Over the past few days, I have received countless emails and phone calls from constituents asking specifics about provisions of the budget. As usual, details about the budget were not available to my constituents prior to voting. We continued our traditional act of voting in the middle of the night on language we received minutes before.
It seems as though late-night budget sessions have become the norm around the Capitol. But even worse is the late-night bill writing. For example, during this last budget debate we had to wait for several hours while bill language was drafted for the offshore oil drilling legislation. The ink wasn’t even dry before we started voting.
Sometimes we don’t even wait that long and vote for bills that are in “mock up” form. This means we don’t have the final language drafted, but we’re supposed to vote for it anyway. I guess we’re just supposed to assume that it’s correct.
Back in April I introduced Senate Constitutional Amendment 20, which will require the budget to be in print and available online for at least 48 hours prior to a vote. This legislation will not only bring back much-needed transparency to the budget process, but will also allow our constituents the ability to give their feedback.
How can we expect to get any feedback from you if you never get to see what we’re voting on? If we’re here to represent the views of our district, we ought to give you time to review the legislation. Bills affect each constituency differently, and everyone should have the opportunity to give their feedback.
We have, through midnight budgeting, effectively silenced the voices of those we are sworn to represent. Constituents are now forced to call the day after and ask what happened. Many times they ask questions or bring up issues that were not addressed prior to the vote. But because they weren’t allowed to see the language first, they’re forced to deal with the consequences.
Unless and until we allow everyone time to review the bill language, we will never have a truly open and honest budget discussion. While SCA 20 is only the first step, it is an important one in reforming how we budget here in California.
