Why California Needs Multiple Budget Trailer Bills

Questions have often been raised about why there are so many trailer bills needed as part of the budget process in California. The number has grown over the past couple of decades and this has been a recurring concern. However, there is a legal reason for this.

According to the Office of Legislative Counsel, the practice of enacting budget implementation bills began in the 1978–1979 fiscal year. Between that time and the enactment of an omnibus trailer bill in 1984, several “trailer bills” (they were called “implementation bills” by the high court) were passed to make “adjustments” to the budget. At that point, the California Supreme Court, in its Harbor v. Deukmejian decision in 1984, set forth its interpretation of the single subject rule.

By way of background, the California Constitution, in Article IV, Section 9, reads, in part, as follows: “A statute shall embrace but one subject, which shall be expressed in its title. If a statute embraces a subject not expressed in its title, only the part not expressed is void. A statute may not be amended by reference to its title.”

As a result of this constitutional language, legislation passed by the Assembly and Senate must comport with the single subject rule. The Supreme Court has generally defined this as a bill’s provisions must be “reasonably germane” or “functionally integrated.” As a result, the issue before the high court in the Harbor case was whether a budget trailer bill, with a title of “fiscal affairs” was an appropriate title and, if so, whether the bill’s over 200 provisions were properly included.

According to the Supreme Court, “A cursory examination of some of these measures reveals that they suffer from the same defect as Bill 1379, i.e., they combine in a single bill numerous provisions which have no relationship to one another, nor are they reasonably germane to the object of the bill, except in the broad sense that we hold improper. Thus, an undetermined but substantial number of provisions in prior budget implementation bills would be subject to challenge.”

In this case, the justices were referring to what we now call trailer bills. The court said “fiscal affairs” was an impermissible title. This is why we see budget trailer bills with a wide variety of titles (i.e., the topic of the bill) including transportation, taxation, education, etc.

And a trailer bill cannot have provisions that are not reasonably germane to the bill. So, a budget trailer bill has to contain just education-related provisions, or just transportation-related provisions, etc.

I was recently reminded that, in 1993, voters rejected Proposition 169, which would have allowed a single trailer bill to accompany the budget bill each year.  As a result, the voters rejected a change to the single subject rule and the state’s high court made clear that it will enforce the limitation. As a result, budget trailer bills need to be limited to a single subject and that is the reason we have to have about two dozen trailer bills each year.