CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2014, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2014, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“COMPELLING PRIORITIES FOR NEW LAWMAKING
SESSION”
Like swallows returning to Capistrano,
state legislators come back to Sacramento as each new year begins, ready to
peck away at what they see as the state’s problems.
Last year, that included giving
drivers licenses of a sort to undocumented immigrants, imposing light
regulations on hydraulic fracturing of oil shale, making it harder to convert
guns into assault-style weapons, setting up an earthquake warning system and
renewing California’s commitment to join Nevada in preserving Lake Tahoe.
That left out issues like campaign
finance openness and transparency, modernizing the early-1970s-era California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), making it easier to fire lousy or perverted
schoolteachers and prison overcrowding. Among others.
Because 2014 is an election year, with
every member of the state Assembly and half the state Senate either termed out,
moving on or up for reelection, the normal expectation would be for little or
nothing of substance to be done. Legislators usually don’t like taking
controversial votes near enough to an election for voters to remember them.
But this election year may be
different. For one thing, as the year begins there is not yet a substantial
re-election challenger to Gov. Jerry Brown. No one who has expressed interest
in running can come close to matching his stature, name recognition or
bankroll. So he probably will have few electoral worries.
Other statewide officials are pretty
much in the same boat. Yes, Democratic Assembly Speaker John Perez will run for
state controller, current Controller John Chiang will try to move to the state
treasurer’s office and a trio of significant Democrats seeks to become
secretary of state. But Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Kamala
Harris appear safe from challenges from other Democrats and there are as yet no
substantial-looking Republican challengers for any statewide office.
Neither of the state’s two U.S. Senate
seats is up for grabs. And only a few legislative and congressional districts
are due to be strongly contested, which means the vast majority of incumbents
in both major parties will have almost as relaxed a time as they did in 2013, a
non-election year. The only real question is whether Democrats will keep the
two-thirds legislative majorities they’ve had for parts of the last two years.
There is no doubt they'll keep enjoying huge legislative majorities, even if
those may not come up quite to the two-thirds level.
So very few in Sacramento have much to
worry about, which could lead to serious business this year.
The single most important bill they
could pass this time around is the so-called Disclose Act, which would force
public disclosure of all major donors to candidates and initiative campaigns,
many of whose donations have previously been hidden behind smokescreen campaign
committees with misleading names.
Prison overcrowding could also be
solved legislatively. One thing lawmakers could do is make it easier to parole
sick and elderly inmates who not only are twice as expensive to maintain as
ordinary prisoners, but pose little or no threat to society if released.
Murderers and rapists, of course, could be excluded.
Mandatory sentencing rules could also
be altered, giving judges more discretion to determine who is dangerous enough
to merit confinement in prison and who could be paroled or somehow rehabilitated
in a non-prison setting.
Taken together, these moves would
probably reduce the prison population enough to satisfy the demands of federal
judges whose order to reduce prison occupancy by almost 10,000 more convicts
was upheld for a second time last fall by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Modernizing CEQA will be somewhat
trickier, as reconciling a simplified and expedited building permit process
with environmental protections is no simple thing.
The same with teacher firings, where
legislators in the last session passed a measure mandating that districts
create a special panel each time administrators want to rid themselves of a
teacher. Brown vetoed this one, mostly on grounds that it complicated matters
without improving much. There’s room to fix the vetoed measure enough to
win Brown’s approval.
So there’s plenty for the lawmakers to
do, as usual, and little for them to fear if they act.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
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