>> jodi traversaro: this is jodi traversaro. i am the statewide learning and performance management officer for the state of here at the department of personnel administration, soon to be calhr. and i am proud to report that over 15,000 state employees have received training so thank you. to all of you who are online today, there's 308 people online, and some of these folks are actually projecting to a group, so there's probably a so with that, i want to thank all of you online for helping us make this
again, this is jodi traversaro with the statewide learning and performance management group here at dpa. and our presentation today is the legislative process. while you're waiting, i want to make sure you mute your microphone. there should be only one person speaking at a time, or, if you're not using your to download a copy of today's presentation, and also the alternate keystrokes i you can click on the handout icon in the upper right-hand corner of your screen or press alt h, then press the down arrow to move through the selection, space tab to move to the menu, and enter to download.
before we begin i want to introduce you to some of the features of microsoft live training webinar more interactive for all of us. if you look at the top right hand corner of your screen, there are four buttons i you can either use your mouse or use your keyboard to download handouts, mute or ask a question, and/or open and close the real-time captioning box. i want to thank our captioner today -- real-time captioner, caption colorado, and you can see the captioning going on by clicking on more or pressing alt + o. to ask a question you can click on the q&a button on the menu, and then type or you can press alt q, press control tab three times until your cursor's in the
then tab to the button that says ask, and then press enter. and just a tip, you can only ask one question at a time; we need to clear your question before we and as i mentioned, the alt o is the captioning option. you can also e-mail me any time during this webinar to communicate with me or if and as a reminder this session is being recorded. our presenter today is mark terry. he's a deputy in the office of legislative counsel. mark has served as a deputy in the office of legislative counsel since 1981. he has specialized in education-related issues during most of his career,
and before he came to the office of legislative counsel, mark worked for three years in a high school as a teacher in the los angeles and for two years as a staff attorney for the aclu foundation of southern mark received his undergraduate and law degrees from stanford university and has a bachelor's degree from occidental college. mark is a member of the california state bar, proudly, and holds a lifeline california standard secondary teaching credential in social and today's presentation is especially near and dear to my heart as we the people have chosen representatives to carry out
kind of laws and policies will best serve our interests. however, to effectively perform their job, legislators rely heavily on input from legislators are always concerned about the people in their district and they want and everybody's opinions are invited and welcomed. and this is precisely how the legislative process was designed to work best. so we're going to go over that process for the california legislature today. and the relationship with your legislature and the communication you have with and positive relationship. and, in addition, many state employees are analyzing and interpreting
and implementing the laws that have been passed, so it's critical that we all and what laws govern our work. so what you can do is actively participate in the legislative process in a understand how the process works. so, with that, i'm going to encourage you to get to know who your legislators are get excited about this webinar because mark's really fun to listen to. and i am going to turn over the presentation to mark in just a moment here as i and here you go, mark. i'm going to mute my microphone.
>> mark terry: as jodi said, my name is mark terry. i work for the office of legislative counsel. we're the legislature's lawyers. and for the next hour or so i'm going to talk to you about how the legislative i'm sure that all of you have learned somewhere during your schooling about the legislative, executive, and judicial, and how they are interrelated through a the legislative branch has the authority to make laws. the executive branch has the authority to enforce laws,
and that includes the authority to issue administrative regulations. and the judicial branch has the authority to interpret laws. the executive and judicial branches depend on the legislative branch to provide this is called the power of the purse. but each of the other two branches has power over the legislative branch as well so the governor has the authority to veto -- veto means reject -- legislation although it is possible for the legislature to enact legislation in spite of the we'll learn a little bit about that later. and the judicial branch can declare a law passed by the legislature and signed by
today we're going to concentrate on the way the legislative branch works on the we're not going to talk very much about the federal legislative branch, which is talking about congress would give us enough material for another hour. and, as i mentioned, there are the three branches of government; legislative, i'm learning how to use my mouse here. okay, here we go. in this webinar you're going to learn how a bill becomes a law, you're going to and its calendar, the organizational structure of the legislative branch, and the governor's role in this legislative cycle.
and, lastly, we're going to clue you in on some helpful resources to learn more now we asked you at the time that you registered for this class how familiar you let's see how this turns out. what do you think, mark? i think, based on the results from our test precincts, we can declare somewhat and that's excellent because i too am somewhat familiar with the legislative i hope those of you who are very familiar will be patient with this presentation. now what is the legislative process? well it's a governmental process.
it's the process by which bills, which make laws, are considered and passed by that process is driven by several influences, most of all the california the constitution set up the legislature and gave it its authority. there are the joint rules. the legislature has adopted rules which control its two houses, and each house there are also general parliamentary rules that control debate and just the general consideration of matters that are before the legislature. and then external events like fires and earthquakes, fiscal crises, these things impact the legislature very heavily and lead to results in the
now the structure of the california legislature: california is one of four states the other three, by the way, are new york, pennsylvania, and michigan. california has had a fulltime legislature since 1966. now what is meant by a fulltime legislature? basically, that the legislature is in session most of the time and that the members are paid a salary that is large enough to enable them to fulltime job for them. currently, each legislator makes about $95,000 per year, and they get about $142 per day when the legislature is in session.
the structure, in terms of the timeframe of the legislature, is biennial; that it begins just after the november election in the even-numbered year and it runs until the end of august in the next even-numbered year. california has had this biennial legislative structure since 1972. california's legislature is also bicameral. that means that it's got two houses, an assembly and a senate, and in that way the california legislature is similar to 48 of the other 49 nebraska being the only legislature that has just a single house. here are the two houses that i just referred to, the senate and the assembly.
