Family Winemakers of California monitors and lobbies a variety of public policy issues on behalf of its members. Legislation ranging from changes to the tied-house laws (the state’s alcohol laws) to environmental issues that affect winery and vineyard operations must be identified, their impact gauged and action taken.
The scope of the effort is significant. Each year the California Legislature introduces over 2,000 bills. And state agencies, such as the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control or departments within the California Environmental Protection Agency that regulate business activities, formulate new regulations based on recent laws or update old regulations. In addition, Family Winemakers monitors regional regulatory agency activity and federal actions by the Tax and Trade Bureau.
The 2007 legislative session has concluded. Except for special session work on health care and water, regular policy work won't start again until January 2008. Family Winemakers is sponsoring SB 108 (Wiggins), which expands the types of non profits that can conduct wine tastings. That will was signed into law on September 26 (Chapter 246, Statutes of 2007). The association is also closely involved on measures that will allow custom crush producers to pour at non profit events (AB 323 - Evans; signed into law), clarify labeling requirements for wine produced in the Paso Robles American Viticultural Area (AB 87 - Blakeslee) and establish an advisory task force for the Department of Food & Agriculture to deal with the light brown apple moth infestation (SB 556 - Wiggins, signed into law). In addition, FWC vigorously opposes SB 297 (Romero), which would allow counties to put local drink tax proposals before voters. FWC is also working on to get AB 1673 (Feuer), an instant rebate bill, vetoed.
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