Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

Senate President Pro Tem, Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said today that he will propose splitting California’s legislative sessions, to concentrate on the budget one year, and the next year, on new laws.

I have ANOTHER suggestion – let’s concentrate on the budget EACH AND EVERY year, and FORGET ABOUT passing new laws! After all, we already have a plethora (an overabundance)!

According to the Sacramento Bee, Senator Steinberg and I agree on ONE thing for sure, that:

“… legislators have become preoccupied with passing laws while spending too little time reviewing the effects of their legislation. He said that, plus the fallout from a poor economy, has helped push lawmakers to new lows in opinion polls….”

The California Legislature, a recurring subject of my blog entries, seems preoccupied with re-introducing FAILED “goofy” legislation (1, 2) from previous sessions every year until it passes. If members of the Legislature would ABANDON this silly practice, I would quit writing about it. I say that, relatively confident that they will not, because the California Legislature is filled with ideologues on both sides of the aisle. Senator Steinberg blamed the term limits, introduced in 1990, for the legislators’ preoccupation with new laws. (Assembly members are limited to three two-year terms, and senators, to four two-year terms.)

Nonsense.

The term limits were introduced so that people could VOTE OUT “maroons,” and so that even the good legislators could not stick around long enough to create ossified (definition 2) structures (fiefdoms? [definition 2]) in government.

Steinberg correctly notes that members of the Legislature “want to make their mark…,” but I disagree that they make their “mark with a major bill.” At least, they do not make a POSITIVE mark. Many of the new laws passed in the California may be praised in California (I’m not sure about this), but they are OBJECTS of NATIONAL (International?) RIDICULE (I am quite sure about THIS, having lived most of my life in other states). California politicians, in general, do not know how extreme they are. If they LISTENED closely, the derisive laughter from other states might dissuade them from the belief that they are making “their mark.”

All in all, California has a good bit of “Not Invented Here” (NIH) Syndrome.

As for the suggestion to go to a two-year budget cycle, with 15 other states (according to the Council of State Governments), I have to disagree. There is a reason why most states have gone to a one-year budget cycle. Among other things, a one-year cycle allows a state to be more responsive to economic change. Agility in responding to economic change is GOOD! In fact, the Bee article notes that California regularly alternated budget years and new-legislation years until 1966, but “legislators regularly had to set special sessions in off years because of budget problems.”

So the California Legislature has failed to learn from HISTORY, as well!

The California Legislature is not alone in their FAILURE TO SEE their own problems clearly. I could name several Fortune 500 customers that I have managed, and at least two of the companies that employed me, who have/had exactly the same problem!

The problem is not a one-year budget cycle. The vision is blurred by extremism on both sides of the aisle in the California State Legislature. The folks in the Legislature either need to tour other states to see what “bipartisan support” means, or to be locked (locks on the OUTSIDE) in a closed-door session with repeated episodes of Sesame Street lessons on C-O-O-P-E-R-A-T-I-O-N!

As a “non-Native Californian,” I have watched legislatures in other states work “for the common good.” I know that it is possible. So do many of you readers from other states and readers from countries with even-more-fragmented (by party) legislatures. (There goes California’s NIH Syndrome again!) California voters, in 1966, amended the state Constitution to create a full-time Legislature, which now has the LONGEST scheduled session of any Legislature in the United States! (When you spend a lot of time in partisan “bickering,” doing the job TAKES LONGER!)

Senator Steinberg’s proposal, to split the legislative sessions, “is similar to ideas pushed by Republican senators, and has been floated by Assembly and Senate Democrats who are examining legislative reforms.”

“Sen. Mark Wyland, a Republican from Solana Beach, has introduced a constitutional amendment to split the session. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a Democrat from Los Angeles, told the Chronicle she is open to the idea as part of other reform proposals.”

I am afraid that I must, once again, respectfully disagree.

When Republicans and Democrats in the California Legislature, who seeming cannot agree on ANYTHING else, particularly with regard to a budget, AGREE on splitting the legislative sessions, my “gut” tells me that splitting the sessions MUST BE THE WRONG THING TO DO!

So… you folks in other states can just “lean back and watch the entertainment,” (because you don’t have to LIVE with this!) as extremist Democrats and extremist Republicans get together to agree on a wrong course of action (because they cannot see the REAL PROBLEM).

Why not? If they don’t do their jobs, they have a lot of time left over for other things….

-Bill at

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