as you see, the senate has 40 members and the assembly has 80 members. that lineup, that 40-member senate and 80-member assembly, that has existed since so california has had 120 total legislators since 1861. although california is the largest state in population, it only has the 29th so each california senator and each california assembly member has more constituents than any of its california's population right now is approximately 38 million. that means that each senator has about 950,000 constituents and each assembly to give you a bit of comparison with other large states, texas,
the second largest state which has only about two-thirds the population of new york, which has about half the population of california, has 212 legislators. so the california members of the legislature, in terms of their constituent load, they have the heaviest workload of any legislators in the country. you see from the slide that senators are elected every four years, assembly and under the current term limits that have been enacted by the people in the a senator can serve a maximum of eight years in the senate, and an assembly those of you who keep up on your current events may know that there is a week from today, and that would allow future legislators to serve up to 12
so we'll keep an eye on proposition 28 next week to see if that passes and each house has members, officers, and employees that help keep it running. the ceremonial president of the senate is the lieutenant governor. the lieutenant governor rarely actually presides over the senate, usually just on the lieutenant governor can vote only when the vote is tied 20 to 20 and when his the real leader -- day-to-day leader of the senate is the president pro tempore. the president pro tempore is generally the leader of the majority party in the currently, that person is darrell steinberg, democrat of sacramento. the minority floor leader, the leader of the second largest party in the senate,
that's bob huff, republican of diamond bar. the members of the senate are divided and organized by party. california, like all of the states, except for nebraska, has a partisan when people vote for members of the assembly and senate, the political parties of which the candidates are members are listed currently, there are 25 democrats and 15 republicans in the california senate. the secretary of the senate is an important officer; he and his staff help keep the business of the legislature of the sensate they're the ones who receive the legislation and actually help the logistics of
the sergeant at arms provides security to the members and to the chambers. about half of the members of the senate are committee chairs, and so committee staff are very important to the business of the house, and each both in the capitol and in the local district. so these are the fundamental people that make the senate run. the assembly has a similar structure. the speaker is, generally speaking, the leader of the majority party in the and that currently is john perez of los angeles. the speaker pro tempore is the person who, for the most part, presides over the
and just as in the senate, there is a partisan structure where the minority floor that is currently connie conway of tulare, california. and right now the partisan makeup of the assembly is 52 democrats, 27 the counterpart of the secretary of the senate is the chief clerk. the chief clerk provides, generally, the similar services as the secretary of the logistical support to keep the house running, to keep track of all of the sergeant at arms provides security for the members in the chambers. and the assembly is twice the size of the senate, of course. about one-third of the assembly members chair a standing committee.
so there's committee staff both for the standing committees and the special and then each member as in the senate has a capitol office and a district office. there's also professional staff that serves both houses of the legislature. i work for the legislative counsel bureau. as i mentioned before, we're the legislature's lawyers. the legislative data center is also part of the office of legislative counsel. they provide information technology services. the legislative analyst provides nonpartisan, budgetary, and fiscal analysis, and also you may be familiar with the impartial analyses they provide of measures
if you look in your voter pamphlet that's at your house right now, if you're a it's got excellent input from the legislative analyst. the bureau of state audits provides performance audits at the request of members now we're going to talk about the building blocks of legislation; bills. now bills are the type of legislation through which the legislature makes laws. a bill must be passed by both houses and sent to the governor. most of the laws that you're familiar with and that you hear about in the news codes are collections of laws that are organized by topic to make them easier for some of the codes you may be familiar with are the vehicle code, the penal code,
and the health and safety code, among a couple of dozen other codes. you keep track of these bills, bills that start off in the assembly, abs, and by their numbers. they are numbered in order of their introduction. so the first bill introduced in each session in each house, that would be ab1 and right now, as of this morning, the abs run up to 2700, there have been 2700 assembly bills introduced so far this session, and we're up to 1580 in senate there are also other types of measures. now the types of legislation that are listed on the page in front of you do not
these do not need the governor's approval. they are strictly up to the legislature to see whether they're passed or not. we start off with the aca and the sca. those are the constitutional amendments. constitutional amendments under our state constitution -- and these i must mention are strictly state constitutional amendments -- they but the legislature can propose to the people suggested constitutional amendments effect have to be approved by the people. those are the acas and scas.
there are also concurrent resolutions, acr and scrs. these concurrent resolutions are sometimes used to urge action on the part of the or to provide for the governance of the two houses. concurrent resolutions, although they're passed by both houses, as i mentioned they do not have the force of law. joint resolutions also do not go to the governor; do not have the force of law. they are used to bring the attention of the federal government to issues that are of importance to the california legislature. the three types of measures at the top of the page, the aca and scas, acr, scrs,
are all two-house measures, but there also measures that only go through one in the assembly it's called a house resolution. in the senate they're called a a house resolution or a senate resolution is generally used to adopt rules of or to establish committees of that one house. sometimes they're used to commend extraordinary individuals or to bring a matter to the attention of the executive branch that does not have here's the chart that we're going to be talking about off and on for the rest of this is how a bill becomes a law, and i like the colors because this helps you the yellow has to do with the first house, what we call the house of origin, the
the blue is the second house; that is the other house of the legislature. that's where the bill goes if it's passed by the yellow house, the house of red stands for the governor's desk. and then the green lets you know where a bill goes when it is signed by the so we're going to talk about each of these stages in turn; a bill being floor action, then the committee hearings and floor action in the second house. then we're going to talk about concurrence or non-concurrence and amendments, when a bill is returned to its original house, then we're going to talk about the and then what happens if the governor -- depending on what the governor decides
to keep its business flowing, the legislature has a calendar. we've selected just a part of the biennial session calendar just to give you an legislature keep its business moving. if you'll run your eyes down the page to about halfway down between may 25th and that'll take you to where we are today, may 29th as i speak, you'll see that we're between the last day for fiscal committees to hear and report bills introduced in their house and the last day for bills to pass the this is a busy week for the legislature because all of the bills that have been legislative session, and that is this year, 2012, they have until friday; that
to pass out of their house of origin; so it's a busy week with lots of floor sessions which may run late for both we move on. in addition to the calendar that was on the previous page, the governor can call that is when there is a crisis or some particularly big issue that needs, in the governor's opinion in any event, special attention. the governor can call an extraordinary session, and the proclamation, which is the announcement that the governor makes of the extraordinary session, is required to specify what the special session is to be about, whether it's to,
address an emergency created by a natural disaster or a situation created by a and those extraordinary sessions have an expedited calendar. well here's a survey question. in 2009/2010, which was the last completed session of the legislature, how many governor schwarzenegger, eight, three, or two? oh, the votes are rolling in. and it appears that a number of you were paying attention during 2009 and 2010 the answer is eight. eight extraordinary sessions were called by governor schwarzenegger during that
that is the record. prior to that there had never been more than five extraordinary sessions during a and in case you're interested about the current session, 2011/2012, there's only been one extraordinary session called so far in this current okay. we're going to take a hypothetical bill and have it go through the process. we've tried to pick a subject that's easy to understand. and our hypothetical bill is to allow four-year-old children to attend this is just a bill idea.
