A few hundred bills reached the end of their run Friday in the California legislature. The culling of legislation is part of an opaque process.
The legislature pares back many bills twice a year through suspense file hearings — where the appropriations committees announce decisions made behind the scenes, without much public debate. Only bills that meet a certain cost threshold go through this process.
This year, legislators voted on more than one thousand bills.
Oakland Democrat and Assembly appropriations committee chair Buffy Wicks said the tightening state budget and threats of cuts from the federal government loomed large.
“When we have price tags of hundreds of millions of dollars on programs — it is not the year for that,” Wicks told reporters after the Assembly hearing. “We are battening down the hatches and preparing for a rocky landing here.”
The Senate moved about 70% of the bills on its docket forward, down a few percentage points from last year.
The Assembly advanced 65% of its bills. That’s about the same as last year, but Wicks said that’s because assembly members are asking for less money this time.
“We stressed heavily to members as they were putting together their legislative package this year to be very mindful of cost. Try not to do bills that cost a lot of money,” she said. “We saw that reflected in a lot of the bill packages that were presented as we went through this process.”
Still, many housing bills lived to see another vote.
“A lot of what we're focused on right now with regard to housing is streamlining,” Wicks said. “You know, making it easier to build, reducing regulation, getting rid of roadblocks and clearing red tape so that we can build housing faster. That is imperative. It also saves us money in the long run.”
Some that didn’t make it include a bill to further expand health insurance coverage to immigrants without legal status and one to fund voter-approved Prop 36. A couple that would regulate big event ticketing were put off until next year.
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