Sacramento Bee: California Democrats consider giving lawmakers more say over initiatives

By Torey Van Oot
tvanoot@sacbee.com

The November election delivered California Democrats a coveted supermajority for governing the state.

Now the party's leader in the Senate wants to use that political capital to give the Legislature more say in the voter initiatives that make their way to the ballot...

...The idea that the state's 101-year-old direct democracy process needs updating isn't new. The rising cost of initiative campaigns, crowded ballots and legal battles over language have fueled calls for reform.

Shortages of political will and cash have sidelined previous efforts to change the system, through both the Legislature and the initiative process.

Democrats now have the ability, however, to put the changes on the ballot without GOP votes...

...Steinberg's package will likely include an "indirect initiative" proposal, which would let the Legislature amend or enact an initiative proposal with proponents' OK...

...California offered an indirect initiative route until 1966, when it was repealed. Few proponents took advantage of the system when it existed, in part because of timing issues created by the Legislature's then-biennial calendar.

Supporters say reviving the option would unclutter the ballot, provide public vetting of proposals and ensure that flaws or unintended consequences are worked out before a statewide vote...

...Polling by the Public Policy Institute of California consistently shows that while voters believe there are problems with the process, they'd rather make policy changes themselves than trust those decisions to the Legislature.

"The voters of California really believe that the initiative process is an important check and balance against the governor and Legislature, and they want to have a say in public policy, particularly the big decisions around the budget and long-term spending issues," PPIC President Mark Baldassare said. "But that doesn't mean they think the initiative process is in any way perfect."

The PPIC's surveys show widespread support for changes that would increase disclosure and transparency, but less enthusiasm for an indirect initiative option. Baldassare said any proposals put on the ballot would likely need broad backing to win over voters skeptical of a legislative power grab.

Even with Steinberg's political pull, reaching such a consensus could be difficult. The initiative process is used heavily by both business and labor interests. And high-powered consulting and law firms in Sacramento make large sums off the costly campaigns.

Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, experienced such opposition firsthand last session, when he introduced a package of constitutional amendments related to the initiative process. Some proposals, such as a requirement that measures that would cost the state money identify a funding source, started with bipartisan support. In the end, even two co-authors failed to vote aye.

"It was just tremendous pressure put on them by some of the people, 'Initiative Inc.', I guess you could call it," Gatto said. "Good government measures, they benefit the people as a whole, but there is no specific special interest that benefits from this."

You can read this entire story and more at the Sacramento Bee: HERE

Mike Gatto is the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the California State Assembly.  He represents Burbank, Glendale, La Canada-Flintridge, La Crescenta, Montrose, and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Atwater Village, and portions of the Hollywood Hills and East Hollywood.   www.asm.ca.gov/gatto

Pasadena Star-News Editorial Board Supports Gatto Reform Efforts

A few days ago I posted an opinion-editorial entitled "The Martial Art of Subduing Special Interests."  The Op-Ed had originally appeared in the Glendale News Press back in December and apparently I wasnt' the only person thinking about reform.  I am happy to say that on the same day that my Op-Ed appeared, the editorial boards of both the Pasadena Star-News and the  San Bernardino Sun wrote editorials supporting my reform efforts and calling on Sacramento to do more.  

I will continue pushing for these important reforms this session.  If you think reforming ballot-box budgeting is important, I encourage you to write your state representatives and tell them to do something about it.  The text of the board's Editorial is below.

THIS has been a big year for political reform in California. Voters in districts drawn for the first time by an independent commission used the state's new open-primary system to elect a group of officeholders bound by redefined term limits.

There's hope these changes will have the intended effect of making lawmakers more representative of actual communities, less beholden to party extremists, and less shortsighted.

What might next year bring?

Plenty remains to be done to improve how the state is run. So let's narrow down the possibilities: The theme for the next round of reforms should be transparency.

Transparency is the

catchall word that political watchdogs use to describe some essential qualities of an effective government. All-too-rare features like openness, honesty and accountability. Things that let constituents know what their leaders are up to, that allow people to participate in the process.

Here are four ideas for promoting transparency. None is exactly new, and some have been proposed before and defeated. Which makes them overdue for action by reform-minded California lawmakers or by voters:

Expand disclosure of campaign contributors.

The November election highlighted the problem.

An Arizona-based nonprofit group, widely and accurately described as shadowy, sent $11 million to the campaigns against the Proposition 30 tax hikes and in favor of the Proposition 32 restrictions on unions' political power. Under current campaign finance laws, the source of the money didn't have to be revealed, leading critics to liken the maneuvers to money-laundering.

Voters must be allowed to know who is trying to influence elections, so they can figure out the real motives of initiative campaigns and candidates.

State Sen. Ted Lieu of Torrance is one of two legislators promoting bills that would tighten disclosure rules and increase penalties for breaking them. These would be good steps.

