Reform proposals aimed at creating efficiency, transparency and accountability in the Legislature dominated the first of five joint hearings of the Assembly and Senate Select Committees on Improving State Government.
Assembly Member Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) and Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) chaired the all-day hearing. Held on Thursday, Oct. 22, the hearing featured testimony from current state executive officers, former legislative leaders, academics, and proponents of the reform measures headed to the November 2010 ballot.
The majority of the hearing was spent discussing many of the governance and fiscal reform proposals that have been considered by members of previous legislative sessions, past and current ballot propositions, and at the Cities Counties Schools Partnership’s Local Government Summit of State Governance and Fiscal Reform.
These proposals included:
· Changing the annual budget process to a biennial system, with forecasts extending up to five years, to promote better fiscal planning;
· Changing term limits so members can serve 12 years in either the Senate or Assembly. The goal is to reduce turn-over, non-stop campaigning, and bring back legislative policy expertise.
· Avoid asking voters to make all the tough policy or budget decisions with ballot measures and instead make the decisions at the legislative level to create accountability;
· Correlate voting threshold requirements with longevity of the proposal: the annual budget should only require a majority vote while constitutional changes should require a super-majority vote to pass;
· Blocking legislation from moving forward until a budget is adopted to ensure funding decisions are made before programs are enacted or continued; and
· More restrictive limits on the number of bills that legislative members can introduce to ensure only priority issues are being addressed and foster collaboration between members to achieve common goals.
Bill Hauck, former chair of the early 1990’s California Constitution Revision Commission and former chief of staff to Gov. Pete Wilson and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, expressed a sense of urgency for action. “Any changes to the state government need to be done during the crisis, not afterwards,” Hauck said. Many of the proposals that his Commission recommended were not considered because of legislative leader’s delay in reviewing the proposals.
Testimony related to budget making decisions stressed the importance of oversight and performance-based decision making. Mac Taylor, legislative analyst, spoke in favor of creating oversight committees by issue areas to institutionalize area-expertise and long-term planning.
Many of these proposals, as noted by both witnesses and committee members, can be accomplished with a rule change in either of the legislative houses and do not require a ballot initiative to be taken to the voters.
Future hearings will take place in various locations throughout the state during the remainder of 2009.
The full agenda and framing background paper from the Oct. 22 hearing is available on the Assembly Judiciary Web site under “Hearing Reports.”
The agenda and background has also been posted on the League’s Web site.
