SB 666 Passes Key Committee Hearing After Compromise with Opposition

CALSAGA's sponsored legislation, SB 666 (authored by Senator Abel Maldonado), passed the Assembly Business & Professions Committee on a unanimous vote Tuesday after CALSAGA reached a compromise with opponents of the legislation, led by AEG, the owner/operators of Staples Center and Home Depot Center in Los Angeles.

SB 666 attempts to increase public safety, increase professionalism in the private security field, and level the playing field between contract and in-house security by requiring state regulation of minimum standards security training between contract and proprietary.

Staples Center, Target, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the California Restaurant Association all opposed SB 666.  They claimed that we were only sponsoring SB 666 to force them to contact out for their security.  We argued that there was no reason that training for contract officers should be regulated by the state, while in-house security is unregulated. 

For most the last two weeks, CALSAGA President Mark Miller, lobbyist Kelly Jensen, and Association Manager Jeff Flint met with legislators, policy committee staff, and representatives from both supporters and opposition of the bill.

As of Monday, July 2, the opponents of SB 666 were confident they had killed our bill, and they asked CALSAGA to just drop the legislation altogether.  Their position remained that there should be no state scrutiny of their security training at all.

However, the CALSAGA team kept working, and votes started moving our way on the committee.  By the morning of the hearing on Tuesday, the committee was split, with neither side sure of victory. 

At that point, we sat down with lobbyists from Staples and Target, and worked out a compromise.  SB 666 originally required the exact same 40 hour course that contract security officers take.  Instead, we agreed to amend SB 666 to delegate to BSIS to develop training standards for in-house security appropriate to the nature of their work and industry.  BSIS will have the power to set minimum numbers of hours and mandatory or elective course topics.

We believe this is a victory for public safety because in-house security operators began with a position that there should be no regulation at all, and they ended up agreeing that BSIS should be able to regulate them.

We believe SB 666 will help increase standards in our profession, improve public safety, and help both sides of the security industry.