Oh, no, it's alive! CA no-shipping bill AB1500 assigned to committee
- Thread starter Berylanna
- Start date
- th_trl_thread_readers 0
- Status
Just listened to the replay and here is what I heard:
Ayes: Gatto (Chair), Eggman, Holden, Pan, Quirk, Weber (All Democrats)
No: Ridley-Thomas (Democrat)
Bigelow-R (Vice Chair) helped squash this and seemed to get the issues better than most. Seems like a potential ally.
All others either abstained or were not present. Here is list of committee members:
Members | Committee on Appropriations
Last edited:
I really don't understand all this. For those that were not present, is that because they had other commitment's?
For those that abstained, why would that be?
For those that abstained, why would that be?
Seems like Ridley-Thomas supported AB-1500 in concept, but actually wanted to make the legislation even stronger. I don't see any of the Republicans supporting this so I think focus should be on the 5 other Democrats, which are Bocanegra, Bradford, Calderon, Campos and Gomez. Certainly does not hurt to reach out to the Republicans, but that is my guess.
I'm reaching out to the Vice Chair of the committee Frank Bigelow to thank him for this non-support of this bill as well as these 5 Dems.
It almost did. In fact, we were pretty much celebrating at La Bou across from the capitol building! Until we got home and heard that, whoops, Dickinson suddenly started trying again to get this thing to sprout wings. We're not done fighting yet... tomorrow will be another day. The hearing was brutal on Dickinson who even missed his 9:30-noon hearing because he got stuck in this one for at least 15 minutes longer than the 9:30am mark.
And, he refrained from making statements like "adults are not interested in flavors...." that he did last time. So I think the twitter bomb definitely sort of worked.
It almost did. In fact, we were pretty much celebrating at La Bou across from the capitol building! Until we got home and heard that, whoops, Dickinson suddenly started trying again to get this thing to sprout wings. We're not done fighting yet... tomorrow will be another day. The hearing was brutal on Dickinson who even missed his 9:30-noon hearing because he got stuck in this one for at least 15 minutes longer than the 9:30am mark.
And, he refrained from making statements like "adults are not interested in flavors...." that he did last time. So I think the twitter bomb definitely sort of worked.
This is Why the Harkins of the World have to be Countered IMEDIATELY when they make Statements like this.
We have to Keep Pressure On. Or this Could Slip thru Our Fingers.
Please Reach Out to People Outside of the ECF Also with any Means People have at their Disposal.
BTW - Now that I have Calmed Down a Bit. Let me say Thank You for Everything you have Done Leading Up to Today.
I wrote this elsewhere but since I know how fragmented our vaping community is I'm just going to paste it here verbatim because I'm sure everyone here wants an update with more details.
###
I was going to do a full blog post update on this but given how all of a sudden this thing got twisted back to life after we thought we left it for dead, I'll just update here and use the URL of this comment for others to read.
Had a good turnout, 19 people, a mix of vendors and vapers. Unfortunately due to some really sad misunderstandings we missed one who got stuck in a hotel while we waited as long as we could before heading in.
The bill got signed in early so it would be handled at 9am sharp. This was unclear because Dickinson's office told us they were going to try to do that but he had a 9:30-noon hearing elsewhere so it might be in the afternoon. A lot of us were prepared to stick around the entire day, if needed.
In the hearing room while everyone in our group (and everyone else who was there was scouring for seats) my wife and I went to quickly meet up with Tiffany, one of Dickinson's aides and someone we've been talking to a lot the past week or two and someone who if we could hammer out details with would be such a pleasure to work with, unlike her boss. We heard that there was going to be a woman in support of the bill, speaking about kids and aiming to win sympathy from the committee. Also, we weren't sure whether we were going to have speakers on our end and a little miscommunication made it sound like we had a choice to either have two people speak or line up and just say if we're opposed or in support.
We tried to quickly decide amongst ourselves who would go to speak. We had a new person with us who had prepared a very nice statement and comes across very professionally and I really wanted him to have a shot at this. He was speaking for the vendor side. This meant we had to have someone for the consumer side and I decided I would give my wife the speaking spot because I have now learned a thing or two about the political game. While I can come across loud and forceful, if what you want is sympathy and all that you may need someone who's female, and even better, in this case a never-smoker and never-vaper. Having people who do not have a direct god in the fight do that works very well. And we believe it did at least help.
The hearing, well, you can see the video on how that went on. And in particular how much longer it went on than was expected.
The whole group of us went to La Bou across from the capitol building for coffee, snacks, and of course by now a lot of much needed vape, some clouds, and some really amazing Burmanii e-liquid from Tasty Vapor (Geoff and Ramilya were there), etc. I managed to snap one picture of part of the group: https://twitter.com/StefanDidak/status/469171360040636418/photo/1 (we were occupying the entire area and two tables and some were inside getting stuff, it was a bit chaotic and I had to talk to a lot of folks so didn't really get to do much picture stuff).
