Saying that the Legislature is bad for business, three of the state’s largest business advocacy groups have formed a coalition to fight some two dozen bills in the closing days of the legislative session.

“I would say that this is one of the heaviest barrages of anti-business legislation” in recent memory, said Kirk West, president and chief executive of the California Chamber of Commerce.

West said much of the targeted legislation is in health care, including bills to require health plans to improve their coverage of mental illness and to give consumers more rights in dealing with health maintenance organizations.

Other bills under attack by the Coalition for California Jobs deal with tort reform and environmental regulation.

The coalition, which along with the state chamber includes the California Manufacturers Association and the California Business Roundtable, plans to spend between $400,000 and $500,000 attacking the 29 targeted bills, West said.

Most of the money is going to advertisements on radio stations and in newspapers throughout the state encouraging California voters to urge their legislators to vote against the bills before the end of this year’s legislative session, which is expected Friday Sept. 12.

“Businesses that can’t afford those costs will be forced to lay off workers or close,” warns one print ad, which features a photo of a business owner standing next to a store with an “Out of Business” sign in its window.

But state lawmakers whose bills are targeted by the coalition as being “job killer” bills say that the list is biased against legislation trying to ensure worker rights.

“I’ve supported many pieces of legislation just in the last few days of the session that help small business,” said state Sen. Hilda L. Solis, D-El Monte, who is carrying four bills opposed by the coalition, including Senate Bill 202, which increases unemployment benefits. “I think it’s unfair to characterize me as somebody who hates businesses. It’s not true at all.”

Solis said that one of her bills targeted by the group SB 233, which allows greater flexibility in a worker quitting for a cause and still being able to collect unemployment benefits has been amended to make it more friendly to business by requiring more discussion with an employer before the worker quits.

“We have really taken some amendments here so that we can bring it down to the level that the business community can support, but it obviously didn’t work,” she said.

William Campbell, president of the California Manufacturers Association and a former state senator, said his group got involved in large part to fight bills in the area of health care.

Those bills include measures that would require health plans to cover mental illnesses at the same level as physical illnesses; require two examinations before a health maintenance organization denies care to a patient; and allow the state to set rates for health care providers.

“The problem in the health care area is that if you take (the bills) individually, one issue might not be that important, but collectively they place an extraordinary cost on people doing business in the state of California,” Campbell said.

Other legislation identified by the coalition to be anti-business are:

– Assembly Bill 15 and SB 680, two bills that reverse the Industrial Welfare Commission decision to end overtime pay for employees working more than eight hours in a single day;

– AB 480, which would require that sick leave provided to employees can also be used for tending to a sick child, spouse or parent; and

– SB 233, which would provide additional circumstances for employees to quit for cause and still collect unemployment payments.

There are a “tremendously larger amount of bills that we would say are biased against economic growth than we have seen in the last few years, and I would say that’s probably because of the make-up of the Legislature,” Campbell said.

In the 1996 elections, Democrats gained a majority in the state Assembly and strengthened their majority in the Senate.

Assemblyman Wally Knox, D-Los Angeles, who is carrying three bills that appeared on the coalition’s list which would increase penalties for managers that violate health and safety laws also said that he is considering amendments on two of the three that would make them more friendly to the business community.

“I’m having frank, searching discussions with the governor’s office and the (California Chamber of Commerce) trying to find common ground,” Knox said.

But the assemblyman added that he thinks the economy has recovered completely enough in California that the state’s businesses can afford to give their workers extra benefits.

“We can afford to have good worker protection in California,” he said. “We can have a state in which we share the prosperity.”

The state chamber formed the coalition last April, when as many as 100 “anti-business” bills were introduced in the Legislature. Since then, many of the bills have been stalled in committees or amended in such a way that they are no longer anti-business, West said.

The money for the campaign was donated by members of the three founding groups, as well as other coalition member organizations, such as the Association for California Tort Reform, the California Building Industry Association and the California Taxpayers Association.

West would not disclose individual businesses that donated to the campaign, adding that disclosure was not required since the campaign deals with bills and issues in the Legislature, not individual lawmakers or ballot initiatives.

A second phase to the campaign will kick off in January, when the Legislature begins its next session, West said. The second phase will address the two-year bills that remain in the Legislature next year, as well as new bills deemed anti-business.

He added that the coalition will likely remain in some form even if there are a smaller number of bills next year that the coalition decides will hurt California businesses.

“I think this coalition is something that formed because of this, but I think it will continue on,” he said.