and we're going to see how an idea like allowing four-year-olds to attend and what its progress through the process might be. only senators and assembly members can officially propose a change like this to you may know that often a governor has a legislative program, but the governor is doesn't have a vote in the legislature, and so if the governor has a proposal, he has got to get a cooperating senator or assembly member to introduce his or likewise, there are many, many agencies or citizens' groups that might be but it all boils down to convincing or persuading a member of the legislature to and, of course, senators and assembly members often have ideas for bills of their
and they are well situated to introduce them since they're the only ones who can. let me just define the term lobbyist. i know a lot of you hear that term. a lobbyist is essentially a person whose occupation it is to work with elected to represent the points of view of his or her employers. so in the case of our hypothetical bill of four-year-olds being allowed to attend citizens, parents of young children, teachers' groups, parent/teacher organizations interested in children's welfare. any of a number of organizations might be interested in either favoring a bill or being opposed to it.
but let's just say that this particular idea has found a legislator who thinks and i'm just going to make up a name of a legislator; it's going to be assembly assembly member drysdale is going to be the legislator who thinks it's a good and he's going to send this idea to my office, the office of legislative counsel. at our office we will look at, in this case, the education code and we'll figure out the best way to express this idea in legal language so that we will then return this draft to assembly member drysdale's office. the document that we send to people is sometimes called an rn. it's an acronym all of the jobs that are presented to us for bill drafting
and for other reasons at the legislative counsel are given a number so that we and so in capitol parlance rn is a legislative consul request number. this bill draft that we've sent to assembly member drysdale can then be submitted in the case of this particular hypothetical, assembly member drysdale is a member so he would go to the desk that is at the front of the assembly chamber, which is manned by the staff of the chief clerk of the assembly, and then this and given a number. let's just say it's given the number ab53. that bill would then go to what's called first reading.
the chief clerk or the chief clerk's deputy would then read that bill. now when we say read the bill, we don't mean that the entire bill, which may be a would be read, it's just the house name, the number, the author, and the title of or the part of the title of the bill that relates to the subject of the bill are so the clerk would say something like this, assembly bill 53 by assembly member an act relating to kindergarten. then that rn, as we referred to before, the document from the office legislative would be electronically dispatched to the office of state publishing, and then it under the constitution, bills cannot be acted on for about a month after they've
that's to allow the public and the press to be informed about these ideas and to and let their representatives know. here is a picture of a bill, and you see at the top it's got the house of origin, the senate, the bill number in the upper right hand corner, this is number ten; and then we have a coauthor on this particular bill because not only the bill, but another legislator or legislators who think the bill is a good idea can farther down you have the date that this particular bill, sb10, was introduced. it happened to be the very first day of the 2010/11 regular session, december 6th and -- i should say 2011/12 regular session.
and then you have the description of the code section that is affected by the and in this case it happens to be an urgency bill -- we'll talk about urgency bills briefly later on -- taking effect immediately. later down you've got the legislative counsel's digest which explains in just what the bill is supposed to do. and then the body of the bill starts at the bottom of the page, that's a typical now where these bills go, they go to legislative committees. and here's a question; how many of you have observed a legislative committee either online, on television, or in person?
i've seen them all three ways. now this looks like our closest vote. it looks like most of you have actually seen a legislative committee hearing by and legislative committees do the bulk of the work of winnowing through and getting to the heart of the issues that are presented by each bill. so let's move on to the types of committees that deal with bills. the first committee that any bill goes to is what's called the rules committee in the rules committees are sort of the traffic cops of each house when it comes to the rules committees decide which policy committees are appropriate for a bill to
in the case of our hypothetical bill about kindergarten, the policy committee it would go to the committees on education of either the senate or the assembly. in the case of our example, it would start out with the assembly education then there's also a fiscal committee for bills that require the expenditure of otherwise, they have to be heard by a committee that especially pays attention to this chart talks about the standing committees. these committees are created by resolution of each house. they are the ones -- these committees do a great deal of the legislative work. they're the ones that by going through each bill in detail, according to topic,
they're able to save the legislature from having to consider each bill in a full which would be extremely time consuming. you see there are currently 30 assembly standing committees, 22 senate standing the members and the chair persons are appointed in the assembly by the speaker. in the senate they're appointed by the rules committee. the president pro tempore, who is the leader of the senate, is always the chair so the president pro tempore usually has a big impact in terms of who is going to or a member of a particular committee. and one thing that's important about these standing committees, the hearings are
so here's the process of a particular bill: the bill gets sent to committee, that is the committee staff takes possession of the bill, it is set for a hearing and that hearing date is published in the daily file. the daily files of both the senate and the assembly, by the way, are treasure troves of information about the schedule of each house. the committee hearings and all of the bills in each committee hearing are set out so those of you who work near the capitol, you can get a hard copy of the or senate daily files at your office or at the capitol, but anybody can get a once these bills are logged in the committee, they are analyzed by the committee
and you will find bill analyses, as they're called, to be very, very helpful. these are where the policy experts of the legislature take a close look at the compare what the bill would do with what is the practice in existing law, and often discuss similar proposals that may be in the current legislature or also, the bill analyses will mention those persons and interest groups who have both in favor of or opposed to the bill. so on any particular bill, the committee analysis has a wealth of information that can be very helpful to anybody who wants to know what the bill is about. the bill then has a hearing.
