Category: Fiscal & Governance Reform

California’s Quietest Reform

California has adopted a lot of high-profile political reforms recently, including a new way of drawing district lines and a radically open primary system. But there’s another reform that is transforming the state legislature without attracting nearly as much national attention.

In June 2012, California voters approved Proposition 28, an important change to the state’s term limits law. Before the reform, a single person could serve a maximum of three two-year terms in the Assembly and two four-year terms in the Senate, a total of 14 years. Under the new law, a person can serve up to 12 years in the Assembly, the Senate, or both. The reform sounds like a tightening of term limits—12 is less than 14—but because legislators no longer face a limit in each chamber, the average length of service will probably increase significantly.

A lot of people have blamed dysfunction in the legislature on the old term limits. Observers have argued that the legislature is short on the kind of relationships and expertise that develop over time, which has led to acrimony and reliance on the expertise of lobbyists. Also, it is often said that members looking to build their records as quickly as possible flood the legislature with unimportant bills, while big problems linger because they take too much time and expertise to address.

When will we know whether the new term limits are helping? Sooner than you might think. Turnover in the legislature has been high since the law took effect. Redistricting helped force a lot of retirements in 2012, a few incumbents lost to newcomers, and there have been several special elections in 2013 to fill vacated seats. As a result, more than half of the Assembly (42 out of 80) is already covered by the new limits.

The new law’s effect on the Senate has been smaller: only two senators, Richard Roth and Andy Vidak, are covered by the new limits. But that’s because termed-out members of the Assembly dominate Senate races and probably will for a while to come. So even though it may take longer for the Senate to switch over, it’s less important if we’re concerned about expertise: since most senators are former members of the Assembly, they already have legislative experience.

Regardless what happens in the Senate, the pace of turnover in the Assembly won’t slow down much. Sixteen assemblymembers will term out this year, and it looks like another seven will be stepping down anyway. When the dust settles this fall, no more than 17 members of the Assembly will be covered under the old limits. The rest will be legally free to serve for at least another 10 years—in some cases 12.

The new California Legislature is coming, ready or not.

Survey Briefing Focuses on State Fiscal Policy

The January edition of the PPIC Statewide Survey is always a popular one—especially in an election year. It gauges Californians’ reaction to the governor’s annual budget proposal and their sense of the issues that will be most important in 2014. Media coverage and audience comments at the lunchtime briefing focused particularly on the governor’s high approval ratings and his debt reduction proposals. Findings on attitudes toward the public pension situation and health care reform also generated considerable interest.

Sonja Petek, PPIC research associate and project manager for the survey, talked about these and other key findings—from Californians’ views on how the state should use the budget surplus to opinions about President Obama, Congress, and immigration policy.

Panel Focuses on Increasing Voter Participation

PPIC hosted a panel of leading experts on voter participation in Sacramento yesterday to talk about several important voter reforms underway. Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan, and California Common Cause Director Kathay Feng responded to a new report from PPIC that says a series of reforms implemented or under consideration in California would result in a small improvement in voter participation. The reforms include online voter registration (which started in 2012), election day registration (expected to start in 2016), and a later deadline for ballots submitted by mail (which is under consideration in the legislature). The PPIC report, by research fellow Eric McGhee, found that online registration changed the way people registered but was responsible for only a very small increase in voter participation.

Still, panelists were hopeful about the future of online registration. They were happy to see that nearly 1 million people used it in the first year—even, as Bowen pointed out, when there was no money to advertise the online option. Feng also said that even small improvements can make a big difference in California, where more than 5 million people are eligible but not registered to vote.

Similarly, panelists expressed optimism about same-day registration—in which voters can both register and cast ballots at a county registrar’s office on election day. They also raised concerns about the potential administrative burden this change would place on local officials. Logan said attempts are being made to modify the policy and alleviate some of the burden before the reform is scheduled to take effect.

In addition to making voting more convenient, panelists talked about the need to motivate voters. Feng pointed to concern about the “exclusive electorate,” as described in a past PPIC report showing that likely voters are far more likely to be white and older than the California voting-age population as a whole. She said it’s important to find out what turns residents off to voting, as well as what might turn them on. Bowen added that government should encourage more civic education to teach “citizens how to be citizens.”

Members of the audience asked questions about the impact of negative campaigns on voter participation, the impact of budget cuts, and the opportunities created by a new voter registration database that is scheduled to be completed in 2016.