Symbolic gestures cost public but boost legislators
Lawmakers cash in on resolutions as taxpayers foot bill
By Melody Gutierrez
SACRAMENTO — As lawmakers scurried around the red-carpeted floors of the state Senate on a busy day near the end of the last legislative session, several briefly paused when the clerk began reading a resolution.
The resolution, by Assemblyman Eric Linder, R-Corona (Riverside County), designated a week in August as Concrete Pipe Week, to promote “a progressive interest and understanding of the importance of the reinforced concrete pipe industry to every community throughout California and across the United States.” The resolution drew chuckles from several lawmakers in the back of the chambers.
Linder’s was one of almost 600 resolutions introduced in the state Legislature during the past two-year session, which ended on Aug. 31. These legislative formalities, designed to honor individuals or groups or draw attention to issues, don’t create or change laws. Some
considered this past session, for instance, asked Californians to celebrate cowboys and urged parents not to idle cars when picking up their kids from school.
While some legislators may find humor in them, taxpayer groups and other critics say they are no laughing matter. They argue that they have become excessive and costly, and that there is little public benefit from them.
Yet, there are, at times, clear personal benefits to lawmakers who push resolutions through the Legislature. A review by The Chronicle of all 578 legislative resolutions in the past two years found many instances where special interest groups made campaign contributions to the lawmakers who carried resolutions highlighting their organizations or causes.
For example, Linder received $900 in campaign contributions from members of the American Concrete Pipe Association last year. He worked with the association this year on the resolution, which declared Aug. 8-12 as Concrete Pipe Week.
Both houses of the Legislature approved the resolution.
Linder told The Chronicle in a written statement that he was proud of the resolution. He did not respond to questions about the political donations.
“As a representative of a district that relies heavily on construction jobs, I believe it is entirely appropriate to honor the industries that keep Californians working,“Linder said.
There’s also Engineers Week.
Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres (Stanislaus County), recognized National Engineers Week in a February resolution requested by unions and associations representing engineering companies or their employees. The resolution read in part: “It is appropriate at this time to recognize the contributions of engineering professionals to the betterment of humankind.”
Weeks after it won approval, Cannella reported $5,200 in donations to his Republican campaign for lieutenant governor from two of the groups that brought him the resolution, the Professional Engineers in California Government and the American Council of Engineering Companies of California.
In each of the past three years, Cannella has authored resolutions for Engineers Week while taking in donations from engineering unions and trade groups that asked for the resolutions. Since 2011, Cannella received $16,100 from two of the groups, the Professional Engineers in California Government and the American Council of Engineering Companies of California.
Cannella declined to comment for this story.
“I think there is tremendous abuse of resolutions by lawmakers who want to take the easy way out by passing a resolution instead of a bill,” said Jamie Court, president of the consumer and taxpayer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. “They give the false impression that a lawmaker is doing something.”
Another lawmaker, state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, who is a doctor, carried resolutions in the past two years related to the medical profession. The California Medical Association and California Academy of Family Physicians asked Pan to author SJR7, which urged Congress and the president to increase funding for medical residency training programs.
Both groups are among his biggest political donors. The California Medical Association donated more than $100,000 to get Pan elected in 2010 to the Assembly and has since made regular contributions to him. The California Academy of Family Physicians donated $5,900 to Pan in the past two years.
Another of Pan’s resolutions declared a week in January 2015 as Physician Anesthesiologist Week. That resolution was brought to Pan by the California Society of Anesthesiologists.
The same day, Feb. 13, 2015, that the resolution was passed by the Legislature, the California Society of Anesthesiologists Political Action Committee donated $4,200 to Pan’s 2018 Senate campaign.
This year, the American Society of Anesthesiologists honored Pan with the 2016 Excellence in Government award, citing, in part, the resolution. He received another $4,200 donation, bringing his total contributions from the group to $31,300 since 2009.
Pan said he’s proud of the resolutions he wrote.
“Resolutions play an important role in recognizing groups and the history of them,” Pan said.
But resolutions don’t just help lawmakers earn campaign dollars. Critics say they also help legislators earn their per diem of $176 a day. That’s a daily tax-free living expense lawmakers receive on top of their salaries as long as they are not out of session for more than three days. The per diem averages to about $36,000 per lawmaker, or $4.3 million for the 120 legislators, according to state Department of Finance budget documents.
“If they didn’t have the resolutions, they would be hardpressed to have an excuse to have a session, and without a session they could lose a day or two of per diem,” said Michael Genest, a former state Department of Finance director under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “The per diem, you could say, is what resolutions cost. That’s what seems to preserve it.”