those of you who've been to committee hearings know that they are public no business can be conducted unless a quorum of the committee is present, that's at least half of the members -- well half of the members plus one who are and then not only does the author of the bill speak, but witnesses are invited to these are persons both in favor of or opposed to the bill. these are people whose occupations may be lobbyists, they may be members of interest groups that are vitally affected by the bill, or they may just be members of the public. in any event, often, a committee hearing has many, many witnesses who weigh in on
i would imagine on our hypothetical bill about four-year-old kindergarten there be interested in testifying on either side of such a bill. once the author and all of the witnesses have been heard, the bill is voted on. and if a majority of the committee, a quorum being present, approves the bill, the bill is reported out of the committee. essentially, the goal of an author is to have a bill favorably reported by a so here are the committee actions, just what a committee does: a committee holds the committee sometimes recommends amendments to the bill, sometimes accepts amendments that have been suggested by the author, committee
the committee can recommend due past, that means pass the bill as it is -- and these are recommendations made to the full membership of the house, or it can recommend to the full membership of the house pass the bill but only as or the committee may not pass the bill, the bill may fail passage. in that case the author can ask the committee membership to reconsider. generally, reconsideration is granted as a courtesy to a member but that does not guarantee that the second time around the bill will be passed. sometimes authors have to make significant changes in a bill in order to get it and then sometimes the bill is held in committee; that is, the bill is not
and just sits in the committee and does not become the law thereby. and the important thing to remember about a committee is that a committee the house; that's what we call the floor. the committee does not amend or pass the bill itself. what it does is it recommends an action to the full membership of the house. we're about to talk about floor sessions, so we're going to ask how many of you have observed a floor session, online, on tv, or live? again, it looks like most of you have observed a floor session, and there are generally on a given floor session day you'll find a group of school kids
or tourists sitting in the gallery of either the assembly or the senate. floor sessions do make for fine theater. and i say that, even if the debate is not that lively on a given day, the and california assembly are beautiful to look at, and so even if it's not the most exciting day in terms of the business of the it's a nice, pleasant view from the galleries in either house. i highly recommend it. now we're going to talk about what goes on at floor sessions. there's a beautiful picture which isn't a picture of either the senate or the
it's got a capacious upper deck kind of like the assembly and it's got a red but it's kind of an idealized legislative space. but it's a nice picture. here's the floor process. now we had the first reading when the bill was first introduced. now when the bill is reported out of committee the bill gets read again, and once when we talk about a reading, we're not talking about the entire bill, we're just the number, the author, and the subject. and then once that is done then the bill is ready for the third reading file.
at the third reading time, that's when the member actually takes it up for so we're talking about the hypothetical bill about four-year-old kindergarten, when and if assembly member drysdale is ready and believes that there are a sufficient number of votes for his bill, he can and, again, assembly member drysdale has to be cognizant of the various deadlines for instance, if this was the second year of the session, like it is now, and if this bill did not get past the assembly, then assembly member drysdale or any other member has to take up his or her bill this week or else the bill is going to be in violation of the rules and will be likely not
when a bill is taken up for third reading the author explains the bill, then other members of the legislature -- other members of that house, who are or who might want to just ask a question, are able to do so. sometimes the debate can be very, very lively. and at the end of the debate then a vote is held. those of you who have observed the floor sessions and the assembly and the senate know that the assembly with its 80-member body has automated there are buttons on member's desks which they can vote, green or red buttons and then their vote is registered on a board behind the speaker's dais.
in the senate the members' names are actually read off in alphabetical order and and, again, the votes are counted on an electronic board that is behind the dais of the presiding officer of the senate. this chart gives you the number of votes that are generally required for the the senate has 40 members, and for a majority vote that's half of the senate plus and most senate bills and all of the senate concurrent resolutions and senate and senate resolutions can be passed with 21 votes. now various other votes require a two-thirds majority. some of them are urgency bills, which can take effect immediately,
and there are various other bills that also take a two-thirds vote, that's 27 the corresponding numbers in the assembly are 41 and 54, respectively. for purposes of discussion, we're going to assume that ab53 by assembly member drysdale for the four-year-old that would mean the legislative process followed in the first house would be that would mean the rules committee would decide -- the rules committee of the senate now would decide what policy committee ab53 would go to, and probably we're talking about the education and then the decision would be made about whether the bill would go to a fiscal
now the wrinkle in the second house is that when the bill comes up for a floor let's say the bill makes it all the way through the committees in the second members are only allowed to address the floor of the house of which they are special occasions when they're given special permission. but basically an assembly member cannot speak in the senate, and vice versa. so assembly member drysdale has to get someone in the senate to present that and let's say he finds a senator, let's call senator colfax is in agreement with so senator colfax presents ab53 on the senate floor. here's the concept of concurrence and non-concurrence:
a bill has to be passed in the same form in each house before it gets sent to the so if, let's say, assembly member drysdale's bill calls for all four-year-olds to and it's not amended in the senate, then it can go directly to the governor. but let's say if the bill runs into some roadblocks in the second house and it's amended in the senate to allow only children who are four years and nine or older to attend kindergarten, and that's the form in which it passes the so then you'd have the senate having passed the bill saying four years and nine and then you have the assembly having passed the bill saying that four years even well in order for that bill to go to the governor then,
it would have to be returned to the assembly to see whether the assembly would that were made in the senate. if, in this case, the assembly concurs in those amendments, then the bill goes to if the assembly doesn't concur in those amendments, then one of the things that can happen is that a two-house conference committee that would mean three senators and three assembly members would be appointed to a and their job would be to try to work out a compromise that would possibly be then that conference committee report would be presented to both houses. let's say that a conference committee met on this particular bill and it came up
and six months being the minimum age for kindergarten, and that report was and the senate, that would have to be adopted by both houses in order to be sent it could not be amended any further. it would have to be voted up or down. conference committees are not that frequent. usually only on the most important issues is a conference committee appointed. generally speaking, if there's non-concurrence in amendments, that's a roadblock and the member is either stymied or has to take the bill back to the second house but let's say both houses agree, either in a conference report or in concurring
what happens to the bill is that there is a very skilled, engrossing, and they carefully proofread all the bills. the bill is then printed in an enrolled form and that bill is sent to the governor for the governor to decide what to do. here are the three choices the governor has: sign the bill into law, allow the bill to become law without the signature of the governor, or to veto or and the governor also has a specific number of days to make this decision of follow, or else the bill will become law without his or her signature. most of the year, the governor has 12 days in order to make this decision.
