Deadline Week for Over 450 Bills on the Floor of California Legislature--Including Universal Health Care

By Frank D. Russo

This is do or die time for over 450 bills that must be passed by their house of origin in the California legislature by Friday in order to be enacted this year. The bills include the major measures on health care, and important bills on global warming, clean air, sentencing for juveniles, gang violence, and food safety for leafy green vegetables, to name just a few.

Approximately 308 Assembly bills and 150 Senate bills will be up for consideration. There still are some measures passed out of their final committee before a floor vote that have not yet made their way to the files of the Senate or Assembly, including ones that were amended just before final passage.

Last Thursday, the appropriations committees of both houses met and considered hundreds of bills that had been placed on the "suspense file" because they expended over $150,000. At times in the Assembly, which had the bulk of these bills, the Chair, Mark Leno sounded like a high school principal, reading the bill number, description, and whether the bill was graduating, followed by a grade--"A" roll call for those with support from both parties, and lower grades for those with different vote patterns. Very little debate ensued in the suspense committee process, as the fate of the bills h ad already been sealed by decisions of the leadership of both parties in their respective houses. In some cases, bills had any appropriations taken out of them as one would with a hot air balloon to get rid of sufficient ballast to make it past the committee hearing.

The hundreds of bills that were passed out of the suspense file will make up a majority of those being voted on the floors this week, and there will be heated debate on some. Legislators will be weary by Thursday, the last scheduled day on the floor this week which sometimes turns into a marathon day that goes until evenining.

Policy committees will not be meeting this week, with the exception of the Budget Conference Committee and the Rules Committees of each house.

Comments

Posted by: Sherry Wilson at June 4, 2007 01:29 PM

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