Two family businesses join FBA

Two more family businesses recently joined FBA – the only organization working solely on behalf of family businesses at the California state capitol. The new businesses are:

  • Jackson Properties. The Sacramento-based company was founded in 1974 and specializes in construction, commercial building, and facility management.
  • Bosley Electric Company, a full-service commercial electrical contractor founced in 1991 and serving the greater Sacramento region and northern Nevada.

Thank you to both family businesses for joining the FBA family!

FBA Names Senator Seyarto as its Legislator of the Year

The Family Business Association of California this week awarded Sen. Kelly Seyarto, R-Murrieta, with its Legislator of the Year award for his leadership in efforts to restore the ability of parents to pass along homes and business properties to their children without incurring potentially massive property tax bills.

FBA Executive Director Robert Rivinius, right, and FBA legislative advocate Dennis Albiani, center, present the Legislator of the Year Award to Sen. Kelly Seyarto.

“Due to rapid inflation in property values, immediately reassessing family ranches, businesses and homes to current market values often forces the younger generations to sell their family homes and businesses to pay the higher property taxes,” said FBA Executive Director Robert Rivinius.

“Family businesses are the foundation of the state’s economy and our communities, and the state should not be making it harder for family businesses to continue from one generation to the next. Senator Seyarto deserves our thanks for taking the lead in this effort to protect family businesses.”

Seyarto introduced a measure this year that would have asked voters to reinstate voter-approved protections that allowed the inheritors to maintain their parents’ or in some cases grandparents’ property valuations and tax levels.

These protections were narrowed or repealed altogether by Proposition 19 in 2020.

Because Prop. 19 took effect just three months after the measure was enacted, many taxpayers were caught unaware and forced to sell their homes and other property. Many affected taxpayers only became aware of Prop. 19’s changes while grieving the death of a parent or grandparent that resulted in an inheritance of property.

Opposed by powerful public employee unions, the measure, SCA 4, failed passage in the Senate Governance and Finance Committee in May.

“I am honored to receive this recognition from the Family Business Association,” said Senator Seyarto. “SCA 4 had one purpose, to restore protections for taxpayers and to keep the intrusive reach of the government away from their family inheritance.

“As we know, Prop 19 resurrected the death tax at a time when we should be making it easier for Californians to inherit property without asking them to absorb the burden of additional taxes. Upward economic mobility cannot be achieved unless we let people own what they create through decades of hard work. I want to thank the FBA for their advocacy and support for California’s families.”

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About Senator Seyarto:

Seyarto is a native Californian who served as a firefighter for 35 years, retiring in 2015 as a battalion chief. He was first elected to the Murrieta City Council in 1997 and served through 2006 when he chose not to seek another term to spend more time with his family. After he retired from the fire service, he was again elected to the City Council in 2016 and served as mayor. He was elected to the Assembly in 2020 and then to the Senate in 2022. He and his wife, Denise, have lived in Murrieta since 1991.

About the Family Business Association:

Founded in 2012, the Family Business Association of California is the only organization working exclusively at the Capitol to educate lawmakers and regulators about the importance of family businesses to the state’s economy and to their communities and to advocate positions on legislation and regulations. FBA has also taken the lead to defeat numerous proposals that would have made it much more difficult to keep businesses family-owned from generation to generation. For more information about FBA, visit www.myfba.org.

Two new members join FBA

Two new companies recently joined FBA, the only organization exclusively focused on protecting the interests of family businesses in California

Cobex Construction Company was founded in 2017 by Vazgen Dallakyan, whose family emigrated from Armenia when he was a toddler seeking safety and freedom. The Roseville-based company does residential and commercial roofing, siding, solar, and windows in a 50-mile radius around Roseville. It has 30 employees and is based on the cornerstones of stress-free customer experiences, long-term customer relationships, quality workmanship, and transparency.

TABBA, LLC, is a commercial real estate brokerage in the City of Orange, specializing in Orange County properties. Founded by Allen and Carla Buchanan in 2022, the company has four employees.

 

FBA is lead plaintiff in crucial court case

FBA is the lead plaintiff in a major court case designed to ensure that our members’ free speech rights and ability to support good government in their communities is protected.

The suit seeks to overturn SB 1439, a bill passed with little debate last year that has major implications. Under SB 1439, receiving a $251 campaign contribution would disqualify a local elected official from voting on any issue relating to whomever they received the contribution from - be it an individual or company. This would even apply to newly hired individuals that did not previously work for, or have any affiliation with, the company at the time of their individual contribution.

Making and receiving campaign contributions is an exercise of a constitutional right of free speech.

This law will also have a direct effect on many of our members’ ability to operate and expand their businesses. For example, if a business wants to expand its operations, they often seek zoning changes or conditional use permits that must be approved by the city council or the board of supervisors. Many restaurants operate under conditional use permits. And farmers and ranchers almost always require special use permits for activities such as agricultural processing facilities. These can be controversial even though the zoning permits them, so elected officials often have to make the final decision.

Accordingly, it would be risky for any family business owner to ever contribute to candidates for local office because it’s always possible that six or eight months down the road an issue will come up that would require elected officials to be involved.

It would also have a chilling effect on many family businesses that you wouldn’t think would be affected. Businesses that do engineering, accounting, legal and other work in the development sector may find themselves cut off from future work if they make contributions to local elected officials. Because their contributions, no matter how small, would be considered part of a prime contractor’s aggregated contributions, the contractor might have to bar them from future work simply because they exercised their constitutional rights.

FBA has joined with several influential business associations to seek to overturn this poorly thought-out law. You can read our joint memo to the Legislature here.

You can read news articles about the suit in CalMatters, the Sacramento Bee, the Orange County Register, and the San Joaquin Valley Sun.

FBA’s bill to define a family business clears Assembly

AB 2611, FBA’s sponsored bill to define a California-based family-owned business was approved by the Assembly Monday on a vote of 71-0 and referred to the Senate for further action. The bill is needed to create a standard definition of what a family business is. Currently, there are at least six definitions of small businesses across California codes, and creating a standard is essential when making economic development decisions such as tax policies, grant programs, and employee training incentives.
If approved by the Senate and signed into law by the Governor, California would be the first state in the nation to statutorily recognized a family-owned business in a way that decision-makers are able to consider the unique strengths and challenges of operating these businesses when considering future actions.
Our thanks to Assembly Member Tom Daly, D-Anaheim, for carrying the measure.

Assembly committee approves FBA’s bill to define a family business

Great news! The Assembly Business and Professions Committee on April 5 unanimously passed AB 2611, FBA’s sponsored bill to create in statute a definition of a family-owned business. A uniform clear definition will provide many benefits, including that it would provide one definition that can be referenced by local municipalities that want to promote family-owned businesses within their local jurisdictions. You can read more about the bill here.

Thanks to the bill’s author, Assembly Member Tom Daly of Anaheim, committee Chair Marc Berman of Palo Alto, Vice Chair Heath Flora of Ripon, and the other committee members for voting for our measure.

The measure is now pending before the full Assembly.