Ringside: Final Legislative Session is Engineered Chaos

How legislation is enacted in any democratic institution is inherently chaotic. That’s a feature of democracy, not a defect. It’s part of what separates us from authoritarian regimes where the legislature, such as it is, obediently passes whatever legislation they’re told to enact. But California’s one-party state is beginning to look more authoritarian than democratic. How the State Assembly closed its 2023-24 session provides an unsettling example.

To begin with, by the time of the February 16 deadline for this year, a staggering 2,124 bills had been introduced by state legislators. That’s typical. Last year, more than 2,600 bills were introduced, and 1,046 were passed and sent to Governor Newsom for his approval. He ended up signing 890 of them. What kind of a state, already choking on laws and regulations pursuant to those laws, needs to pass nearly 1,000 more, year after year?

This year, despite having had nearly seven months to deliberate on these bills, on August 31 the state assembly still had 144 bills to either approve or reject. And so in a special session on that last Saturday of the last month of their legislative year, they gathered bright and early, 2 p.m., in the assembly chamber and got started. In the final hours of this final day, just to speed things along, they amended the Assembly’s rules to limit debate on bills to just 30 seconds per person.

This didn’t sit well with Bill Essayli, a Republican representing California’s 63rd Assembly District in Southern California. As a former federal prosecutor and district attorney in Riverside County, Essayli is no lightweight. He understands the rules of the assembly. But as someone serving his first term, he also is not yet numb to the corruption.

In a confrontation that was recorded on video and went viral, Essayli, a former prosecuting attorney, demanded the Assembly adhere to the rules. The presiding officer, Speaker pro Tempore Jim Wood, was having none of it. The following dialog ensued:

Wood: “Mr. Essayli, you are using dilatory tactics, I will no longer recognize you.”

Essayli: I have a right to debate.

Wood: You are no longer recognized, Mr. Essayli.

Essayli: Jim Wood, I’m talking to you. I have a goddamn right to speak.

Wood: You sacrificed that right earlier tonight.

Essayli: No I did not. You’re a f***king liar. You lie.

Wood: You are out of order. Mr. Essayli, I’ve already told you, you will no longer be recognized tonight.

Essayli: I will debate this with or without you, I am allowed to debate every damn bill on this floor. You cannot stop me.

But they did stop him, and proceeded on that day to finish the session by passing 142 of the 144 bills that had been remaining. In a guest column published a few days later in the Orange County Register, Authoritarianism turned to chaos at the Capitol,” Essayli summed up what happened.

“The message was clear: I was, for all intents and purposes, no longer a member of the Assembly, and the 478,000 Californians I represent were now voiceless—all because I dared to question the undemocratic actions of the self-proclaimed defenders of democracy. Sit down, shut up, and vote as you like, but we will do what we want with no regard for rules, civility, or respect. Any others who followed my lead would face the same silencing.”

It’s difficult to overstate how easy it is to send transformative legislation through a legislature that is captured by one party. Bills that will completely upend entire industries can sail through on the last day without even meaningful objections logged into the record by dissenting legislators. Once the 2023-24 session ended, Governor Newsom was left with 911 bills to either sign or veto, with 142 of them passed with little or no discussion on the last day.

Making matters worse is the fact that mad rushes to approve legislation before the close of the session is not the only way to enact laws without public scrutiny. An even more effective way to sneak game-changing legislation onto the books is via the so-called “trailer bills.” These are bills that are introduced when the state budget is being negotiated, and if they include even a token amount of financial appropriations in their language, they can be “attached” to the budget and automatically passed if the budget itself is approved.

Trailer bills, because they are considered part of the legislative budget package, are also exempt from the referendum process, which is a last resort that opponents have available to challenge ordinary legislation. As reported by Cal Matters, “It can take weeks or even months for those outside the Capitol to figure out the real-life impacts and decipher the dense legalese of trailer bills, which often run hundreds of pages.”

Also available to legislators intent on circumventing the public vetting process is the “gut and amend” tactic. This is where a legislator takes an existing bill that has already made it through several committees and adds new completely unrelated language. In some cases, the original bill is completely removed.

For anyone remotely interested in transparency and accountability from the California legislature, the end of the 2023-24 legislative session leaves a bad taste. One of California’s senior Republican legislators, Assemblyman James Gallagher, joined Essayli on August 31 in an attempt to preserve debate and avoid chaos. In a formal complaint he subsequently sent to the Chairwoman of Assembly Committee on Rules Vice Blanca Pacheco, Gallagher alleged that the actions that night illegally amended assembly rules, ignored motions to adjourn, and misused parliamentary actions to quash debate.

The seeming chaos of this process is misleading. Last minute suspension of debate, trailer bills, and gut-and-amend tactics are accepted parts of a system that would be out of control even without them. These abusive tactics, and the corrupt, authoritarian policies that result, are possible in California because Democrats wield absolute power in the state legislature.

Democracy itself is the casualty.