Why a Theoretical Physicist Wants All State Bills To Be Online Before Final Vote (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Among a slew on ballot propositions that Californians will be asked to consider on Election Day (Nov. 8) is Proposition 54, a proposed constitutional amendment that seems like a no-brainer. If passed, the law would require that the final text of all proposed legislation be published on the Internet for 72 hours before lawmakers can conduct a final vote. Typically, the text of bills in California is put online as it goes through the committee and voting process, but sometimes those bills can change at the last minute. Accessing those changes isn't always easy. The initiative, which seems all-but-certain to pass, has massive support from Charles T. Munger, Jr., the son of billionaire Charles Munger. The younger Munger, an experimental physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a longtime Republican activist, has donated over $10.6 million to the "Yes on Prop. 54" campaign. The effort supporting the opposing view has taken in just over $27,000. Proposition 54 would also force the Assembly and State Senate to allow the public to record meetings as well, which could potentially be used in political advertising. So why would anyone oppose the bill? According to Steven Maviglio, the director of Californians for an Effective Legislature, a campaign committee formed to oppose Proposition 54. It all comes down to who is behind the initiative, and why. "The first thing you need to do is follow the money," he told Ars, pointing us to Munger, Jr. "He's been the top contributor to the California Republican Party. His goal is to disrupt the power of a legislature that's getting things done."

Comments

Yes please

[penguinoid]

The purpose of this may well be to delay bills someone doesn't like while also making it harder to compromise, but it would be nice to see what the bills say before they're voted on.

Re:Yes please

[bondsbw]

There could be ways to mitigate that, such as allowing a supermajority vote or an executive order to override the 72-hour waiting period.

Re:Yes please

[Ichijo]

And then require that every law on the books be read aloud once every 6 years or the law expires.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of this may well be to delay bills someone doesn't like while also making it harder to compromise, but it would be nice to see what the bills say before they're voted on.

Agreed. GIT for Government has the idea, though there are countless variations. The idea is not just to know what the bills say, but to know what the exact step by step process of making the bill was, and which politician signed off on every edit and change. That doesn't mean that they can't just meet in a conference room and hash out something before putting it in a bill. In fact, I'd encourage that, but revision to a bill, or any proposed new bill must be signed off on by one or more politicians.

It might also be necessary to add some kind of rule to make the guy who signs off on everything not the guy who is about to retire/lose/etc, though at some point you have to hope the press will do its job.

Re:Yes please

[No Longer an AC]

It annoys me that the summary decided that it is a bad law solely by the side funding it.

It's funny because I only read about half the summary and decided it was a good idea.

It's not like I'll get to vote on it anyway since I don't live in California. I guess their campaign budgets are getting too large though because I've seen a number of commercials for issues in California (Proposition 61? What's that? I don't care).

So your post prompted me to read the whole summary, but I still wasn't really swayed by that last sentence. I don't really see a good argument against it. Legislation is a slow and tortuous process and it should be. Give the world 3 days to pick apart your legislation and object to certain parts if they're objectionable.

Re:Yes please

[gfxguy]

It's an interesting proposition. I'm a solo programmer working in a fairly interesting role at my company - I write a lot of varied code and utilities, as well as doing a lot of other technical things. After about that magic five years, I found myself unable to keep up with new demands as I was maintaining old code to account for changes in the other software and hardware we use. After about 10 years it was almost all maintenance. I found an out in both switching departments and advocating for more off the shelf software that did what we needed (even if not quite the way people wanted... I told them to suck it up and deal with it).

Applying that sort of scenario to what you propose gives a pretty exciting result - after 10 years or so we're down to maintaining old laws (supposing the most important laws are passed first, after 10 years you're just down to nit-picky laws that probably don't mean a whole lot). After 10 years, you're refining and making the existing laws better instead of proposing complex new ones that benefit few at the expense of many (the typical law passed these days, it seems). Sounds good to me.

Some backroom chatter is necessary for democracy

[Isara]

I voted against this, precisely because, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we actually don't want *all* discussions to be televised. There's a lot of compromise that happens in these meetings, and I fear that real backroom dealings will start to happen once this law is in place. No one will want to be seen as compromising, and frank, intelligent discourse will end up as fodder for opposition commercials. The bill sounds great on the surface, but, as always, the devil's in the details.

Remember Romney Care?

[kenh]

According to Steven Maviglio, the director of Californians for an Effective Legislature, a campaign committee formed to oppose Proposition 54. It all comes down to who is behind the initiative, and why. "The first thing you need to do is follow the money," he told Ars, pointing us to Munger, Jr. "He's been the top contributor to the California Republican Party. His goal is to disrupt the power of a legislature that's getting things done."

WTF? Ignore the actual wording, just look at who is proposing it! That's all you need to know. Oh, and "Getting things done" isn't the right metric, "doing the right thing" is, and they are not equivalent.

Dear Democrats, a little lesson for you - you know Obamacare (PPACA)? You know where the idea came from? (Brace yourself) A Republican! And when it was proposed by the Heritage Foundation it was attacked and vilified because, well, it wasn't Hillary Care, and since Hillary Care was the Democrat idea and the Heritage Foundation's plan was the Democrat plan, it must be destroyed! Until one day, many years later, Gov. Romney and the MA legislature picked it up, dusted it off, and tried it - it worked! The Democrats, thanks to their short memories, saw what happened in MA and decided to take it nation-wide. When the Republicans started to push back on (what was now called) Obamacare, suddenly one of the Democrats remembered it was a Republican plan (from the crazy old Heritage Foundation) and wondered why Republicans were attacking what was essentially their own plan!

Moral of the story - if Democrats didn't reject the Heritage Foundation plan back when Hillary's husband was in office for no other reason than it wasn't their plan, we could have had all the benefits of Obamacare at least ten tears earlier.

Great Idea-works well at the Village level

[speedlaw]

I worked in Village Government for a while in NY. All bills must be published...read...debated...and voted on. You can't combine things in a bill and must vote on that one item. None of this applies to the State Government, or the Feds. No last minute sausages, or tacking a kill Planned Parenthood rider to Veterans Benefits. I iwish I lived in a world where the upper level governments had to follow the rules our little villages do.