Related to this, Assemblyman Mike Gatto of Burbank has proposed requiring backers of voter initiatives to identify their top five campaign contributors in ballot pamphlets.

It's worth pursuing.

Rein in ballot-box budgeting.

California's budget problems are complicated by the creation of expensive state program through ballot initiatives. Here, too, Gatto is promising to continue to push to at least warn voters of the risk by requiring initiative campaigns to state how new programs would be funded.

End "gut and amend" legislating and other rush-job laws.

The gut-and-amend practice causes outrage one week per legislative cycle, during the days before the deadline for passing bills, but the anger hasn't lasted long enough to spur reform.

In August, Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes of Sylmar turned a Senate bill concerning vehicle pollution into a bill to give as many as 2million undocumented immigrants "safe harbor" in California. Though the bill didn't pass, it was an egregious example of an effort to completely alter a bill at the last minute to try to slide something unrelated through the Legislature.

Around the same time, a pension-reform bill was jammed through before lawmakers, let alone members of a concerned public, could figure out what as in it.

A remedy is to require bills to be made public at least 72 hours before lawmakers vote. This was among several reforms in Proposition 31, which voters rejected in November. The proposal deserves another chance.

End vote-switching.

The game-playing doesn't end after legislators cast their votes. Thanks to an Associated Press report, Californians now know how often members of the Assembly take advantage of rules allowing them to alter or add votes in the official record after the fact (more than 5,000 times this year). Sometimes there are legitimate reasons to do this, but usually the aim is to make their voting history more attractive to the public and party leaders.

Come election time, voters should be able to judge incumbents' performance in office in part by reviewing which bills they supported and opposed.

Not surprisingly, Assembly leaders have signaled they have no plan to forbid vote-switching. So, as with most good reforms, the impetus will have to come from the public itself.

These ideas are a start on the next round of California political reform. There will be more where they came from.

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This Editorial originally appeared in the Pasadena Star-News.  You can read this editorial and more by visiting the Pasadena Star News HERE

Mike Gatto is the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the California State Assembly.  He represents the cities of Burbank, Glendale, La Canada-Flintridge, La Crescenta, Montrose, the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Atwater Village, and portions of the Hollywood Hills and East Hollywood.   www.asm.ca.gov/gatto  

Even a Tiny Initiative Reform Can't Make It Past the Governor

By Joe Mathews |  Friday, Oct 5, 2012  |  Updated 9:13 AM PDT

Initiative reform is an unpopular cause, and an uphill battle.

Assemblyman Mike Gatto, a Burbank Democrat, has been one of the few lawmakers foolhardy enough to attempt it. And this session he appeared to have achieved some success with AB 2220.

This was modest with a capital "M." But useful. The legislation tried to grab the attention of voters by letting them know something very important about their votes on initiatives: that when they do something by initiative, it can't be changed. This permanence -- you could call it inflexibility -- distinguishes California's initiative process from how the initiative is used around the country and the world.

Gatto specifically would have instructed the non-partisan legislative analyst to add one paragraph to the ballot pamphlet warning that the measure would provide an increase in revenues to fund new or existing programs, create a new fund, or create or change a funding formula for programs. In essence, this is a warning label that fiscal decisions are being made that will be hard to undo. An example of one of the possible warnings:

"Unless changed by a future voter-approved ballot measure, this initiative would permanently dedicate state funding to the program(s) identified, and these funds would not be available to meet other responsibilities of the state."

This legislation made it through the legislature. But it couldn't make it through Gov. Jerry Brown, who has been a political reform skeptic and has seen the initiative process as a means to the end. He vetoed it.

His explanation? He wrote in a veto message that, while he shared Gatto's concern that voters should understand what their vote on an initiative means, he wasn't sure if additional warning was all that helpful, since the legislative analysis already provides information in the ballot pamphlet.

Let's hope Gatto tries again.

Lead Prop Zero blogger Joe Mathews is California editor at Zocalo Public Square, a fellow at Arizona State University’s Center for Social Cohesion, and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (University of California, 2010).

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Read this article and more at NBC Bay Area by clicking HERE

Mike Gatto is the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the California State Assembly.  He represents the cities of Burbank, Glendale, and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Los Feliz and Silver Lake.  E-mail Mike at: assemblymember.gatto@assembly.ca.gov, or call (818) 558-3043.

Website of Assemblyman Mike Gatto: www.asm.ca.gov/gatto

KCET Praises Assemblyman Mike Gatto's efforts to strengthen voting requirements for Constitutional Amendments

California Constitution, Altered Over 500 Times; U.S. Constitution, Only 27

by Jessica Levinson - September 3, 2012 10:00 AM

Last week our state's lower legislative house rejected a bill that would have made it harder to qualify and approve of initiatives that change California's constitution. Assemblyman Mike Gatto, a Democrat from Los Angeles, sponsored the bill that would have made an enormous amount of sense. Let's hope it comes back again, successfully passes both legislative houses, and is signed by the Governor. Here's why.

