Every session of the California Legislature seems to produce at least one bill that sparks heated political debate and attracts media attention.

As the 2023-2024 session draws to a close this week, Senate Bill 1047, which would impose rules on artificial intelligence developers, is generating intense lobbying and global interest.

In the final days of last year’s session, the focus was on a very different issue: whether the state should implement a $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers and establish a fast-food council to oversee working conditions.

A year earlier, California Assembly Bill 257 had created the council, giving it the authority to set an initial minimum wage of at least $22 an hour, but assuming that franchised fast-food restaurants were subsidiaries of the parent company and not independently owned.

The fast-food industry responded with a referendum that, if ratified by voters, would repeal the new law, reigniting the debate in the 2023 session. A last-minute deal repealed AB 257 and replaced it with another measure, AB 1228, that mandated a $20 minimum wage and eliminated what the industry saw as a threat to the franchise system. In exchange, the referendum was dropped.

The $20 wage went into effect last April, but only after a new dispute erupted over which grocery store workers should be covered, following a Bloomberg article claiming Newsom had requested an exemption for a campaign donor who owns two dozen Panera stores in California.

Newsom said the story was “absurd” and assured that Panera and other similar companies would be covered. Billionaire businessman Greg Flynn also said he would stick to the $20 wage.

The end of fast food fear? Of course not.

Six months after the $20 wage came into force, there is a new debate in politics, the media and academia about its effects.

Fast food prices have risen, but the extent to which higher wages are driving this price increase and how fast food operations have changed are two new questions.

This month, Newsom said 11,000 new jobs have been created in fast-food restaurants in California since the law was passed.

“What’s good for workers is good for business, and as California’s fast-food industry continues to boom each month, our workers are finally getting the pay they deserve,” Newsom said. “Despite lies that would bankrupt the industry, California’s economy and workers are proving them wrong again.”

The industry disagreed.

“Every day there are headlines about restaurant closures, employee layoffs and reduced hours, and rising food prices for consumers,” the International Franchise Association said in a statement. “Local restaurant owners in California are already struggling to make ends meet on the $20 hourly wage while the Fast Food Council considers additional wage increases. Meanwhile, workers and consumers are suffering the consequences.”

Brooke Armour, president of the California Center for Jobs and the Economy, an arm of the Business Roundtable, criticized Newsom’s statement because it reflected only one month’s preliminary data, and concluded: “Whatever some say, the data is clear: The newly passed minimum wage laws for fast-food restaurants are leading to job losses in California..”

Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, also voiced criticism of the state’s economic trends. “California’s well-intentioned push to reduce income inequality through minimum wages is beginning to have a significant negative impact on some of our most vulnerable workers – our youth, especially those from lower-income households,” Thornberg wrote.

What California has done to the fast-food industry may be a harbinger of more direct regulation of other industries, not just in California, for better or for worse. It’s not surprising, then, that the implications are being debated ad nauseam.