CAR Legislative Day 2006

Yesterday, one day after our primary elections here in California, I along with about 2000 of my Realtor colleagues assembled in Sacramento to thank our legislators for their support and lobby them on a couple of bills that are of particular importance to the California Associate of Realtors and its members.

A little bit more about the experience later but I want to address Assembly Bill 1169 in a bit more depth first. AB1169 addresses a previous law that first appeared three years ago but sunsetted this year. The first law took tenant notification to move by landlords from the original 30 days out to 60 days. It reverted back to 30 days this January when they were unable to remove the sunset clause from that law. Now another Assemblyman is trying to reinstate that law with a new bill, but only for landlords, whereas tenants still get 30 days. Naturally CAR is against this bill as it will make it more difficult to remove problem tenants if the notification period is extended. This law is designed to protect good tenants and addresses other perhaps real concerns for those like Seniors, who may be incapable of moving quickly. However, truth is, landlords don't remove good tenants so this law is written to protect the very few good tenants from the very few bad landlords. Whereas I believe protecting tenants against bad landlords is a noble and necessary cause, punishing the vast majority of landlords who are good is not the way to go about it so I stand with CAR in opposing this bill.

Now that the politicking is over, the experience of Legislative Day is an interesting one. Though our Legislative teams on the local, state and national levels are always lobbying for causes important to us Realtors, this is the one day a year where we actually get to pitch in. I had the opportunity to meet with the aids for Assemblyman Gene Mullin and State Senator Jackie Speier as well as with Ira Ruskin. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson spoke along with two Assemblymen and the Real Estate Commissioner and I saw State Senator Abel Maldonado walking the halls. Making it an even more chaotic experience was that it was merely one day following the primaries in which Maldonado and Speier failed to win their party's nomination for their statewide elections in November.

It was a nice break from the daily routine and let us Realtors play lobbyists, something that we may or may not necessarily be that good at, but a role that, judging by the fact that we have the largest legislative day in the state, we cherish and hold up as important and essential to our livelihood.