As California prepares to fully reopen Tuesday June 15th, legislative leaders appear to be reluctant to allow the State Capitol to fully reopen and return to normal. Yet government should be the first to fully reopen, not the last. Both...
As we near the mid-way point in the 2021 California Legislative Session, we can look at some statistics regarding bills in the legislative process. Suspense Files Last Thursday, May were the important hearings of the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees...
As we examine instances where a bill in the California Legislature contains both statutory changes (by amending, adding or repealing code sections) and legislative intent statements (usually in the form of findings and declarations), we expect these two types of...
Few of us today were alive during the New Deal Era when the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis spoke about states being the laboratories of democracy. California above all other states embodies that sentiment and leads the nation in...
It is often a time-consuming and sometimes daunting task to find just the right author for a bill to introduce in the California Legislature. How do some lobbyists pick the right bill author? While there is no cookie-cutter approach to...
California Constitution Article IV, Section 5(a)(1) specifies: “Each house of the Legislature shall judge the qualifications and elections of its Members and, by rollcall vote entered in the journal, two-thirds of the membership concurring, may expel a Member.” The courts...