Too many bills, too little time: Why COVID-19 has California Democrats feuding

A common maxim in the California Legislature holds that lawmakers shouldn’t fall in love with their bills.

This year, there are a lot of broken hearts in the Capitol.

Hundreds of bills meant to alleviate the homeless crisis, decrease medical bills and bolster labor laws ran into the buzz saw of a legislative year twice abbreviated by the coronavirus outbreak.

Now, with just three weeks to go on the legislative calendar, Democrats in each house are showing hard feelings over which remaining proposals deserve a vote and which will have to wait until next year.

Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, a Santa Barbara Democrat and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, lamented in a July 23 letter to Assembly members that she was left with the “unpleasant task” of making the “extremely difficult and frustrating” choice to shave dozens of bills from the 80 assigned to her committee.

“I recognize there will be many who are disappointed, but I want to assure you that this painful process has not been undertaken lightly, nor has any Assemblymember been singled-out one way or the other,” Jackson wrote. “This has been a conundrum that has made my work in my final year as chair of this committee extremely difficult and frankly, unsatisfying. This was not the way I had hoped to conclude my service in the California Legislature.”

The math against the Assembly

A bill has to clear both houses before it can go to Gov. Gavin Newsom and become law.

Lawmakers had little time to get their bills to the finish line after recessing because of the coronavirus outbreak for much of the spring and again in July when two Assembly members tested positive for COVID-19.

The Senate, with its 40 members, sent around 160 total bills to the Assembly since the start of the two-year session in 2019.

The 80 Assembly members passed on 540 total measures to the Senate.

Before returning to Sacramento from a summer break July 27, Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, asked members to prune their bills. They also limited policy hearings to one meeting per committee.

Both houses nixed about 75% of their proposals since January introductions, according to Sacramento lobbyist Chris Micheli, who tracks legislative action.

Senate committee chairs, however, said the coronavirus breaks had chiseled too much time from the calendar to allow all the remaining Assembly measures a hearing. Instead, senators asked their counterparts to cull their legislation again to focus only on the coronavirus, wildfire issues and, amid national protests against police violence, law enforcement policies.

Even then, the senators said they had too many bills.

Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, said he had to decide how to fit as many of the 43 bills referred to his Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development, into nine hours of committee time as possible.

“I’ve never not heard a bill. It’s a very uncomfortable position for me to be in,” Glazer said. “It is a factor of how much time is available to hear as many as I can. That’s my goal. To hear as many bills as possible with the time that’s been allotted.

Assembly members have rejected that argument. Instead, they say Senate chairs failed to communicate why certain bills — some of which aren’t related to COVID-19 or other urgent priorities — made the cut and others were tossed out.

Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, said during a July 27 hearing that because the Senate had not scheduled two of his bills, he would not weigh in on a Senate proposal his committee was considering.

“There’s been real mixed messages from the state Senate on how we’re prioritizing legislation during a public health crisis that’s unprecedented,” Gray said. “As of today ... I won’t be supporting any SBs at this time until we can get some rational agreement with our colleagues on how to move forward during this public health crisis.”

“The Senate is failing us, and is failing the state of California,” Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-Marin County, echoed during the same meeting. “We’re doing our job and the Senate is not up to this moment.”

On July 28, as tension between the two houses caught public attention, Rendon canceled committee hearings.

“Negotiations between the houses are a normal part of the legislative process,” Rendon’s spokeswoman Katie Talbot said in a statement, continuing that the delay was only a “temporary pause that will allow the Assembly and the Senate to come to work out some outstanding issues.”

What died

Gone is a bill to streamline construction for homeless shelters and affordable housing by exempting certain projects from environmental review.

A proposal to let California workers get paid even if their boss abruptly canceled their shifts met the same fate.

Another measure to ban lead ammunition at shooting ranges was also axed.

Some Assembly members, however, said senators cut priority bills that aimed to ease disparities the pandemic highlighted in California and that the Legislature couldn’t afford to ignore this year.

Assemblyman Adrin Nazarian, D-North Hollywood, said his proposal to cap insulin copays would provide crucial relief for low-income individuals with diabetes, a condition that puts people at high risk of COVID-19.

Nazarian blamed state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, for not scheduling the bill in the Senate Committee on Health.

“He has to be held accountable for that,” Nazarian said. “He had the audacity to tell me that this bill is not directly a COVID-19-related bill. I thought he was absolutely wrong about that.”

Levine similarly lambasted Pan for rejecting Assembly Bill 1324, which would have required the state’s public health department to develop health and safety guidelines for nursing homes and other congregate care settings.

Pan said he had to review 45 bills and determine from that list which of those prioritized COVID-19 and had few outstanding policy questions.

“By the time it lands in the second house, we need to settle all the policy stuff,” Pan said. “What we don’t want to do is move legislation that hasn’t had that vetting that we would expect bills to have.”

The Assembly and Senate face an Aug. 14 and 15 deadline, respectively, to pass bills from policy committees to the floor for final votes.

Atkins, who also served as Assembly speaker from 2014 to 2016, said this year has required anything but “business as usual.” As Californians “delay important things in their own lives,” she said, “we all have to face the realities of these unprecedented times.”

“The Speaker and I and our staffs talk constantly, especially at the end of session,” she said. “That will continue. Having led both houses I know the approaches along the way can differ, but in the end we reach the same goal.”

This story was originally published August 4, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Too many bills, too little time: Why COVID-19 has California Democrats feuding."