California Legislation: Structure, Process, and Important Details about the State Legislature

California’s legislature includes a bicameral system with detailed structures, voting rules, session schedules, and committee influences. The process from bill drafting to law involves hearings, amendments, fiscal review, floor votes, and possible gubernatorial action.

By Brad Nakase, Attorney

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. History

3. Schedule for legislative sessions

4. State House

5. Terms & Term Limits

6. Record Keeping

7. Committees in charge of California legislation

8. An outline of the legislative process

9. Compensation

10. Proposals for Reforms

Introduction

The state legislature in California comprises two houses. California State Assembly (lower, eighty members) and the California State Senate (upper, forty members). It is the state assembly of California, a state of the United States of America. The two houses of the legislature meet at the California State Capitol in Sacramento.

There are 10 state legislatures in the US that operate full-time, including the California legislative framework. Each house is identified by its carpet & trim color, which is red in the Senate and green in the Assembly, respectively. It is modeled after the House of Lords & the House of Commons in the United Kingdom.

At the moment, the Democratic Party has veto-proof majorities in both California State Legislature houses. The Senate is made up of thirty Democrats and ten Republicans. The Assembly is made up of sixty Democrats and nineteen Republicans. The Assembly has been controlled by Democrats since the 1970 election (except the 1995–1996 session).

History

1. Constitution of 1849

Article IV of the California Constitution of 1849 stipulated that the Assembly and Senate, to be known as the State Legislature of California, were to have the state’s legislative authority. The first Monday in January following the previous election marked the start of the obligatory yearly sessions, unless the governor declared an emergency session.

Senate members served terms of 2 years, while Assembly members served one-year terms. Although neither house’s size was specified in the 1849 Constitution, it did mandate that the Senate be made up of at least one-third but not more than half of the Assembly’s members, with fifty percent of its senators being eligible for election every year.

The legislature was also required to set the number of senators & assembly members, leaving the Assembly with not less than twenty-four members and not over thirty-six members until the state’s population reached 100,000, at which point the Assembly’s membership was to be at least 36 and not over eighty.

Corresponding to the white people’s population of the “many counties & districts,” legislative areas were to be distributed among them. In accordance with Section 25, legislative bills were subject to a single-subject rule; Section 26 forbade the legislature from providing divorces; Section 31 forbade the legislature from creating a corporation via a special act (which is comparable to a private California legislation); Section 34 forbade the legislature from issuing a license “for banking”; Section 35 called for the legislature to pass the California legislation that forbade any individual or organization from engaging in banking activities or producing paper money; and Section 38 mandated that all legislative votes be carried out by voice.

2. Constitution of 1879

The legislature was originally organized by the 1879 California Constitution, Article IV, which was modeled after the 1849 Constitution. However, it was made clear in the 1879 Constitution that the Assembly had 80 members and the Senate 40. Representatives of the Assembly have two-year terms, and senators have four-year terms, according to the constitution.

Schedule for legislative sessions

Each two-year session begins at 12:00 on the 1^st Monday after the election, when new lawmakers gather in the Senate and Assembly chambers to organize.

Unless January 1st falls on a Sunday, in which event they meet on the next Wednesday, both chambers are in recess till the 1^st Monday in January following the organizational meeting. The legislature meets throughout the year, with the exception of recess.

State House

On 9^th September 1850, California gained full statehood. San Jose (1850 to 1851), Vallejo (1852 to 1853), & Benicia (1853 to 1854) have served as the state capital. In 1854, Sacramento was selected.

In the beginning, industrialist Pierre “Don Pedro” Sainsevain & his partners owned the initially constructed California State House as a San Jose hotel.

Currently, the California State Capitol in Sacramento serves as the venue for State Legislature meetings.

Terms & Term Limits

The Assembly’s members are elected to serve for two years from 80 districts. Elections are held every two years for all 80 Assembly seats. Senate members are chosen from forty districts and hold office for four years. With odd-numbered constituencies up for election with presidential elections and even-numbered constituencies up for election at midterm elections, fifty percent of the Senate (twenty seats) is up for election every 2 years.

