Group seeks to scratch plan for part-time California Legislature
Torey Van Oct
Sacramento Bee
09/18/2009
A group led by three former state lawmakers has formed to fight an effort to roll back the California Legislature to part-time status.
Californians for an Effective Legislature filed paperwork with the secretary of state Wednesday opposing a proposed initiative that would cut the current legislative calendar to 90 days.
Proponents of the "Citizen Legislature Act" recently re-filed the initiative to include a provision cutting legislators' pay by 50 percent and must now collect nearly 700,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the 2010 ballot.
Democratic strategist Steven Maviglio, executive director of Californians for an Effective Legislature, said the goal of organizing against the initiative in its infancy is to "nip it in the bud."
"I think this current session has shown that we have some major challenges, and to expect someone to walk in with 30 days of experience and try to solve a billions-of-dollars budget deficit, complex water policy and education issues is absurd," Maviglio said.
The bipartisan group opposing the measure is chaired by three former state lawmakers: Democrats John Laird and Dario Frommer and Republican Bob Naylor. The group argues that a part-time Legislature would give interest groups more sway because inexperienced lawmakers would have to address the state's problems under a compressed calendar.
"This initiative would seriously hamper the ability for the Legislature to tackle the challenges it faces because legislators would have less time on the job and the public would have less input on legislation," Frommer said in a statement.
Initiative proponent Gabriella Holt, a Republican who lost a 2008 bid for the Assembly, and her group, Citizens for California Reform, say the full-time Legislature, in effect since 1966, has failed Californians. They argue that a part-time body of citizen lawmakers would better represent and understand the needs of California families.
Tom Kise, a spokesman for the pro-initiative group, said the proposal would create "a true citizen Legislature instead of a group of lobbyists and politicians who are operating in a revolving door."
