Published
4 years agoon
Given their druthers, many government officials would prefer to do their business – our business, actually – behind closed doors and provide sanitized, self-serving versions of their actions after the fact.
Last year, the disdain of local officials for the law manifested itself in a budget “trailer bill” that would suspend the transparency law for two years – thereby exempting hundreds of 2018 bond and tax measures.
The author of AB 195, Assemblyman Jay Obernolte, a Big Bear Lake Republican, said the trailer bill was drafted by the Legislature’s Democratic leadership without his knowledge.
For whatever reason, the exemption bill was not taken to a floor vote. Therefore, Obernolte’s disclosure law remained in effect for local tax and bond measures in 2018.
Local officials still don’t like the law and have waged a low-profile drive in the Legislature to get it repealed or watered down and, not surprisingly, a new bill has popped up to fulfill their hopes.
Last week, Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, did a “gut-and-amend” maneuver on one of his bills, Senate Bill 268. The measure, which had dealt with welfare benefits and already had passed the Senate, was stripped of its contents and a new bill was inserted.
It would allow local officials to remove the required information about tax consequences from the ballot summary that voters read before casting their votes and place it, instead, in the voter pamphlet or another separate statement, where it would get much less attention.
Moreover, the bill declares, “Failure to comply with this chapter shall not affect the validity of any bond issue following the sale and delivery of the bonds,” which basically lets local officials entirely off the hook.
Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. He has written more than 9,000 columns about the state and its politics and is the founding editor of the “California Political Almanac.” Dan has also been a frequent guest on national television news shows, commenting on California issues and policies.
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