Bad Bills: Just Say No

One moment in late May on the Assembly floor said everything about a regrettable trend toward bad lawmaking. Up for a vote was AB 1165, by Assemblyman Peter Frusetta (R-Tres Pinos), requiring Caltrans to install a sign on rural California Highway 156 south of San Jose to mark the turnoff for the new San Juan Oaks Golf Club. The bill was justified as “a common courtesy to allow signs at hidden or hard-to-find exits off of state routes.”

Before a final vote, Assemblywoman Audie Bock, the new Green Party member from Piedmont, rose to ask why the Assembly was helping a golf club. There was a hush. Bock might as well have declared the emperor wore no clothes. Then another member called out, “It’s a district bill.” More voices cried, “District bill,” meaning it affected only the sponsor’s district and was really no one else’s business. When the roll was called, AB 1165 sailed through 65 to 3.

One more bad bill in a season jammed with bad, or at least ill-considered, legislation.

Lobbyists and other insiders in Sacramento say that one of the major effects of term limits is that lawmakers don’t kill bills as they used to or as they should. The Senate gives legislation more critical examination, but Assembly bills often are incomplete or badly written by inexperienced lawmakers. Others that ought to be strongly debated are shuttled along with vague promises to amend them later to meet objections of opposition interests. When some bills that were important to Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) were threatened in committee this spring, he temporarily replaced opposing committee members with stand-ins who would vote for the bills.

This is bad procedure. It undermines the committee system, critical to an effective Legislature. Policy decisions that should have been made in substantive committee hearings often are passed on to an overwhelmed Appropriations Committee, which is supposed to consider only fiscal issues. One day this spring, Appropriations faced an agenda of 500 bills. This accelerated the crush of bills before the full Assembly in early June, when the lower chamber voted on legislative measures as late as 3 a.m. Most were passed.

Leaders and members of both parties in both houses should reexamine their procedures and the role of policy committees in crafting precise legislation. Legislators need to rediscover the power, and legitimacy, of voting no on bad bills.