the following statement: “This new mandate will impose significant costs on California businesses, especially small employers already operating on slim margins. Many California businesses already offer more than three days of paid sick leave and can afford to do so. Our concern is that far too many small employers simply cannot absorb this new cost, especially when viewed in context of all of California’s other leaves and paid benefits, and they will have to reduce jobs, cut wages, or raise consumer prices to deal with this mandate.”

But the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California saw it differently. “Every single working person and especially working parents know that three sick days are not enough,” said David Huerta, SEIU California president. “No one wants workers to come to work sick, but that’s exactly what happens when workers face the prospect of losing a large part of their pay.”

Voters

Another important bill Newsom signed into law was Assembly Bill (AB) 969. This new law would ban hand-counting of votes, except in very narrow circumstances. Hand counting would have to be approved by the secretary of state. It prohibits counties from canceling the contracts for ballot counts without having a replacement.

Currently, all voting systems used for California elections must be certified by the secretary of state or conditionally approved.

AB 969 would authorize hand counting if there are more than 1,000 eligible registered voters, or an election is held on a date other than an established election date if there are more than 5,000 eligible registered voters.

Further, the secretary of state must approve the plan to hand count ballots and the plan must be in accordance with state regulations. These regulations have been drafted and two public review comment periods were held in June and July.

This law was a reaction to the Shasta County supervisors voting in January to cancel the county’s voting system lease agreement with Dominion Voting Systems. This would occur after the county’s special election in March. At the time, there would be no means to count votes other than by hand.

The county had no plan for future elections. The board eventually asked its Voting Office to explore hand counting and investigating two voting systems. Ultimately, the board chose to use Hart InterCivic of Austin, Texas.

According to the August Senate Report on AB 969, manual tallies have been shown to be less accurate, slower and more costly than machine tabulation.

A 2018 study conducted by researchers from Harvard, MIT and the University of Wisconsin examined statewide recounts conducted in Wisconsin and found that paper ballots counted by hand were less accurate than ballots counted with optical scanners.

Tabulators are used by over 90% of U.S. election jurisdictions. Hand counts are complex, imprecise and resource intensive. Voting systems allow for higher security, accuracy and accountability than hand counting and ensure the secrecy of the ballot.

However, a small manual count is used to verify the election results. To accomplish verification, current law requires a hand count of ballots.

There are two methods in which this may be accomplished and counties are required to use one or both to certify the results of every election.

Election officials are required to conduct a 1% manual tally in which they manually tally all the ballots in 1% of the precincts, selected at random by the election officials.

The alternative is using risk-limiting audits. If the county is using an experimental voting system as part of a pilot program, it is required to use this method. A risk-limiting audit involves the manual count of randomly selected ballots. The count stops as soon as it is implausible that a full recount would show a different result than the ballots reviewed.

The Assembly Election Committee noted, “It appears that no California county has conducted a full manual tally of all ballots cast at a statewide election since 1984 … Nearly 70% of California counties have not conducted a full manual tally of all ballots cast at a statewide election since at least the 1960s.”

Opposition to the legislation focused mainly on the limitation it places on the decisions and rights of local governments.