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

[alvinrod]

I think there should be a requirement that all bills are read aloud in full before the legislative body that is to vote on them. At the very least, it ensures that all present are aware of the contents. It also has the nice side effect of keeping legislation concise and likely ends bundling various thing together that have nothing to do with each other.

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

[darkain]

That, and bill's text for disaster relief can be pre-written, and simply enacted upon disaster. If the text hasn't changed, then there shouldn't be any issues.

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

[kenh]

On the other hand, there are a good number of things I can think of where a 72 hour waiting period might be inappropriate such as disaster reliefand other time sensitive bills typically handled swiftly by all parties involved.

Are you serious? Do you imagine first-responders to disasters need a literal act of (state) congress to respond? The various departments of the state are pre-authorized to respond, the so-called 'disaster relief' bills would address things like investments in reconstruction, providing emergency housing, etc., and are passed well after the disaster. First the disaster occurs, then the damage is assessed, cost estimates are formulated, then disaster relief bills are drafted and passed.

You could always amend the state constitution to provide a fast-track for a very specific type of bill, but honestly such a provision would likely be exploited way too often, rendering the bill useless.

Re:Yes please

[drinkypoo]

There isn't enough time in a Federal session to read a single big bill aloud.

Congratulations, you got it in one.

Re:Yes please

[Wycliffe]

On the other hand, there are a good number of things I can think of where a 72 hour waiting period might be inappropriate such as disaster relief and other time sensitive bills typically handled swiftly by all parties involved.

Th categories that require an immediate response usually do not require an immediate vote. Things like grounding planes, mobilizing troops, deploying national guard to a disaster, etc.. are usually authorized by the governor and/or president without the consent of a legislative body. Declaring war and additional funding is done by the legislatures but a 72 hour freeze isn't going to really have much effect on that.

It annoys me that the summary decided that it is a bad law solely by the side funding it. A law should be decided on its merits and in this case, I think this is a good law. I also think things like picture ids for voting, background checks for buying guns, and plenty of other things which are sensible laws should not be immediately rejected just because the other side wants it. That's why we have the current stalemate that we currently have.

Re:Yes please

[Wycliffe]

I don't know about California state legislation, but Federal bills are literally unreadable. You'd need a staff of dozens, all experienced in the subject matter, studying the bill to have a chance of understanding it within 72 hours.

And this is absolutely insane. We have members of congress regularly voting on bill that they themselves haven't read and don't understand. How can anyone think this is acceptable?

Re: Yes please

[kenh]

I think there should be a requirement that all bills are read aloud in full before the legislative body that is to vote on them.

The Republicans tried to do this when PPACA was being discussed/passed - you may recall a few high-profile Democrats saying things like "we have to pass the bill, so you can see what's in it" (pelosi) and "what good is reading the bill if you don't have 2 lawyers with you to explain it to you?" (Conyers, admitting he never actually read the bill he was sponsoring in Congress). The republicans tried to force Dems to hear, from f they wouldn't deign to actually read, the bill they were trying to pass.

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

[legRoom]

there are a good number of things I can think of where a 72 hour waiting period might be inappropriate such as disaster relief

The author(s) of Prop 54 agree. From the text of the proposed law (section 3, part c; emphasis mine):

To give us, the people, and our representatives the necessary time to carefully evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the final version of a bill before a vote by imposing a 72-hour public notice period between the time that the final version is made available to the Legislature and the public, and the time that a vote is taken, except in cases of a true emergency declared by the Governor.

Re:Yes please

[quetwo]

But here is the kicker -- Senator A and Senator C both have towns in their districts that build floatys and arm-wings for the Navy... The Navy doesn't actually need them, and if they completely control their own spending, they will cancel the contract. Both Senators will have heavy job losses in their districts, spurning hard economic times, making it harder for them to get re-elected. If they write a bill that dictates that the Navy buys all these floatys and arm-wings for the Navy, then they saved jobs and are heroes... The same goes for army/navy bases, etc. Heck, it's reasons like that, that there is a fully stocked air-force armory in my town -- 75 miles away from the closest air-force base and 30 miles away from the closest airport that can even land a jet.

And that is why things don't chance. If we made these organizations more efficient and allowed them to spend in ways that are actually useful to them, lots of people lose their jobs (mostly people in congress, but you know)...

Re: Yes please

[Entrope]

Yes, the criticism is a true ad hominem: this person supporting the idea is "bad", therefore the idea itself is bad.

Re:Yes please

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

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

I've been advocating law experation without renewal for years. It forces elected legislatures to review previous generations' laws for problems and continued validity.

It also recognizes the lower weight assigned to simple majority decisions (as opposed to supermajorities).

If there is too much for the government to do even a cursory review every 5 years, there's too much to expect The People to obey it all.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the purpose is more insidious. The intent isn't as much delay as it is to give the people with money and an agenda a chance to see bills and react with either private lobbying or very public press thrown at the bills. In this case, press as in spin, misinformation, and lies. Basically some wealthy people with an agenda want more control over the legislative process than they have now.

Would I like to see bills ahead of time? Sure. But what would I be able to do about a bill I disagreed with? Not write to my representative - the timing is too tight for that. Call? Sure, but that isn't going to do as much as hordes of lobbyists descending upon the state capitol or a slanted news report. I actually did vote no on this one - just because it will allow money even more access.

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.

Federal Law and Tracking

[Herkum01]

What I would love to see is laws being tracked in version control. The text of congressional bills are large and people can easily slip in minor changes with major impact. There is no real tracking of who edited a bills text and version control would provide that transparency.

Beats having people acting shocked with something is added at changes added at the last minute.

Re:Because "getting things done"

[kenh]

"getting things done" is not the same thing as "doing the right thing" - the person opposing posting the final language of a bill for 72 hours before passage is hoping you don't see the difference...

The whole point of Prop. 54, as I read it, is to make sure the gov't is "doing the right thing" - what's wrong with that? Oh, right, it was proposed by a "republican"! Yikes! It must be a trick of some kind!

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.

Sigh

[argStyopa]

"Follow the money" means to find out who ultimately benefits.
It does NOT mean "follow the money until it comes to someone you don't like and then reflexively oppose it because you just don't like them"...

Re: I know nothing about CA rules

[kenh]

The 72 hours requirement kicks in once you have 'final text', not each draft.

Re:Because "getting things done"

[pipingguy]

"Something MUST be done!"

"Well, THIS is something..."

"Then we must do it!"

Republican Would Benefit?

[sycodon]

"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."

So, Republicans would benefit by everyone knowing what they are voting on, that the public know what's going on, and that the legislation be carefully considered?

What does that say about the people who oppose this? That they don't want people to know what they are voting on, don't want the legislation to be carefully considered, and that the public not be informed?

Is the definition of "getting things done" mean having things slipped in at the last minute while keeping the public and the legislators clueless ?

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[sycodon]

Nope.

Leadership regularly adds items to bills at the last minute. That practice is ubiquitous in all legislative bodies, even the US Congress, and is bullshit.

And, what's the fucking hurry? When a Bill is changed it takes a while for it to be analyzed and the people it may affect to understand it and bring their concerns to the attention of their legislator.

The only reason for allowing that bullshit is to slip something in under the wire and without due consideration.