After Proposition 140 was passed (1990), term limits were first instituted. Proposition 28, which restricts lawmakers to a maximum term of twelve years, irrespective of whether they spend those years in the State Senate or the State Assembly, was approved by voters in June 2012. The 1990-approved term limits, which limited lawmakers to the State Assembly’s three terms and the State Senate’s two terms, apply to lawmakers who were first chosen on/before 5^th June 2012.

Record Keeping

Regularly released periodicals provide a concise summary of the California State Legislature’s operations, including votes and the names of those who submitted or withdrew certain measures. In the annexes to the Journals, reports from the Legislature and California government departments were published between 1849 and 1970.

The legislature has been broadcasting live video feeds of its sessions since the 1990s, via regional public-access cable TV and the California Channel, carrying the feeds throughout the whole state. Prior to the start of the video feed, California did not maintain verbatim archives of real speeches delivered by lawmakers in the Assembly and Senate because of the cost and the clear political drawback. Because of this, it is very challenging to reconstruct the legislative purpose for California legislation prior to the 1990s outside of the preamble of an act.

The Legislature has operated some kind of online or FTP site since 1993. This website currently includes the written version of all California legislation, all bills, all bill versions, all committee analyses, every vote on bills in the panel or on the Senate floor, and the governor’s veto messages.

Prior to that, committees would sometimes provide reports on important laws, but the majority of bills were not sufficiently significant to warrant the cost of printing and sending a report to the state’s law libraries and archives.

To find legislative intent for bills without such an official committee report, one must manually search through the files that pertain to legislators, legislative panels, and the office of the governor from the relevant period in the state records in Sacramento. The goal is to find a declaration of intent and proof that the statement truly reflected the opinions of multiple lawmakers who cast votes for the bill, rather than just one.

Committees in charge of California legislation

The most coveted legislative committee positions are in the fields of business, professions, health, governance, and finance. These are commonly referred to as “juice” committees since participation in them frequently helps committee members with their campaign fundraising activities because influential lobbying organizations want to give to committee members.

Pocket veto

Lawmakers can “pocket veto” legislation by bypassing deliberation and, consequently, a vote. Developed in the middle of the 1980s, the Appropriations “Suspense File” is a common means of evading a vote.

Usually, the general membership can approve a discharge petition when a committee declines to vote the California legislation out of committee. Senate Rule 28 in California, requiring 21 members, & Assembly Rule 96(a), requiring 41 members, governed this as of 2019. The process was most famously employed in 1998.

The plan was essentially killed in 2019 when the Assembly changed its rules to permit committee chairs to postpone considering measures. For the 2017–2018 session, ACA-23 was suggested as a constitutional amendment that would need a vote.

Pocket veto authority is widespread in legislatures around the nation; in Colorado, they were famously eliminated in 1988 by a citizen initiative amendment to the constitution that was pushed by a number of reform organizations.

An outline of the legislative process

Bills are proposals to amend, repeal, or enact current state legislation. A bill is referred to as an Assembly Bill in the Assembly, and in the Senate, a Senate Bill.

In each house, bills are numbered according to their introduction order. The 16th bill submitted in the Assembly, for instance, is referred to as AB 16. Every session, the numbering is done from scratch. Any number of “exceptional” sessions could occur. For every one of these, the bill numbering begins afresh. As an example, the third bill, ABx2 3, was introduced to the Assembly on its second special session. The name of the proposer is contained in the title of the bill, and the lawmaker who spearheaded it.

The process of legislation is split into a number of steps:

Drafting. The process starts when a member of the assembly or a senator chooses to write a bill. When a lawmaker submits a bill idea to the Legislative Counsel’s California Office, the office prepares the bill and delivers it back to the lawmaker for introduction.