It is distressingly easy to amend our state constitution through a disturbingly broken process -- the ballot initiative process. A constitution should be a basic governing document. It should be difficult to alter it. It should be altered only after an open, deep, and thorough debate. Ours is not; it has been amended well over 500 times. It is one of the most bloated constitutions in modern history. Compare our state constitution, in existence for 133 years, to our federal constitution, in existence for 223 years: It has been amended only 27 times.

The ballot initiative process simply makes it far too easy to propose, qualify, and pass citizen-initiated laws. Gatto's bill would have required more voter signatures to qualify initiatives. Further, his proposal would have required that constitutional amendments pass by a vote of 55 percent of voters taking part in the election in which the measure appeared on the ballot.

Gatto's proposal was quite rationale. Constitutional amendments should not pass by a simple majority of those who show up to the polls in any given election.

We live in a representative democracy. The ballot initiative process was designed as a safety valve for citizens when the legislative process failed to function properly. Now, because the initiative process is largely dominated by the same special interests we created the process to guard against, both the legislative and initiative processes are in need of serious reform.

Gatto's proposal would have been a step in the right direction.

Jessica Levinson writes about the intersection of law and government. She is an Associate Clinical Professor at Loyola Law School. 

Read this article and more at KCET HERE

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Mike Gatto is the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the California State Assembly.  He represents the cities of Burbank, Glendale, and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Los Feliz and Silver Lake.  E-mail Mike at: assemblymember.gatto@assembly.ca.gov, or call (818) 558-3043.

Website of Assemblyman Mike Gatto: www.asm.ca.gov/gatto

Press-Enterprise Editorial: Favors Mike Gatto's Ballot-Box Reform

The Press-Enterprise becomes another in a growing chorus of major publications to editorialize in favor of my ballot-box budgeting fixes.

THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE
Published: 02 July 2012 05:20 PM

"Haphazard budgeting at the ballot box only ensures that the state’s fiscal turmoil will continue. California needs to use available resources wisely. Voters should help advance that effort by rejecting ballot measures that create arbitrary spending formulas and new earmarks.

Ballot-box budgeting is the issue behind AB 2220, by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles. The bill would mandate a ballot pamphlet reminder to voters about proposed initiatives that would raise new revenue and dedicate it to specific programs. The official analysis of such measures would have to include language specifying that the money raised by the initiative would go only to the intended programs, and would not be available for other state needs unless voters approved changes later. The requirement would not apply to tax measures that directed the resulting money into the general fund without restriction.

The fate of AB 2220, now in the Senate, is unclear. Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed nearly identical legislation last year, saying that a rote disclaimer in initiative analyses “won’t provide voters greater clarity.” Well-informed voters, of course, already know that legislators have little power to alter initiatives — which is one reason ballot measures are popular with an electorate that distrusts the Legislature.

Regardless of how the bill fares, however, Gatto has a legitimate point: Voters too often decide budget-related ballot measures with little insight into the state’s larger financial picture — or the consequences that result from such disjointed fiscal choices.

California has many voter-approved propositions that limit budgeting flexibility. The most sweeping is Prop. 98, the 1988 measure that requires about 40 percent of the budget to go to education. Prop. 99, also from 1988, raised the cigarette tax and earmarked the money for health programs. Prop. 172 in 1993 raised the sales tax to fund law enforcement. Prop. 10 in 1998 raised the cigarette tax again, directing the money toward early childhood development programs. Prop. 64, in 2004, taxed wealthy Californians to pay for mental health services.

Such tinkering blocks any attempt to set sensible priorities for public spending, and helps make state budgeting more opaque and convoluted. The Legislature should be directing available funds to sustain the most crucial programs first. Instead, the state wrestles with ways to pay for priority services while tax money flows unchecked to less critical programs. Thus Prop. 49, from 2002, requires the state to spend nearly $550 million a year on after-school programs when districts struggle to fund classroom instruction.

Yes, the Legislature has an abysmal record of making shortsighted, reckless financial decisions. But voters will not encourage greater fiscal responsibility by approving arbitrary spending dictates based on whatever cause happens to gain sufficient popular support.

Randomly disrupting sensible allocation of public money is not a strategy for fixing the state’s chronic fiscal woes. Good intentions do not justify ballot measures that make the state’s budget more intractable."

Read more HERE

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Mike Gatto is the Assistant Speaker Pro Tempore of the California State Assembly.  He represents the cities of Burbank, Glendale, and parts of Los Angeles, including Los Feliz, North Hollywood, Silver Lake, Toluca Lake, Valley Glen, and Van Nuys.  He has served in the Assembly since June 2010.  E-mail Mike at: assemblymember.gatto@assembly.ca.gov, or call (818) 558-3043.

Website of Assemblyman Mike Gatto: www.asm.ca.gov/gatto