but during the periods at the end of the legislative year, mainly in september of both the odd- and even-numbered years, the governor has approximately a month to decide what to do about the multitude that crowd onto his or her desk. if the governor decides to veto or reject the bill, then the legislature can override that veto by a two-thirds vote in each house. i say can because it actually hasn't happened in 32 years in the california legislature have overridden a gubernatorial veto. yes, it hasn't happened since the last time governor brown was governor.
once a bill has become a law, that is either by being approved by the governor or becoming law without the governor's signature, it is chaptered by the in a manner that's similar to the way that bills start off as numbers in the chief clerk of the secretary of state, the secretary of state receives signed and assigns them numbers. and these laws are called chapters, and they are the official embodiment of the for the most part people use the laws collected in codes, as i mentioned before. but sort of the actual sort of raw materials of the laws are the chapters of the they're chaptered by the secretary of state.
certain measures, urgency measures, as are mentioned on this chart, take effect but most bills don't become effective laws until january 1st of the following usually, every year around the week between christmas and new year's you'll hear and you'll see newspapers talk about all the new laws that are going to take and that's because for the most part the new laws in california take effect on okay, we've gone through the entire legislative process in just under an hour, which is a bit quicker than the legislature usually does it, so we have time for so i will begin with, what is the different between a committee's report on and a committee's analysis of it; what is the purpose of each; and how do you
that's a simple question. okay, so i was taking notes, well actually i wasn't but i think i can remember okay, the difference between a committee report and a committee analysis, all i'm going to do that a little bit backwards because the committee analysis comes a committee receives a bill and then the staff of the committee analyzes the the analysis is available to the members of the committee and to the public in generally speaking, when you go to a committee hearing the committee analysis is a hard copy of it is available in the committee hearing room, and generally either that day or sometimes the day before.
so the committee analysis comes first, and that's the staff's view of the bill, perhaps the history of similar proposals, and maybe some suggestions from the from the chair of the committee because that's who the staff is working for, some suggestions perhaps about amending the bill, and also often a listing of and who's opposed to the bill. okay, so that's the committee analysis. now the committee report comes after the hearing; that is the record of what the when you go to or watch a committee hearing you'll notice that there's a usually sits right next to the chair, usually right between the chair and the
the committee secretary takes the roll. you'll notice that the committee secretary keeps a sheet on which she or he keeps and no votes on each bill, and also keeps track about whether there's an now that record constitutes the committee report, the record of the ayes and the and in the case of bills that are as amended -- that are amended -- recommended generally the amendments themselves are part of the committee report, and the committee report is sent to the desk of the chamber. in the case of the assembly, it's the chief clerk's desk, in the case of the so that's the record of what the committee actually did.
so you have the analysis is the committee staff's impression, discussion of the and the committee report is the record of what the committee did. and then how do you tell which is which on leginfo? now the committee report, as far as i know, is not online verbatim. the committee report can be deduced from the history, which is also on leginfo, but when you look at the history of the bill, as part of the history, that and so it's not the committee report itself, but you'll see something like -- report received from committee on education, ayes, seven, nos, three, do pass as that is a shorthand summary of what the committee action was.
so that's where you see it, you see it in the bill history. and then if there are amendments to the bill, those amendments are routinely and then those amendments will go into the bill. usually a few days after the committee hearing you'll see the amendments in the so i hope that explains it. the committee analysis is on leginfo, it's right below the text of the bills, i i don't have leginfo in front of me right now, but i think it's generally below. and then the history is actually above the text of the bill, and that's where you find the information that summarizes the committee report.
okay, so someone asks here, basically, what does staffing a bill mean? does it mean to get someone to introduce the bill? and it's one of these wonderful bits of capitoleese that may not have an official but let me tell you what i understand it to mean. i understand it to mean the legislative staffer who works for the author who responsible for doing the things that are necessary to get the bill passed; that getting the bill idea into legislative counsel, and then getting that document and making sure that it has in it what the author and the proponents of the wish also, making sure that the bill --
the information that is helpful to the committee staff to do their analysis get let's say on our hypothetical bill about the four-year-old kindergarten, let's say there's some sort of a study on the excellent outstanding effects of on some pilot study someplace. that might be something that an author of a bill like that would like the and include in the analysis. so a good staffer would have information like that and would also be ready to provide information as requested by the committee also, staffing a committee also usually means helping the member
by actually sometimes writing the member's presentation before the committee or some members like to have the information written out. some members like to improvise. but it's generally the job of the staffer to have -- at least have the important member, and also, when the member presents the bill on floor, to have the or actually have the speech written out for the member to give. and also, if the bill makes it all the way through the process, when the bill is staffers provide information to the governor's staff that may be valuable and may come to the decision that the author would like the governor to come to on that
in other words, the staffer keeps track of the bill, makes sure that all the makes sure that the bill is set for hearings within the deadlines that we saw and makes sure that all the various decision-makers who see the bill have and the proponents of the bill; that's what i think is staffing a bill. so does a member of the first house need to get a sponsor from the second house although that's not needed initially. you really don't need to have that sponsor. it's often called a floor jockey. you actually don't need to have that sponsor until your bill has made it all the
and then all the way through the committees of the second house. you don't really need to have that other member until the bill needs to be however, if you have a bill that's being staffed by an excellent staff person the very, very best staff people have the second house in mind from the very beginning of a bill's trip to the legislature, and they may already be working with a member that they feel will be helpful in ultimately, they'll need to have not only somebody to present the bill, but or maybe 27 of the members of the other house if we're talking about the senate, or 54 when talking about the assembly, they'll need those people to vote for the
or else it will all be for naught. >> jodi traversaro
what would be the different between the bills the governor: and the bills he permits to be law without a signature? please elaborate. thank you. or if the governor allows a bill to become law without his or her signature, the bill is just as legal, just as effective. now in withholding the signature the governor is making a political statement, that is refusing -- by refusing to put his or her name on it, the governor is making some sort of statement that may have a political impact,
depending on people's view of the governor. but in terms of the practical effect of a bill being signed or being allowed to become law without a signature, there is none. >> please standby for webinar to continue or fast-forward to 1:10:45.: i work for fish and game and have been asked to prepare a bill analysis for a how is that used? does it go through the committee reviewing of the bill? i can't be absolutely sure, but since they hired me to do this presentation even though i'm not sure about them, i'm just going to launch into this.