Sallie and I did a video interview for Grand Vapor Station which will be on their blog in the next few days. Geoff and Ramilya did one as well. And James Root of the newly formed California Vapor Association did one as well.
Sallie checked her laptop and also to try and check on our "missing vaper" and there was a message from Dickinson's office saying the abstention votes were the same as no votes and that it was a majority of no votes due to that. We took that as a victory, celebrated, and like an idiot I tweeted around that we saw AB1500 go down in flames. Well, it did. Nobody ever told me about the phoenix rising effect!
We hung out at La Bou for a while, some new introductions, lots of talk about what happened, the industry in general, mostly a mini vape meet, if you will.
After we got back home I saw a tweet from Greg Conley and a message from Julie at CASAA saying it wasn't over yet and that Dickinson was trying to get another few votes. This after the vote was already done but "uncalled" at the end. This is where I had hoped to relax for the day and try and get rid of the damn migraine I've been having all day since I woke up and ended up... well, emergency communications. I think about 120+ emails have been going back and forth and up and down in just the past few hours along with some phone calls, checking up on things, and now I'm writing this here and my clock has just hit 5-o-clock.
Other interesting notes:
NJOY and V2 (VMR) lobbyists have been working with Dickinson, in particular to get the second age verification removed and accomplished nothing in the past two weeks even though they had been intensely busy on it. We heard through Dickinson's office that they were "out" of the game because they weren't "transparent enough". I don't know how more transparent it needs to be... they're lobbyists, paid ones at that, who are there doing the job for their employers, to get things changed in a bill's text. And for good reason. Well... make of that what you will because I certainly have no common sense explanation for that.
We were also supposed to have a line up of people opposing the bill and saying so but we didn't get a real chance at that. First, because of the seats being mostly all taken and even some folks being outside because they stopped letting people in, some of us were shoved into seats all across the room so our group got disjointed and fragmented. By the time they called out for opposing voices to be heard they did that by mentioning it real softly and in 2 seconds and then moved on. Maybe we should've formed a line up ahead of time but staff there were rather urging us to stay in our seats. So even if we had more than 2 seconds to reach the microphone it would've certainly resulted in chaos. We will try and make sure we do this part a little differently next time so the opportunity will not just slip us by.
###
I was going to do a full blog post update on this but given how all of a sudden this thing got twisted back to life after we thought we left it for dead, I'll just update here and use the URL of this comment for others to read.
Had a good turnout, 19 people, a mix of vendors and vapers. Unfortunately due to some really sad misunderstandings we missed one who got stuck in a hotel while we waited as long as we could before heading in.
The bill got signed in early so it would be handled at 9am sharp. This was unclear because Dickinson's office told us they were going to try to do that but he had a 9:30-noon hearing elsewhere so it might be in the afternoon. A lot of us were prepared to stick around the entire day, if needed.
In the hearing room while everyone in our group (and everyone else who was there was scouring for seats) my wife and I went to quickly meet up with Tiffany, one of Dickinson's aides and someone we've been talking to a lot the past week or two and someone who if we could hammer out details with would be such a pleasure to work with, unlike her boss. We heard that there was going to be a woman in support of the bill, speaking about kids and aiming to win sympathy from the committee. Also, we weren't sure whether we were going to have speakers on our end and a little miscommunication made it sound like we had a choice to either have two people speak or line up and just say if we're opposed or in support.
We tried to quickly decide amongst ourselves who would go to speak. We had a new person with us who had prepared a very nice statement and comes across very professionally and I really wanted him to have a shot at this. He was speaking for the vendor side. This meant we had to have someone for the consumer side and I decided I would give my wife the speaking spot because I have now learned a thing or two about the political game. While I can come across loud and forceful, if what you want is sympathy and all that you may need someone who's female, and even better, in this case a never-smoker and never-vaper. Having people who do not have a direct god in the fight do that works very well. And we believe it did at least help.
The hearing, well, you can see the video on how that went on. And in particular how much longer it went on than was expected.
The whole group of us went to La Bou across from the capitol building for coffee, snacks, and of course by now a lot of much needed vape, some clouds, and some really amazing Burmanii e-liquid from Tasty Vapor (Geoff and Ramilya were there), etc. I managed to snap one picture of part of the group: https://twitter.com/StefanDidak/status/469171360040636418/photo/1 (we were occupying the entire area and two tables and some were inside getting stuff, it was a bit chaotic and I had to talk to a lot of folks so didn't really get to do much picture stuff).
Sallie and I did a video interview for Grand Vapor Station which will be on their blog in the next few days. Geoff and Ramilya did one as well. And James Root of the newly formed California Vapor Association did one as well.
Sallie checked her laptop and also to try and check on our "missing vaper" and there was a message from Dickinson's office saying the abstention votes were the same as no votes and that it was a majority of no votes due to that. We took that as a victory, celebrated, and like an idiot I tweeted around that we saw AB1500 go down in flames. Well, it did. Nobody ever told me about the phoenix rising effect!
