Once California’s lawmakers are elected to represent us in the Assembly and the state Senate, it appears that they’re a little too busy, well, trying to make laws to hear commentary from the rest of us about whether those proposed laws are good ones, or bad.
It’s simply that matters get a bit backed up when, what with over 2,000 bills — proposed laws — introduced so far this year in the current legislative session. Too backed up, much of the time, for legislators to make a few minutes to bother to listen when Californians head to the Capitol in Sacramento with something to say about a particular law that would affect them.
In just the last two months, in fact, journalists from the nonprofit news site CalMatters “witnessed more than a dozen examples of committee leaders cutting speakers off midway through their remarks or prohibiting them from talking at all because other people went over the few minutes that members of the public are given to testify” when a proposed new law is up for consideration.
Legislators excuse this inexcusable rudeness to the people who elected them and pay their salaries by noting that, for people in the know, there are other channels available in order to lobby them on the bills they propose that will govern our lives — written commentary through online portals, face-to-face meetings with the electeds or their staff members — rather than real-time public comment periods during committee meetings.
“Some bills you get dozens of people. Some bills you get over 100 people,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman, a Democrat representing the Palo Alto area who oversees the Business and Professions Committee. “There is a real attempt to be fair on both sides and to everybody.”
But such attempts at fairness often frustrate and fail ordinary people who show up in Sacramento trying to have their say. That’s just wrong. That needs to be changed for democracy to feel real. One fast fix: How about introducing fewer proposed new laws, politicians?
CalMatters cites the case of Landon Morrison, a recovering addict, who wanted to ask lawmakers to support legislation “he believes will hold troubled drug and alcohol treatment centers accountable.”
He was told he would get two minutes to speak before legislative committee members, so he wrote a short speech and drove to Sacramento from Los Angeles County. In the end, “Morrison didn’t get to say a single word because previous speakers talked for too long.”
How was he to know that the committee chair, Sen. Caroline Menjivar of Van Nuys, would end testimony in support of the bill after five minutes?
“In a way, this kind of articulated the stigma of addiction. … I’m at the bottom of the line, you know?” Morrison said. “It was just kind of very disheartening.”
Insiders such as paid lobbyists know the drill, know that after a few key people on either side of an issue have made their points at the microphone, speakers should join in what’s termed a “me too” chorus — take just a few seconds to state your name and position so that they don’t get cut off.
How are regular Californians supposed to know this protocol? One Native American man was ushered away from the microphone by Capitol security when he tried to state his position on a cannabis bill. “They shut me down, just pretty much telling me to shut up, you know?” he later said. “I wanted to actually sit up there and present my argument, but they wouldn’t allow me.”
Gadflies happen, as every politician knows. People, just like pols, can rattle on a bit. But San Diego Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio “says he doesn’t bother bringing witnesses to testify” anymore, CalMatters reports, “because he knows what they say won’t change anyone’s mind — and there’s a good chance they won’t get to say all they came to say anyway.”
It’s “all theater,” he says. But for Californians, it’s real life, living under the laws Sacramento makes. Just hear us out before the vote. It’s really not too much to ask.