The first reading or introduction. The bill number, name of the author, and descriptive title are read and heard on the House floor when a lawmaker submits a measure initially. After that, the bill is sent to the State Publishing Office. With the exception of the budget bill, the legislator has 30 days from the date of introduction to take action on the measure.
Hearing by the committee. A bill is introduced, then sent to the House’s rules committee, which selects the relevant policy committee to hear it for the first time. The committee could hear testimony in favor of or against the bill during the hearing, which is when the author delivers it to the committee. The bill is then put to a vote by the committee to either pass it out of committee or pass it as amended. Bills can be changed more than once. A measure must be approved by an overwhelming vote of committee members in order to move on to the subsequent committee or the floor.
If the measure includes a budget allocation or has financial ramifications for the state, it is reviewed by the fiscal committee.
When a measure is recommended for passage, it is given another reading on the House floor. Usually, the debate is minimal or nonexistent. A measure may be sent back for an additional committee hearing if it is changed at this point.
Vote on the floor. A vote is held by roll call. For a regular bill to pass, a majority vote is required. It takes two-thirds of the vote to pass an urgent bill or one that raises taxes. Before California Proposition 25 in 2010 was passed, the annual budget and any item that would raise taxes needed a two-thirds vote in both houses, as required by the California Constitution. Now, only tax hikes need the two-thirds vote. A majority of what was referred to as “legislative deadlock” was attributed to the two-thirds vote required prior to this modification, which allowed a minority party to prevent the ratification of a budget prior to the one that had expired.
Second House. A bill continues the same procedures in the second house if it is approved by the first house. The bill gets forwarded to the governor’s table if it is approved by the second house without revision.
Dispute Resolution (conference or agreement). If a measure is passed after being changed in the second house, it is sent back to the original house for revisions. If the legislature of origin approves the amendments, the bill will be sent to the governor; if not, it will be sent to a two-house discussion committee. It is possible to organize a second or even a third conference committee if the conference report is rejected by either house. Should the conference report be approved by both houses, the bill is forwarded to the governor.
The governor’s action. The governor can veto a measure, sign it into California legislation, or let it become law without signing it within thirty days after receiving it.
Overrides. A defeated bill is sent back to the original house for a vote. A two-thirds majority in both houses is needed to overturn the governor’s veto. From 1979 forward, the California Legislature has not had an override.
California law & the date of implementation. After the Legislature passes a measure and the Governor authorizes/signs it into law, the Secretary of State assigns it a chapter number. The California Codes typically include these chaptered bills, which are statutes. Typically, a law passed in a normal session becomes operative on January 1st of the subsequent year. A few laws, such as those requiring elections and other urgent steps required for the immediate maintenance of public safety, health, or peace, take effect immediately as the governor approves them.

Compensation

As of 4^th December 2023, California State Legislature members are paid $128,215 per year. $147,446 is paid to the Senate President, the Assembly Speaker, and minority House leaders. $137,832 is paid to the majority house leaders and the second-ranked minority leaders. The second-highest wage of any state as of 2023 goes to California lawmakers. Assembly members get $214 per diem, while senators receive $211.

Proposals for Reforms

The Neighborhood Legislature Reform Act

John Cox, a Republican presidential primary candidate (former), put forth “The Neighborhood Legislature Reform Act” on 23^rd July 2015, proposing to divide the Legislature’s districts into “neighborhood districts” of roughly 5,000 people in each Assembly district and ten thousand individuals in each Senate district. Eighty Assembly members and forty Senate members would thereafter be chosen by majority voting from among the representatives in those “neighborhood districts” in every district.

There has been a contention that although this approach would facilitate citizens’ ability to reach out to particular neighborhood leaders, it would also make it more difficult for these people to reach their state legislators. Insufficient signatures were collected for the proposal to be eligible as a proposition on the ballot for the November 2016 elections.

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California Legislation: Structure, Process, and Important Details about the State Legislature

Introduction

History

Schedule for legislative sessions

State House

Terms & Term Limits

Record Keeping

Committees in charge of California legislation

An outline of the legislative process

Compensation

Proposals for Reforms

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