often departments do bill analyses of bills that affect their subject matter just and often, when it comes to the time when the bill is on the governor's desk, if governors often want to hear from the various executive branch departments about governors don't rely just on the analysis that comes from the legislative branch. governor brown is the head of the whole executive branch with all kinds of including the department of fish and game, and if a particular bill reaches his he's likely to wonder just how his employees at the department of fish and game so the bill analysis you're doing could be for an internal information of your or it could actually go to inform the governor or maybe at the agency level.
and what we recommend, of course. excellent. so what is the process for measures and initiatives? there are statutory initiatives and constitutional initiatives. now initiatives differ from the measures that i discussed today that are placed i mentioned earlier acas and scas where the legislature can propose though the acas and scas take a two-third's vote of both houses. they don't go to the governor. if they get a two-thirds vote of both houses then they go on the ballot for the
an initiative doesn't go through the legislature. it starts off with regular citizens, and these citizens can either draft the if they get the signatures of at least 25 registered voters, they can get my to help them draft the measure. ultimately, though, to get on the ballot, they need a large number of signatures. for a statutory initiative, that is an initiative that would enact a new law, that takes 5% of the number of voters in the last gubernatorial election. and, off the top of my head, i don't know exactly how much. i think there are about 9 million people voted in the last gubernatorial
so that would be about 450,000 people. maybe there were more people than that. maybe it's more like 500,000. maybe there were 10 million people that voted in the last gubernatorial election. and then if you want to amend the constitution, or if any part of your initiative amends the constitution, that takes 8%. so when you take, let's say, approximately 10 million people voted in the that would mean about 800,000 signatures you need. and that's just not total signatures, those are valid signatures,
and so there are processes that are somewhat complex that the secretary of determine whether they need to actually count each signature or whether they can just take a certain percentage of the number of signatures because with any collection of signatures like that, there's going to be a that is, people who sign the same petition twice, or they're not registered or they don't sign the name that's the name that is on their voter registration, so, generally speaking, to get enough signatures, you need to, as a rough about 125% of whatever the official number is, or maybe more like 133%. so, for instance, when the governor -- i think the governor,
for his tax initiative that's going to be on the ballot in november, i think he although he only needed about 800,000. so i don't have these numbers off the top of my head, but, roughly speaking, the governor turned in a lot more signatures than the minimum that was needed. but the bottom line is that you need a lot, a lot of signatures of voters to get initiatives on the ballot. the legislative session starts right after the november election, where the so let's go in this year's calendar. this year we're going to have an election in november, and then on the first
i think that's like december 3rd of this year, the new legislative session is it's going to be the 2013/14 regular session, and that session will last until now two-year bills, by definition, only include the bills that are introduced in you can't have a bill introduced in the second year be a two-year bill because it because there are only two years in the session. so a bill that is introduced in the first year, but that doesn't pass all of the in the flowchart to make it to the governor's desk, has to go into the second that's what's called a two-year bill. that is a bill that starts off in the first and that is still active in the second year; that's a two-year bill.
there is a deadline in the constitution that helps move two-year bills along, and that is a bill has to pass -- a bill that's introduced in the first year has later than january 31st of the second year. so if a bill is introduced this december, it's got until january 31, 2014, to at but if it makes at least that much progress, it can go on ward into the second every year the legislature adopts a budget, hopefully by the constitutional if you've ever taken a look at the budget bill, it's generally about 800 to 1,000 it has lots and lots and lots of numbers in it and instructions related to those those numbers are dollar amounts, and they have to do with the amount of money
and governor are authorizing to be spent by the various agencies of state well just listing those numbers isn't enough to carry out all the instructions in for the budget really to be effective, there are certain laws that need to be now just to give you an example, let's say for one of the budget numbers -- that the number in the budget is based charged community college students per unit, and in order to actually have authority for community colleges to make that the level of the fee. that would need to be done in what's called a trailer bill.
these bills are called trailers because they trail along behind the budget if you like being a great big cab of a truck and the trailer carried behind it, the the trailer bills make changes in the substance of the law that are needed to that's what a trailer bill is. let's see, the question, more about trailer bills. let's see here. do trailer bills go through the same legislative process as regular bills before although, generally speaking, the time period in which they're active is really i mean they're kind of like, what is it, a may fly only lives one day as a fly.
it spends most of its time in a larval status or something. to use that sort of insect analogy, a trailer bill spends much of its time in a most of them start off as bills that just express the intent of the legislature the bills sit there until the time comes that the furious activity on the budget with our current schedule, would be about now, then these bills would have but just like the schedule that i had before, they will go to committees. generally speaking, many of them will not go to the policy committee, but they will get hearing in the fiscal committee, and generally speaking, the so they will be heard by committees.
they will go for floor action, and then they have to be passed in the same form before they can be sent on to the governor, just like regular bills. so their lifespan, the sort of active lifespan that they're being worked on, is but they pretty much go through every stage that another bill goes through. they just go through it in a quicker sequence. why would a bill be put on hold? one might be that it just doesn't have support, enough support to -- i guess we're talking about in a committee a bill would be it may not have enough support, sometimes on that particular day.
