Notes From a Spectator at the Sausage Factory of Democracy

Ferrets: Cute little pets or environmental menace? How much should motorists be fined for leaving children unattended in cars? What about the contract small print that requires consumers to take any complaints about faulty toasters or whatnot to courthouses in distant states? What can be done about that?

And how to tackle the hidden menace of swimming pool drains, theoretically capable of sucking down little swimmers and pinning them to the bottom? And shouldn’t parents be told how many inexperienced teachers work at a given school? And let’s not forget about poor Southern California Edison: Bailout or bankruptcy? Oh, what to do? What to do?

Yes, it is that time again in the California state Capitol. The legislative session is screaming toward its finale of next Friday, forcing lawmakers to pass judgment on bills and resolutions by the hundreds. There are highly complex and controversial bills before them, works in progress intended to unravel various threads of the energy conundrum. And, more commonly, there are bills that tackle such grave public questions as whether Fresno can sell beer at its new basketball arena.

For those who have vested interests in the legislation, this can be a time of high anxiety. Lobbyists huddle together in the hallways like sheep on a wind-swept hillside, warily watching closed-circuit television to see if their bills will pass or be sent to slaughter. There are whispers of double-crosses and back-room maneuvers, of powerful interests demanding their way--the heavy-duty stuff.

And yet, to an outsider with no keen interest in, say, buying a ferret or beering up at a Fresno basketball game, the last couple of weeks of a Sacramento legislative session can be seen as pure, wonderful entertainment. For absolutely no charge, a citizen can take a seat in the gallery and watch politicians toil away in the sausage factory of democracy, cranking out legislation by the truckload--some of which they might actually have read before passing judgment.

What’s most amazing is the sheer breadth of the intellectual inventory. Sacramento veteran John Vasconcellos, a Democrat now representing Santa Clara in the Senate, once described the Capitol to me as an extraordinary clearinghouse of ideas and issues and causes--a sort of wide open public policy bazaar. Wonk heaven. Indeed, almost anything that needs fixing in California eventually is brought here for repairs in the form of legislation.

No potential issue is left unlegislated, resulting in something like 3,000 bills introduced this year alone--a typical workload. There are those who argue that this is no virtue, that Sacramento in fact suffers from its addiction to legislate--an old debate that need not be revisited here and now. For I came to the Statehouse late last week merely to marvel at the boundless legislative variety.

In the early afternoon, I sat in the Assembly chambers and watched members work through an agenda, or “daily file,” as it’s called, that contained 171 items--resolutions, amendments, minor consent calendar matters, but mainly bills. Each bill was identified by a file number and a brief, vague title, such as “An act relating to controlled substances.”

There were bills that advanced solutions to problems many Californians never even knew existed (see “swimming pool drains”) . . . and bills that closed arcane loopholes that had never been breached . . . and bills that promoted causes known only to secret societies that meet Wednesdays at 8 p.m. sharp on the backwaters of the Internet.

At one point, I started jotting down the titles of the bills as they came up, one after another. In one stretch I took note of the following:

An act relating to private investigators.

An act relating to acupuncture.

An act relating to public utilities.

An act relating to school districts.

An act relating to insurance.

An act relating to tobacco products.

An act relating to military bases.

An act relating to housing.

An act relating to water.

An act relating to alcoholic beverages.

An act relating to international trade.

An act relating to hazardous waste, and declaring the urgency thereof, to take effect immediately.

An act relating to horse racing.

An act relating to mental health, and making an appropriation therefor.

An act relating to labor.

An act relating to identity theft.

Some were passed, a few were rejected, and many were “retained,” meaning they had been cast into limbo, perhaps to be brought back later in the session, perhaps not. What was most impressive was that the Assembly galloped through the above list in something like 30 minutes flat. Now that’s legislatin’. Pass the sausage.