Editorial: Legislators can suspend Assemblyman Roger Hernandez without pay. But should they?

After a judge slapped him with a domestic violence restraining order stemming from accusations that he beat his wife, Assemblyman Roger Hernandez lost his committee chairmanship and was stripped of his other assignments in the Legislature. Colleagues withdrew their endorsements of him, hurting his bid for Congress. And prominent Democrats called on Hernandez to drop out of the congressional race and resign his Assembly seat.

The passage of Proposition 50 in June gives Hernandez’s colleagues another tool to punish him: They can suspend him from the Legislature without pay. But just because they can doesn’t mean they should.

Proposition 50 was passed in response to scandals in the California Senate in 2014, when one lawmaker was convicted of voter fraud and perjury and two others were facing serious charges of corruption. After much debate, the Senate voted to suspend all three, but lawmakers — and members of the public — were unhappy that the booted legislators would continue to collect a paycheck and receive benefits while on suspension. That’s because the state Constitution did not allow members to suspend one another without pay.

In response, then-Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and his colleagues drafted Proposition 50, which explicitly allowed the Legislature to suspend members without pay if two-thirds of their colleagues voted to do so. It was a pitched as a commonsense good-government reform. Why should lawmakers get a paid vacation if they’re accused of violating the public trust? The measure passed easily with 75% support.

Hernandez is the first test of Proposition 50, and his case demonstrates the problems with the new law — which The Times opposed when it was on the ballot.

First, lawmakers now have the ability to cut off a colleague’s salary without due process. As awful as the accusations against Hernandez are — and they are terrible — the fact is that he hasn’t been charged with a crime, much less convicted of one. A judge merely listened to testimony from Hernandez and his ex-wife, Baldwin Park City Councilwoman Susan Rubio, and found Rubio’s concerns about her safety credible. (Hernandez testified that he never hit his wife.) The judge ordered Hernandez to stay away from her for three years.

It seems unfair to deny Hernandez his livelihood on the basis of an accusation that has not been tested in a criminal trial.

The second problem is that Proposition 50 allowed legislators to withhold a colleague’s pay, but it set no rules or criteria for when such a punishment is justified, or how it should be applied.

Lawmakers now have a very powerful tool, but no real idea how to wield it.

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