WHY has it taken so long???

Bolstering the charge that debt-ridden California is an over regulated “nanny state,” a bill placed before the legislature requires hotels to discard flat sheets and use only fitted sheets instead.


The measure, which has already been approved by the Senate, is intended to reduce back injuries sustained by hotel housekeepers, who must lift heavy mattresses to change flat sheets.

“We are now going to make it a crime in California not to use a fitted sheet?” state Sen. Sam Blakeslee asked during a debate.

The hotel industry claims if the bill is enacted, hotels in the state would have to spend at least $30 million to replace sheets and buy appropriate laundry equipment, according to the Los Angeles Times.

California legislators past and present have evoked protests, and sometimes ridicule, by introducing bills that would outlaw spanking children, ban trans fats in restaurants, require calorie counts on menus, ban the cooking of shark fin soup, and outlaw Styrofoam food containers.

A bill pending in the legislature would require hospitals to provide patient-lifting equipment or teams of backup workers to help nurses avoid bank injuries when they lift or move patients.

The cost of providing a two-person lift team around the clock is about $375,000 a year, according to Jan Emerson-Shea, a vice president with the California Hospital Association.

As for the ban on flat sheets, Lynn Mohrfeld, head of the California Hotel & Lodging Association, told the Times:

“Californians will be outraged when they learn that instead of focusing on the many real problems facing this state, lawmakers want to regulate bed sheets.”
 
We need this kind of "thinking" in Washington, focus on IMPORTANT issues.