BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE COMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS, REAPPORTIONMENT AND
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS
Senator Loni Hancock, Chair
BILL NO: AB 1676 HEARING
DATE: 6/29/10
AUTHOR: FUENTES ANALYSIS BY:
Darren Chesin
AMENDED: 6/24/10
FISCAL: YES
SUBJECT
Elected officials: residency requirements
DESCRIPTION
Existing law requires a person to be a registered voter and
otherwise qualified to vote for an office at the time that
nomination papers are issued in order to be eligible to be
elected to that office, unless otherwise specifically
provided.
Existing law provides that a local office for which local
residence is required by law becomes vacant if the official
who holds that office ceases to be an inhabitant of the
district, county, or city for which the officer was chosen
or appointed.
Existing law requires county supervisors and city
councilmember's, where they are elected by district, to
reside in the district from which they were elected during
their incumbency.
Existing law requires a member of a county board of
education, in any county where board members are elected by
trustee area, to be an elector of the trustee area during
his or her term of office.
Existing law permits a county charter or a city charter to
provide for the method of election of local elected
officials and the procedures for removal of local elected
officials.
This bill would make it a crime for a person elected to a
nonjudicial office for a county, city, or school district,
from moving outside the jurisdiction that he or she
represents during his or her term of office. This bill
does not apply to special districts. Specifically, this
bill:
a)Requires a person who is elected to a nonjudicial office
for a county, city, or school district to continue to
maintain his or her place of domicile within the
jurisdiction in which voters are qualified to vote for
the office during his or her term of office. Provides
that a person does not violate this provision if, after
being elected for a term of office, the boundaries of the
jurisdiction in which voters are qualified to vote for
the office are changed during that term of office.
b)Provides that a person who violates the provisions of
this bill shall immediately forfeit his or her office and
is disqualified from holding any state or local public
office for a period of four years. Provides that this
penalty shall apply to all persons holding a nonjudicial
office for a county, city, or school district at the time
of the effective date of this bill.
c)Provides that any person serving a term of a nonjudicial
office for a county, city, or school district commencing
on or after November 2, 2010, who violates the provisions
of this bill, shall be subject to a civil penalty not to
exceed $1,000 or by imprisonment in a county jail not
exceeding six months, a fine not exceeding $1,000, or by
both the fine and imprisonment.
d)Permits an action to enforce the provisions of this bill
for a violation to be brought by the Attorney General
(AG), the district attorney or county counsel of a county
for a violation involving an office whose territory is
located wholly or partially within that county, or the
city attorney of a city for an office whose territory is
located wholly or partially within that city.
e)Finds and declares that Members of the Legislature should
reside in the districts that they are elected to
represent in order to ensure that their constituents are
adequately and effectively represented. Calls on each
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house of the Legislature to review its rules relative to
the qualifications to hold office in the Legislature and
to amend those rules as appropriate.
f)Defines "domicile" as that place in which a person's
habitation is fixed, wherein the person has the intention
of remaining, and to which, whenever he or she is absent,
the person has the intention of returning. At a given
time, a person may have only one domicile.
BACKGROUND
Residency Requirements . Existing state law establishes a
variety of residency requirements for holding elective
state or local office, which vary depending on the office
sought or held. For most elective state and local offices,
residency requirements apply at the time a person is
running for office, either at the time a candidate takes
out nomination papers or for some specified period of time
before the election. In most cases, existing law also
explicitly requires elected officials to maintain their
residency in a district or jurisdiction once in office.
For instance, existing state law provides that when members
are elected by district, rather than at-large, county
supervisors (Government Code Section 25041), city
councilmember's (Government Code Section 34882), and
members of a county board of education (Education Code
Section 1000) must live in the district or trustee area
that they represent. In cases where members are elected
at-large, state law typically requires elected officials to
live within the jurisdiction which they represent.
COMMENTS
1.According to the author , existing law requires that a
person running for office be domiciled in the district
that they aspire to represent for a proscribed period of
time in order to be qualified. The law is unclear as to
whether they must continue to be domiciled in the
district after they are elected. This lack of clarity is
problematic for a number of reasons. First, the people
of a district have a right to be represented by someone
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who lives in their district and understands the unique
needs and desires of the constituents. Further, most
constituents presume that they are being represented by
someone who lives in their district, and this belief is
logical given the requirement of residency in the
district to run for the seat. Finally, the public good
is best advanced when representatives are in touch with
their constituents. To allow elected officials to live
in areas potentially far removed from the district they
were elected to represent frustrates the goals of
representative democracy.
2.Overkill ? Existing law already provides that the
officeholders affected by this bill would lose their
offices if they move outside of their jurisdictions. In
addition to that, this bill would disqualify them from
holding any state or local public office for a period of
four years and subject them to a $1,000 civil penalty,
six months in county jail and or a $1,000 fine. Does an
officeholder moving out of his or her jurisdiction rise
to the level of criminal behavior? Is not forfeiture of
office as provided in current law a sufficient deterrent?
3.Applicable to Charter Cities and Counties ? The
provisions of state law that require local elected
officials to reside in their districts may not apply to
charter cities and charter counties. For instance, the
Los Angeles City Charter does not explicitly require
members of the city council to continue to live in their
districts during their term of office. Section 407 (a)
of the Los Angeles City Charter requires only that a
candidate for city council be a resident of the council
district from which he or she is nominated or elected for
at least 30 days prior to the first day on which
candidates can file a declaration of intention to run for
office.
If Los Angeles were a general law city, as opposed to a
charter city, state law would require the members of that
body to remain residents of their districts during their
term in office. It is only because Los Angeles is a
charter city, and because the city charter does not
include such a requirement, that it is unclear whether a
member of the Los Angeles city council is required to
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live in the district he or she was elected to represent
during that member's term of office.
Additionally, due to the greater authority over local
affairs that is granted to charter cities and charter
counties, it is not clear whether the provisions of this
bill would apply to elected officials in charter cities
and charter counties. The California Constitution
generally provides that legally adopted charters
supersede any laws that are inconsistent with the
provisions of the charter. Additionally, the
Constitution provides that county and city charters shall
provide, among other things, for the method of election
of local elected officials and for procedures for removal
of such officials from office. As such, it is unclear
whether the provisions of this bill would be applicable
in charter cities and charter counties, particularly in
charter cities and counties that have adopted local
residency requirements and have chosen not to require
elected officials to maintain residency in their
districts during the entire term of office.
PRIOR ACTION
Assembly Elections and Redistricting Committee: 7-0
Assembly Appropriations Committee: 17-0
Assembly Floor: 72-2
POSITIONS
Sponsor: Author
Support: American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees California Common Cause
Oppose: None received
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