as any of you who have been to legislative sessions or legislative committee sessions know that oftentimes the members, because they're all members of several committees simultaneously, they often have or vote at another -- or present a bill at another committee. so it may be that on that particular day, the vote that you, the author, need to get your bill -- the favorable recommendation on a committee just isn't relying on isn't able to be there. it could be that reason. or it could just be that your bill doesn't have very much support at all.
and rather than bring it up for a vote and have it defeated, you just decide to and have it saved for another day. i referred a few minutes ago to two-year bills. often, the way a bill becomes a two-year bill is that it is held in committee. sometimes a bill is held in committee because it's a subject where the committee believes that it could benefit from more study. for instance, the hypothetical bill that i discussed today about four-year-old that could very well be a bill that could benefit from a good deal of study, and, during the recesses that the legislature has each fall,
often there are hearings on issues where bills were presented during the regular and where the committee's still in need for more information, more input from the maybe testimony from experts in the field, presentation of reports by the or by executive branch agencies or sometime from academics. so sometimes a bill is held in committee so that more information can be those are the basic reasons why a bill is held. and we still have several questions. of course, for those of you still online, you are welcome to exit the meeting however we are still taking questions from our amazing presenter here.
so i do have several questions left here, mark. how are the members chosen for the committees? because this is something that goes on in a not-so-public fashion. i know that there are certain members who have certain interests, either because or maybe because of the occupations and interests that they have as individuals. so you'll often, let's say, have, as the chair of the education committee of someone who has been an educator. in fact, that's kind of usually been the case. and often with some of the other committees,
you'll have someone who has been active in that particular subject matter that is sometimes members want to be on a given committee because of the areas they for instance, legislators from the central valley, more often than not, serve on and resources-related committees because those issues are of great importance to ultimately though, those decisions are made by the leadership of each house. in the case of the assembly, it's the speaker who makes the assignments, both of and the committee chair, and in the case of the senate, it's the senate rules i'm certain that they take into account the various things that i've already the importance of giving subject matter to a member's own background
and interest into the area that a member represents, and also their various political needs that are addressed by the leadership. they may want a particular person to be on a particular committee for political reasons that don't necessarily relate to the substantive issues of the committee, but it may be important to have a given person available to cast a vote on a also, even though the majority party controls -- ultimately controls the committee process of selection of members in chairs, i know they do take into consideration recommendations made to them by the so that also comes into play.
or is there any requirement for this? i want to say that before something can be noticed in the file -- i should have but i'd say at least three to five days, maybe a week for something to be on so there's at least several days notice that a bill has to be listed in either or the assembly daily file if it's going to be heard in committee or it's going and those notice requirements can only be waived by an extraordinary vote. they can always bring up something on an emergency basis right away, but that let's see. please explain when and how an executive order is used.
how is it different from an extraordinary session? well extraordinary session is when the governor wants action from the and so the governor calls the legislature into an extra session to deal with a so this is the governor urging action for the legislature. with an executive order, the governor takes the action himself or herself and without the involvement of the legislature. so the governor uses the authority that he or she has from the constitution as or perhaps from a law that has delegated some authority to him on a particular and just issues an order that controls the activities of the executive branch.
but i guess you wouldn't call them regular state employees. the legislative staff people are not part of the regular state civil service. they are at will employees. they can be relieved of their duties in a summary fashion, unlike most state but they are state employees in the sense that their paycheck is signed by the knowing that this year is probably the largest turnover in the legislature that and many of the employees there will probably either, what would you say, find i guess, with new elected officials coming in; is that right? with term limits has come more turnover in legislative staff than existed prior
although many of the staff people are able to find employment for new members. people who are good at that sort of work are at a premium, and so you do find that there are certain staff people who remain working for new employers have had to move on because of term limits. i'm not sure if we have the answer to it. what is the ratio of men to women in regards to the senate and assembly? thank you. if i were to make -- this is an absolutely wild guess, and i'm going to go back and then i'll probably be horrified at how wrong i was.
but in the assembly i would guess it's about one-third female and two-thirds it might even be 40% female. now the senate, i'd say there are about 10 women senators and 30 men. that seems a little bit low to me. maybe there are like 11 or 12. so this is total wild guess. one-third of the members of the assembly are women and about the same in the i could be completely wrong. oh, yeah.
when i first started, there was the historic rose ann vuich who actually has one office in a chambers named for her because there was no place when she was a she was the only female senator at the time. there was no place for her to retire and, how can i say it, powder her nose, you they had to make a room for her, and she now has a room named after her in the it's a very historic person, rose ann vuich. is there a timeframe when a measure must be assigned to committee? it's a different deadline every year, but generally speaking, there is a deadline usually at the end of february of each year, by which the bills have to be
and then roughly a month after that, i'm talking about late march most years. and depending on when easter falls, the calendar can be different, but generally in late march is the deadline for bills to have content amended to, say, the proper policy committee. so, generally speaking, it's late march. in other words, about three months into the legislative process the bills have to be in some form that that they can be considered by a policy committee. are these staffs all being selected by public votes, or some of them are regular please verify which are in permanent positions.
thank you for this excellent presentation.. they're some of the most distinguished employees of the legislature. when you talk about a public process, i wonder whether you mean like a civil since legislative staff aren't civil service, that's not exactly the way they're not like regular state employees taking a test. however, i can say that the overwhelming majority of committee consultants that i've ever dealt with are highly qualified people who are selected through a less formal process than what most state have very, very demanding jobs where their work is under quite a bit of public
the analyses they prepare are posted online for anybody to see and comment on. and, often, much of their job involves issues that are very much in the public and can be quite controversial. so these are challenging jobs and, generally speaking, the people in them are some really outstandingly qualified state employees, although not civil service employees in the sense that most of us are. "no decision is an easy one at that level," right? they're so complicated that i decided not to have them in this presentation. but just to try to have a shorthand description.
