California Assembly wants to ignore voter-approved ‘72-hour rule’

One problem with political reforms, of the sort approved from time to time by the California electorate, is that many of them have to be implemented by politicians.

Because elected officials often are the targets of those reforms, they’re often less than forthright in carrying them out.

A fresh case in point is the fallout from Proposition 54, the state constitutional amendment passed by voters on Nov. 8 to bring new transparency to the legislative process.

Approved by nearly a 2 to 1 margin, Prop. 54 aimed mainly to stop the state Assembly and Senate from voting on a bill without first making it available to the public in print and online for at least 72 hours.

The general intent of the 72-hour rule was pretty clear: Keep legislators from ramming through new laws without giving interested members of the public and press, and the bill’s potential opponents and supporters, a good chance to examine it and say it’s good or bad or could use improvement.

Voters’ specific expectation was pretty clear too: The new rule would apply to any vote on a non-emergency bill by either of the two houses of the Legislature in Sacramento, and would apply to either the first vote in the house where the bill originated or the second vote in the other house that sends it to the governor for a signature.

This was certainly the understanding of the good-government groups that backed Prop. 54, and the understanding of this editorial board when we endorsed it a month before the election.

Unfortunately, to take effect for the legislative session that began last week, the new rule had to be written into the houses’ new operating rules by lawmakers themselves. Lawmakers who don’t necessarily like the restrictions Prop. 54 calls for. Lawmakers who in many cases are lawyers, skilled at twisting words to suit their interests.

Seizing on the initiative’s language saying the 72-hour rule applies to a bill “in its final form,” Assembly members on Dec. 5 adopted rules that apply it only to the vote of the second house to act on a bill.

This means a bill authored by an Assembly member could be rushed to a vote of approval by the full Assembly, and that would be OK as long as the Senate then publishes it for 72 hours before voting to approve it and send it to the governor.

This is a clear bastardization of Prop. 54. Since the work of crafting a bill is usually done mostly in the house of origin, that’s where the public should be allowed to exert its influence. Some bills are approved by the second house with little change, so the first house’s version may for all intents be “in its final form.”

Even the way the Assembly is reading it, Prop. 54 would help to fight legislators’ end-of-session practice of adopting last-minute “gut-and-amend” bills, using the amendment process to put entirely new language into existing bills. But it would not accomplish all of what voters had in mind.

The lesson here is not that the public and civic-minded activists like Prop. 54 sponsor Charles Munger, should give up on passing reforms. The lesson is that on top of legal reforms, good government requires elected officials who honor the will of the people.

Assembly members should revise their operating rules to give full force to the 72-hour rule. If they don’t, Californians should remember it the next time we vote.