We hung out at La Bou for a while, some new introductions, lots of talk about what happened, the industry in general, mostly a mini vape meet, if you will.
After we got back home I saw a tweet from Greg Conley and a message from Julie at CASAA saying it wasn't over yet and that Dickinson was trying to get another few votes. This after the vote was already done but "uncalled" at the end. This is where I had hoped to relax for the day and try and get rid of the damn migraine I've been having all day since I woke up and ended up... well, emergency communications. I think about 120+ emails have been going back and forth and up and down in just the past few hours along with some phone calls, checking up on things, and now I'm writing this here and my clock has just hit 5-o-clock.
Other interesting notes:
NJOY and V2 (VMR) lobbyists have been working with Dickinson, in particular to get the second age verification removed and accomplished nothing in the past two weeks even though they had been intensely busy on it. We heard through Dickinson's office that they were "out" of the game because they weren't "transparent enough". I don't know how more transparent it needs to be... they're lobbyists, paid ones at that, who are there doing the job for their employers, to get things changed in a bill's text. And for good reason. Well... make of that what you will because I certainly have no common sense explanation for that.
We were also supposed to have a line up of people opposing the bill and saying so but we didn't get a real chance at that. First, because of the seats being mostly all taken and even some folks being outside because they stopped letting people in, some of us were shoved into seats all across the room so our group got disjointed and fragmented. By the time they called out for opposing voices to be heard they did that by mentioning it real softly and in 2 seconds and then moved on. Maybe we should've formed a line up ahead of time but staff there were rather urging us to stay in our seats. So even if we had more than 2 seconds to reach the microphone it would've certainly resulted in chaos. We will try and make sure we do this part a little differently next time so the opportunity will not just slip us by.
Thank you! Appreciated. I like to finish what I start and I had so hoped that AB1500 would have really ended today. Unfortunately, it seems it hasn't done quite that even though it's been getting a real good beating today and it might not survive in the next few days, which would be good news. We're not out of the woods yet... we have to KILL this thing in the next few days, for good! Because working with Dickinson's office is... while a nice change of daily pace, perhaps less effective given that two professional lobbyists could not get {ANYTHING} done in two weeks of them being on it (well, more than 2, actually!).
Last edited by a moderator:
Wow, Stefan, what a day!
It sounds like that was a really small hearing room? Does that committee usually not get an audience? Or was it the opposite, that money-related stuff fills the room?
Thanks so much for your effort and thank Sallie! (She looks very delicate, which is a big plus going up against a guy with such a big nose!)
It sounds like that was a really small hearing room? Does that committee usually not get an audience? Or was it the opposite, that money-related stuff fills the room?
Thanks so much for your effort and thank Sallie! (She looks very delicate, which is a big plus going up against a guy with such a big nose!)
It almost did. In fact, we were pretty much celebrating at La Bou across from the capitol building! Until we got home and heard that, whoops, Dickinson suddenly started trying again to get this thing to sprout wings. We're not done fighting yet... tomorrow will be another day. The hearing was brutal on Dickinson who even missed his 9:30-noon hearing because he got stuck in this one for at least 15 minutes longer than the 9:30am mark.
And, he refrained from making statements like "adults are not interested in flavors...." that he did last time. So I think the twitter bomb definitely sort of worked.
Phoenix my broad behind. Get a wooden stake!
Thanks. It's been a blast, though I had hoped to see AB1500 go off into orbit with a blast today, instead.
I'm not sure what the regular level is on these AC meetings but I think I counted a total of 4 empty seats that were left there. All the rest was filled and people that couldn't make their way to the empty seats in the middle ended up watching outside in the hall. It was less chaotic than when we were there, but again, members of the committee not being there seems to be a trend and there was a lot of disorder in general because of the way we all ended up spread out.
My wife just posted her version of what went on today:
Upset in the Appropriations Committee over AB 1500
Upset in the Appropriations Committee over AB 1500
Danger danger Will Robinson!
The Democrats that are opposed think it is not STRICT enough! That's scary and means he can get support by making it worse, which he promised to do. And he can do it fast. He has until Friday apparently.
There are a few points we need to make:
Outside of cities, there generally are very few brick-and-mortars selling modern ecigs, and a lot of poor people ON MEDI-CAL whose cars don't run and have very low-level jobs will be pushed back to smoking, costing Medi-Cal more money.
It is not only the $5 fee that we object to, it is the difficulty arranging to get delivery AT ALL for everyone outside of cities. This is one more thing where the urban people are forgetting the vast rural areas of the state.
Absolutely. That was sort of clear from some of their remarks about the definition of what is covered exactly, the one that was opposed to it having anything to do with ..., the other who would've preferred it did deal with .... Ugh.
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
- Locked
- Locked
- Locked
