BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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Date of Hearing: April 30, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON BUDGET
Bob Blumenfield, Chair
ACA 4 (Olsen) - As Amended: January 23, 2013
SUBJECT : Legislative Procedure
SUMMARY : Imposes a requirement in the State Constitution to
require bills to be in print for 72 hours prior to adoption by
either house. Specifically, this bill :
1)Prohibits either house from passing a bill unless it has been
made available in print and on the internet for 72 hours prior
to the vote.
2)Provides an exception for urgency bills related to a declared
emergency, as specified in the Constitution.
3)Allows bills to be heard by committees after the contents of
the bill have been available on the internet for 15 days.
EXISTING LAW prohibits any bill (other than the budget bill)
from being heard or acted on by a committee or off the floor in
either house until the 31st day after being introduced unless
the house dispenses with this requirement by a roll call vote
with three fourths of the members concurring.
COMMENTS : The stated goal of this measure is to enhance
transparency by requiring all final legislation to be in print
for 72 hours prior to floor action in either house of the
Legislature. It is unclear whether any benefits from this
additional requirement would out-weigh the considerable
downsides posed by the process consequences of the measure.
California's legislative work is more transparent now than at
any point in history. This year marks the twentieth anniversary
of AB 1624 (Bowen), which required any legislative bill,
analysis, history, and voters to be made available via the
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internet. Prior to the enactment of this bill, this information
was only available through the Capitol Bill Room and various
small publications that charged a fee to provide this
information. Today anyone with access to the internet can see
the latest version of a bill, for free, at any time in a system
that is updated daily.
Most bills considered by the Legislature are already in print
for 72 hours prior a vote. Bills considered by the Legislature
that are in print in final form for less than 72 hours are
usually due to one of three scenarios: the bill is part of a
hard fought, complicated compromise; the bill is part of the
budget package or; the bill has technical problems and needs to
be amended prior to final floor action.
California's most significant compromises have been forged in a
crucible of pressure and heat from all sides that creates the
resolve for action. Often in such circumstances, powerful
special interests may not be satisfied with the final agreement.
However, requiring a 72-hour in-print rule essentially creates
a three-day "time out period" on all legislation. This time can
allow the resolve for action to dissipate, and special interests
can exert pressure and work to block carefully-crafted
agreements. Thus, the 72 hour in print rule required by this
measure would be akin to requiring juries to wait three days
after making a decision to vote on the final verdict, the
waiting period allows courage and willpower to be undermined by
second thoughts and doubt.
History provides many examples of transformative political
documents that have not been in print for long periods because
their adoption was the result of urgency and political resolve
to forge compromise. After a lengthy debate and numerous
redrafts, the final version of the Declaration of Independence
was printed on July 1, 1776 and was adopted the next day on July
2, 1776. Likewise, the framers of California's first
Constitution were still making language changes and debating the
State's boundaries less than two days before its adoption in
English and Spanish on October 13, 1849.
The annual budget process often contains major policy provisions
necessary to balance the budget or to implement key budget
priorities, which often requires strong political resolve. One
obvious example was the February 2009 budget package, which was
recognized as an example of historic, courageous action that
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saved the state from fiscal insolvency. That budget agreement
was being updated and technically corrected up through the final
hours prior to the vote (including, ironically, the insertion of
SCA 4 (Maldonado), which set up the Open Primary). This
agreement was not in print for 72 hours, but it did save the
state from insolvency and earned the four Legislative Leaders
the prestigious Profiles in Courage Award by the John F Kennedy
Library Foundation in 2010.
This measure would also severely narrow and hamstring the annual
budget process. The passage of Proposition 25 in November of
2010 sent a clear signal to the Legislature that the passage of
a budget on time is a top budget priority for the public; the
measure even included financial penalties for members of the
Legislature if the budget was not passed by the deadline.
California's Constitution requires that the Legislature adopt
the budget on or before June 15th of each year, giving the
Legislature slightly more than four weeks from when it receives
the May Revision on May 14th to when it must enact the budget.
This bill would require about ten percent of that time-period to
be set aside for the bills to be in print on the floor at the
end of the process.
How would the Legislature accommodate this loss of time?
Because the current May -June process is already compacted, it
is difficult to envision how the process would accommodate this
requirement. Should the time to analyze and hear the May
Revision proposals be shortened by three days, reducing the
chance for the public to participate in crafting of the budget
and requiring members to vote on provisions with less
information? Or should the Senate and the Assembly have three
less days to reconcile their respective budgets into one unified
version of a budget package? Perhaps the drafting process could
be shortened for the trailer bills and the over 800-page budget
bill, but that would further tax the hundreds of staff in
Department of Finance, Legislative Counsel, as well as the
Legislature and the Administration that develop the final budget
package, potentially resulting in significant errors in their
work product.
Because the budget process is based on a finite schedule, there
is no room to accommodate this print requirement without
undermining the quality of the process and the budget
legislation. Therefore, these costs should be considered when
weighing the merits of this bill.
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This measure would also make the small technical changes at the
end of session more difficult to accommodate. These include a
common practice of eliminating an urgency clause from a measure,
to allow a measure to be adopted with only a majority vote. In
addition, bills often amend the same sections of code and
technical changes are necessary so that the measures don't
chapter out the provisions of a different bill. Under the
provision of this measure, either of these changes would trigger
a 72-hour in-print requirement, which will mean it will add
complexity to the final days of each legislative session.
Therefore, while this measure has the admirable goal of
increasing transparency, California has a relatively transparent
legislative process and a long history of important agreements
that were quickly passed. Moreover, adding new time
requirements may actually strengthen special interests ability
to upset legislative agreements and harm the already condensed
budget process.
The provisions contained in this measure were also contained in
Proposition 31 of November 2012, which was rejected by voters
with 39.5 percentage of the electorate voting in favor of the
measure.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Board of Supervisors County of Madera
California Common Cause
California Contract Cities Association
California Newspaper Publishers Association
City of Gilroy
City of Goleta
City of Scotts Valley
City of South San Francisco
City of Rancho Cucamonga
League of California Cities
Orange County Taxpayers Association
Rural Counties
Town of Danville
Opposition
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None on File.
Analysis Prepared by : Christian Griffith / BUDGET / (916)
319-2099