the grp is a process that the constitution allows for the governor to propose the reorganization twice in a sentence, but can propose the reorganization of the executive branch in a way that has a where the governor's proposal is looked at by the little hoover commission and and then if the legislature does not take action to reject the governor's within a certain amount of -- it takes effect as law within a certain amount of so a grp, it's not exactly legislation. it's sort of a hybrid, i guess, between an executive order and legislation. for want of a better description, it's sort of like legislation that the
but it gives an independent fact-finding group, the little hoover commission, a and it also gives the legislature a chance to either accept it or reject it. so that, in a nutshell, is what a grp is. although the one that i'm thinking about isn't going to take effect until july 1, so that would be not the budget year that is upcoming but the one after the next so, let's see, there was an occasion where leginfo didn't list a hearing for a when i went to that committee meeting to listen to two other bills, i found that the bill in which i was interested in was will also on the agenda what are other ways to determine when a bill will be heard in committee aside
i actually am one of the few people in my office that still gets the hard copy in my office i have a huge stack of them in the bookcase behind my desk. and i just sort of look over those in the area that i work in, which is to just see what bills that are of interest to me are set for hearing, because i like to keep track of some of the more important ones. so that's what i would suggest for you to do, take a look at the daily file, which is available online on either the assembly or senate -- on both the and just keep an eye on whatever the listing for whatever committee that you're one thing that the daily file includes is the sometimes mysterious meeting dates
some committees meet every week. let's say some committees might meet every tuesday, or some committees might meet or some committees might meet the first and third tuesday of the month. the daily files have that information about when the committees generally meet, as well as having the agendas for the individual meetings. so that's what i would take a look at, the daily file. what is the process for applying cleanup language to a bill? who is involved, thanks for the presentation and the awesome q&a session. a cleanup bill, when we talk about a cleanup bill, we're actually usually talking
because you have to have had some bill that made a mess that needs to be cleaned or some situation that needs to be addressed in some form. so when you talk about cleanup legislation or a cleanup bill, that is a bill that comes along after another bill has done where it is then proposed that something further be done or something different let's say there's a bill -- again i go back to the four-year-old kindergarten and it turns out that there's an unintended consequence, because cleanup bills often flow from unintended consequences of legislation. let's just say because there are all these four-year-olds that are coming to
all of a sudden there's this incredible shortage of kindergarten teachers, that, something needs to be done in order to attract more people to teach kindergarten. or let's say there's some other unintended consequence that needs to be that's the sort of thing that a cleanup bill might do. here's another thing. let's say there's a bill that requires some department to do a report. let's say gives them two years to do a report on some problem or other that's and it turns out that the report is so detailed and requires so many resources that the department isn't going to be able to do
it's really going to take them four years to do the report as originally so let's say a bill might come along to simplify or to -- let's say we move some of the subject matter that was originally going to be and make it is a simpler committee report so they can have it in two years. or another way is that recognizing that it's going to take four years for them to to then come along and make the deadline four years. those would be things that could be done in a cleanup bill. so, essentially, a cleanup bill addresses a situation caused by an earlier bill, often because there are unintended consequences of the bill.
we have two questions on the two-year session. regarding the may through june deadline that we are currently in, does that apply only to the second year of the second session? and then somebody could you explain more on biennial (two-year sessions)? well that's a very good question. yes, it does only apply to the second year of two-year bills because the bills they have to have already have passed out of their house of origin. as you may remember, i mentioned that bills introduced in the first year, they have until january 31st of the second year to pass out of their house of
so if there are any bills from the first year of the session that haven't passed they are already dead. they have already become void under the constitutional provision that would have required them to have passed by january 31st. so you're right, that deadline of june 1st only applies to the bills that were in terms of biennial, maybe it will help if i distinguish the type of system that from the way that the legislature was before 1972, when we had, for several years that is, before the biennial session, each legislative year was its own closed and bills couldn't carry over to the next year.
so under the old system, a bill introduced the first year had to pass all the way and if it didn't, it would die at the end of that first year, and the second year it was thought, when the biennial session was proposed to the voters in 1972, that that might lead to certain perfectly good bills just dying just because the and that if these bills still had some sort of validity and some sort of support, it was wasteful to just make them void because of an arbitrary one-year deadline. so it was decided to make the session, essentially, a continuous two-year session but with the requirement that i've mentioned now a that the bill has to at least pass out of the first house by january 31st of the
if it was introduced in the first year. so i hope that clears up a little bit about biennial. why do some statutes say, this statute is effective only if some other version of or words to that effect? sometimes there will be several bills or more than one bill amending the same and there is a process called chaptering out that you may have heard of. when the same law is amended at the same session there is a way that the of the bills actually takes effect. it's the bill that was signed latest by the governor.
but sometimes in order to -- there's sometimes a complicated relationship among and so the members of the legislature who may have conflicting bills, they get together to work out ways to preserve the language that they want to and that's the language that you may see about this bill will only become and such a thing happens, or if such and such a bill is passed. and also, sometimes you'll have bills that are just intricately related to one unless both of the bills are enacted into law at the same time, they won't stand i mean let's say you have a bill that sets up a program and another bill that and for various reasons the funding and the program are in different bills.
it may be that there will be language in each bill saying that this bill will whatever that bill number is -- takes effect because it takes both of them in order for the program to actually be funded. so those are some of the reasons why you might have language like you mentioned. you've been handling all these questions. i only have one left, and the question you may have actually already covered. can bills get held up in a committee indefinitely and never make it to the floor that happens all the time. sometimes there are bills that just -- either they're ahead of their time
or they just don't have enough support from that particular group of members. and sometimes bills just never get taken up for a vote because the author might or she has made his or her point just by introducing the bill, and so the bill is or sometimes it is taken up for a vote and is defeated and never is let out of and never makes it to floor. one thing i really want to thank you for, of course, is that normally this would cost state employees several hundred dollars to so with the approximately 500 employees that attended today, i hope they have actually an enhancement of their skills on the leg cycle.
and no matter how many times hear this, i'm learning more and more each time. so thank you so much. this webinar is now officially over. i will be stopping the recording. and for all of you still online, you will be receiving an e-mail from joan strohauer that asks you to complete a and submit your confirmation number to get your completion certificate. and with that, this meeting is now over. thank you so much.
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