Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
In this chapter we'll focus on California's legislative politics, looking at the state
Senate and state Assembly. As your text asks, which state pays its legislators more than
any other state but forces them to leave office as soon as they gain valuable experience?
The answer is California, and that's a key to some of the challenges we face in our system
caused by term limits. California's term limits -- Proposition in 1990, Assembly members were
limited to three two-year terms and senators, two four-year terms. Proposition 28 in 2012
changed that a bit. Legislators can now serve a total of 12 years in the legislature, regardless
of the chamber. Take a quick look at California's legislative history. In the early years, it
was an amateur body dominated by farmers. As we've mentioned, it was beholden to the
Southern Pacific Railroad. Progressives came in and limited the power of the legislature
and approved the initiative, and that allowed people to compete with the legislature for
policymaking power. And we saw a lot of stagnation in the legislature amid real change in California
from the 1920s to the 1960s. We saw tremendous growth and tremendous diversity in California,
but not in the legislature in that period. In that time, no county could have more than
one state senator, rural interests dominated and policymaking was fractionalized by region.
And we saw a growth in special interests. We then saw a period of reform in the 1960s.
The Constitution Revision Commission -- the legislature could govern most of its affairs.
And in 1966, voters approved Prop 1A, which created the full-time legislature. And that
period also saw the "one person, one vote" concept, where it was no longer one senator
for each county. The districts were divided up by population, and we saw new legislators
who were younger, better educated and had more professional backgrounds. The Golden
Years of the 60s and 70s we saw that with a growing economy, salaries and staffs grew.
We saw a two-year legislative session, and that allowed bills to stay alive longer and
gave them a greater chance of passing. Now let's look at the factors that were leading
up toward term limits. We saw divided government that was routine -- Republican governors and
Democratic legislatures, policy deadlock was quite common then. The initiative process
became a driving force. Voters were becoming less partisan, but legislators were becoming
more partisan. There was a media spotlight on how campaign funds were raised and spent,
focusing on Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and how he raised and distributed campaign
funds. Legislators were looking to serve on what's called "juice committees," those are
committees where industries that are interested in the actions of those committees would contribute
more to the campaigns. The result of these factors: Prop 140 and term limits. That's
helped lead today to some of the dysfunction we see. We see high member turnover, we see
high staff turnover, less experience for people working on staff and really a greater ideological
divide between Democrats and Republicans. Let's look briefly at what the legislature
does. First, policymaking. It acts on bills, it acts on constitutional amendments and resolutions.
Second function is representation. You represent your district, the geographic representation.
You also represent the social and cultural characteristics of people in your district.
You have specific representation, where you're dealing with constituents on matters that
require individual attention. And you also have functional representation, where, as
we talked about in the AGPT text, about trustees, delegates and politicos. One other function,
executive oversight where you go through the process of authorization and appropriation.
For purposes of your exam, you need to know that in the authorization process, the legislature
gives authority for an agency program to exist. In the appropriation process, the legislature
creates spending authority, thereby allowing the agency to implement the program. Authorization
simply gives authority for the program to exist, but it's the appropriation process
that allows the agency to implement the program. And legislative members also do civic education
through office hours, speaking to community groups, service clubs and that sort of thing.
How do members of the legislature get there and stay there? How are they recruited? Some
are self starters, some are recruited by others (sponsorship), some it's a combination, and
really it's the power of incumbency that helps people stay there. As recently as 2010, 100
percent of incumbents who sought office were elected to the California Legislature. What
are some of the rewards, quickly, of the office. Policy achievement -- you're finding solutions
to challenges facing California. Material benefits -- you get a legislative salary,
you get some of the perks of the office, so there are those kinds of benefits. And something
called psychic satisfaction -- that somehow your ego is helped by the attention that you
get -- the attention you get from lobbyists, constituents, and virtually every one you
meet who will be paying deference to you. How do they stay? A lot of it has to do with
reapportionment politics. You've heard of gerrymandering, that's the case where legislative
districts are drawn in such a way that it provides an advantage to one candidate or
one party over the other. What we saw in Proposition 11 of 2008 is that before 2008, those lines
were drawn by political parties. Proposition 11 was really a groundbreaking initiative.
It gave authority for drawing legislative districts and state Board of Equalization
districts to a 14-member commission, an independent 14-member commission. In November 2010, congressional
districts were added to the commission's areas of responsibility. Let's go quickly through
how the Legislature is organized -- the Assembly and the Senate. In the Assembly, the leader
is the Speaker. The Assembly speaker, that's the person with the most power in the Assembly.
He or she is elected by the majority party caucus. The majority party gets to pick the
Speaker. Another Assembly post is the Speaker Pro Tem, that's a member of the Speaker's
party who exercises the powers of the speaker if the speaker isn't available, if the speaker
is absent. The other Assembly posts with power are the Majority Leader and the Minority Leader.
In the Senate, the President Pro Tem is the person who handles the day-to-day leadership.
The lieutenant governor is really the person who has comparable powers to the vice president
of the United States, but the day-to-day operation is really run by the President Pro Tem. And
a lot of power stays with the five-member Rules Committee in the Senate. It's the President
Pro Tem and then two other senators from each party. Legislation goes through committees.
The types of committees -- standing committees, they are permanent committees that process
legislation. Fiscal committees handle bills that require spending money. Conference committees
-- they work out the differences if there is a different version of the same bill passed
in the chambers. Select committees, they deal with various issues facing California with
long-term solutions in mind. And joint committees include members from both chambers. The staff
-- there is a very professional staff in California state government. In the early days, we had
the Legislative Counsel of California that helped draft bills. California State Auditor
was established in 1955 to provide fiscal oversight of state agencies. A real key agency
right now is the Legislative Analyst's Office, and that gives nonpartisan advice on fiscal
and policy issues to the legislature. Very quickly, let's go through the legislative
process. Bills are introduced -- if you have an idea, you can introduce a bill. It's then
sent to a committee -- depending on what committee is it sent to or how many committees it's
sent to, that plays a key role in the bill's fate. If you make it through the committee
process, you go to the floor for votes on the floor in the Assembly and the Senate.
If there are different versions of the bill passed, it goes to a conference committee
for final approval. Once each house has signed off on the same version of the bill, it goes
to the governor for final action. Another key part of the legislative process is what's
called the "Third House" -- those are lobbyists and interest groups. The types of things they
do to influence the legislative process -- six different ways. They make campaign contributions.
Their physical presence makes a difference - -simply being there is important in the
process. These lobbyists, these interest groups, they know the process and they can provide
information on legislation to legislators and their staff. That has an impact. They
can do coalition building -- they can bring groups together in support of or in opposition
to a piece of legislation. And they can do grassroots lobbying. Please use this PowerPoint
as well as other information in the Course Documents section to prepare for your weekly
quiz. Good luck!