On Feb. 25, senators spent nearly their entire hour-long floor session discussing resolutions that included teen dating violence awareness month, California Pharmacists Outreach Week, Ronald Reagan Day, Korean American Day
and Black History Month. Meeting that Thursday enabled lawmakers to receive their per diem for Friday, Saturday and Sunday as well.
Such resolution-heavy sessions are common at the beginning of the year, when policy bills are still being introduced or weaving their way through committee hearings.
The cost of a bill or resolution is unknown, since the Legislature does not track the amount of time spent on individual proposals.
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated two decades ago that the average cost to process a bill in the state Legislature was $13,733. The office has not done an estimate since 1993. But adjusting that figure to today’s dollars using the California Consumer Price Index would peg the average cost of a bill at $24,000. Still, the cost of a resolution would be less than that of a bill because resolutions typically do not go through committee hearings, which adds to the amount of legislative staff time.
Genest said because legislative staff are paid the same regardless of how many resolutions are passed, it’s hard to make an argument that drafting and passing resolutions itself is costly. No matter how many resolutions are passed, the staff earns the same.
He said the actual cost is mostly in the attorney fees from drafting the resolution. The Office of Legislative Counsel, a nonpartisan public agency with 80 attorneys and an annual budget of $97 million, drafts legislation and resolutions for lawmakers. But the office does not track how much attorney time is spent on bills or resolutions.
Former Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said resolutions serve a vital role for the Legislature by allowing lawmakers to recognize the work of individuals or groups.
“To the person receiving a resolution it’s most often a big deal,” Steinberg said. “So long as the important policy business is considered and gets done, I don’t see a negative.”
In the Assembly, each of the 80 lawmakers is allowed to carry up to five resolutions during the two-year session, a cap created under then-Speaker Fabian Nuñez in 2006.
Assembly members introduced 313 resolutions during the last two-year session.
In the Senate, however, the 40 members have no restrictions. Pan carried the most of any lawmaker with 23 resolutions in the past two years. Senate Republican Leader Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, was second with 21 resolutions.
Nuñez said resolutions are an ineffective method of drawing attention to an issue because so many are introduced each year that they lose their meaning.
“Resolutions don’t solve any problems,” Nuñez said. “They are symbolic gestures. The question is whether that is a good use of the time of legislators. I would argue it’s not.”
While many resolutions typically receive the obligatory aye vote in the Legislature, some result in lengthy floor debates that eclipse the time dedicated to substantive policy bills. For example, when John Wayne Day was taken up in the Assembly this year, it received considerable debate as to whether the actor was worthy of the designation given racist remarks he’d made. The resolution ultimately failed.
“Resolutions are like feelgood moments for policy members,” said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor and expert on state ethics laws. “They are all a way to say I resolve to be a person who is popular and who is re-elected.”
Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, sparked a debate over Ronald Reagan Day after saying he could not support the annual resolution because of the former president’s inaction on the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. The resolution was amended twice and two legislative staffers analyzed it four times. All that added to the time given to the resolution.
In all, lawmakers spent 30 minutes discussing the merits of Ronald Reagan Day in the Senate and Assembly before it passed in both houses.
In the Senate, lawmakers introduced 265 resolutions in the two-year session.
Senate Republicans, on average, introduced three more resolutions than Senate Democrats, likely a result of Republicans being the minority party and having a more difficult time passing bills.
“This is a way for them to make a statement,” Leno said. “It may not have the effect of law, but they can still add something to a resume and still feel accomplished as a legislator whereas they can’t otherwise.”
Leno said he did not introduce his own resolution during the two year session, because “we are busy authoring actual bills.”
During the most recent session, lawmakers passed resolutions to declare September as Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, Pain Awareness Month, Chiari Malformation Awareness Month and California Pedestrian Safety Month.
In August alone, amid the end-of-session rush before lawmakers finished for the year, lawmakers introduced 24 resolutions. The Legislature ran out of time to pass many of them after they had been drafted by Legislative Counsel.
They included one recognizing Gold Star families in an effort to rebuke Donald Trump’s highly publicized clash with the Khan family, and one that would “profusely apologize” to American Indians in California for the atrocities committed against them. Others would have named September 2016 as Silver Alert Community Education Month and declared Aug. 25 as California Young Parents Day, Sept. 28 as Parent Advocacy Day and a week in October as Digital Citizens Week.
“I won’t say they are never appropriate, but the vast majority are meaningless and only give the appearance that they are doing real work,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “At the end of the day, you have to wonder what the real value is.”
Some lawmakers say it’s hard not to grow frustrated with the steady stream of resolutions, particularly when the Legislature is busy with budgets and deadlines.
“There is often a little eye rolling,” said termed-out Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles. “Members can sense that it may be something that’s a priority to one member, but maybe not the state as a whole.”