Senate Standing Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments

[Roll Call]

Okay, thank you. We have established a quorum. So first let's take up our consent calendar. Proposed for consent is SB-1111 by Min. Thank you. We have a motion by Portantino, so please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Okay, it's 5-0, and that will be on call.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. I want to thank the Committee for allowing me to present this bill, and happy to accept the proposed Committee amendments. Last year, the Legislature passed arguably one of the most significant reforms in the last 50 years, political reforms, SB 1439, which prohibited parties seeking contracts, permits, or licensing with local government from making political contributions over 250 dollars to elected officials who have authority over those decisions.

This bill would require that any party involved in a proceeding before an agency, particularly related to contracts, licenses, and permits, disclose any campaign contributions that exceed 250 dollars to the agency before the final decision is made in the proceeding. Requiring such notice would further facilitate proper conformance with our conflict of interest law. I'd also like to mention that this measure currently contains placeholder language to allow for further discussion on the Levine Act relating to conflict of interest.

I've received a number of suggestions for additional changes in that measure, and I'll continue to consider them if and when this bill continues to move forward. With me today to testify in support is Laurel Brodzinsky from Common Cause. With that, respectfully ask for an aye vote at the appropriate time.

Thank you, Senator Glazer. So let's move to your lead witnesses in support.

Thank you, Chair and Members. Again, I'm Laurel Brodzinsky, on behalf of California Common Cause. We were a strong supporter of SB 1439 in 2022 when Senator Glazer authored it, and as he mentioned, it's really been a landmark change for preventing corruption and the perception thereof for local government officials. But, of course, with the rollout of any very large policy change, as we've seen with implementation, there have been issues that come up as it started to be implemented.

And so the idea of having a notice on the agenda for both officials and parties to the proceedings to have a little bit of notice of their obligations is one that actually came from local governments and we thought was a really great step in the right direction, and we're looking forward to continued conversations on how to have reasonable reductions and obstacles to implementation for them while still preserving, really, the crux of the issue, which is to prevent any undue influence of officials while they're making decisions. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any other witnesses in support who would like to speak today? Seeing none, we'll move to witnesses in opposition. Do we have any witnesses in opposition? Seeing none, do we have anyone else wishing to speak in opposition? I do not see any.

So we'll go to Members who may have questions or comments, and I'll just start out with a quick comment, that I appreciate the spirit behind this, which is to make sure that people who are participating in local government by watching it or are sitting up on the dais of a city council have on the agenda what the law is, so that they're able to understand that. One of the things that was important to me as the Chair is that we do not repeat language on agendas that is essentially incomprehensible to average people because it's out of context or things are written in such a bureaucratic way that they are nearly impossible to decipher.

So one of the things that I've been working on together with the Committee consultant staff, who've been very helpful, and with your staff, is to translate it into layman's language so that it could be well understood if somebody just sat there and read the paragraph.

So I just want to make sure that when you said you accept the Committee amendments but you're still working on the language, that the Committee amendments are several sentences that are a summary of the law, but not taking the ordinance or not taking the law as it was passed exactly and putting it onto the agenda. So I just want to make sure that that's clear.

Yeah, no, I was referencing some other suggestions that have come in from other quarters about ways to help implement the law, not speaking to those amendments specifically, so thank you for that clarification.

Okay, great. So I'm glad to hear that the summary of it is acceptable because it's much, I think, clearer to understand. Okay. Now looking to my colleagues, anybody have any questions or comments they would like to make? Okay, would you like to close, Senator Glazer?

Thank you for your consideration. For those who may not be here in the hearing room but listening, we are taking into account all the suggestions that have come in about the previous bill. I'm working closely with the Fair Political Practice Commission, their new Chair and staff, as well as stakeholders such as Common Cause, to try to, if there's ways to improve the language, the law, that we look for those opportunities if this bill moves forward today. With that, respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Okay, thank you. I would entertain a motion on this. Okay, thank you. Senator Umberg has moved, so let's go ahead and call the roll.

Motion is 'do pass as amended to the Committee on Appropriations.' [Roll Call].

Thank you very much. We will--it's five to zero, and we will leave it on call. Thank you. And next we have SB 1294 by Senator Ochoa Bogh. If she's right outside--oh, she's presenting next door. Okay. Well, should we go into a short recess till she comes? We already voted on the consent calendar. Okay, well let's go into a short recess. Okay. The Senate will reconvene in 30 seconds. Not the Senate.

The Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments will reconvene in 30 seconds, and we will invite Senator Ochoa Bogh to come forward. Okay, we are back in, come back to order. Thank you. So next, we will hear SB 1294 by Senator Ochoa Bogh. So, Senator, you may present your bill.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. Senate Bill 1294 would codify the ability to recall proponents to file a notice of withdrawal. All recalls begin with a notice of intention. Once the election official has accepted the notice of intention, proponents must prepare a draft of the recall petition for approval. If a petition is approved by the elections official, proponents may begin collecting the signatures needed to meet the threshold for qualification.

During the review period of the recall petition, any voter or the elections official may seek a writ of mandate, which requires the court to review the statement for reasons of reasons to determine if the contents are false or misleading. In May 2023, recall proponents in Yucaipa submitted a recall petition that was approved by the City Clerk. At the same time, the Clerk filed a writ of mandate challenging the information contained in the proponents' statement.

Unfortunately, the ruling of the writ of mandate went beyond the amount of time allocated to gather the signatures, which meant the proponents were unable to move forward with the recall petition. The delay in the ruling caused a delay in timing with regard to signature gathering. While this may be an unintended consequence of the law, the proponents could not move forward, nor could they withdraw the petition because the law is silent on this issue. SB 1294 would simply allow the proponents to file a notice of withdrawal. Here to testify is Chris Robles, a recall elections consultant from Southern California.

Thank you. Well, if you're a lead witness and support, you may proceed.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Chris Robles, and I reside in Ontario, California. I am a campaign consultant, and I've worked on eight local recalls. It is from that experience and my recent work on the recall in Yucaipa that I come here today in support of SB 1294.

With the recent changes in the recall process regarding a writ of mandate, and without set guidelines in code or by the Secretary of State's regulations, the provision to allow a writ of mandate challenging the statement of reasons is leading to some serious confusion out there and delays in the process and an excessive expenditure of money by both the city and recall proponents.

Unfortunately, if an elections official or a voter within the jurisdiction questions the language in that statement of reasons, it can't be resolved through a process of edits or changes. It only can be resolved in the courts. SB 1294 simply gives recall proponents another way to end the recall petition process, making the challenge to the statement of reasons moot.

In addition, it allows any voter to start another recall process using different language. Granting recall proponents the option to withdraw the recall petition would ease the concerns of the public, elections official, and the officer being recalled by sparing them the prolonged anticipation of the deadline. Thank you for your time today, and I'm available to answer any questions.

Okay, thank you. Is there anybody else in the room wishing to express support? Seeing none. Are there any opposition, lead opposition witnesses? Seeing none. Anyone else wishing to express opposition in the room? Seeing none. We will bring it back to the Committee. Yes, Senator Newman.

Mr. Robles, good to see you.

Thank you. You too.

A couple of questions for either the author or the witness. I'm semi-familiar with the situation in Yucaipa where the writ of mandate messed up the timing, right, or messed up the clock. So was consideration given to simply devising a basis for a timeout in that eventuality. Why have it start over? Let me ask my second question, which is, how do you prevent this process from being gamed by somebody who, or parties who would otherwise continually take out a petition, withdraw it, start again, start again. I can see where that would have an affect more adverse than the status quo.

Frankly, I think it got gamed the other way by the city because they have endless resources. So most of the local recalls don't... It's so difficult to do a recall that, and now it requires not 20 signatures on the notice of intention, it's 60. So it's really a difficult thing. Most people don't take it up lightly. They're not well funded. It's usually a grassroots movement. And so I understand your concern where somebody could, in a sense, torture an elected official that way.

And honestly, you know, in theory, it could have happened before the writ of mandate process anyway. I've never really seen it used like that in 24 years at the local level. Usually what happens is recall proponents come together and they try and put together some kind of a campaign because of some policy problem. Or we've actually...

I've been part of a recall where somebody hid the fact that they were a convicted felon and were elected, and it's the only recourse that people have to make a change before the actual election. And then to further answer the point that I made about it being game the other way, in Yucaipa, the city clerks are the election official at the local level. They don't have a budget for an attorney. They don't have a budget that they can just expend.

So that meant the recall, the majority that were on the council, they're the ones that had the money. They're the ones that hired the attorney. It was all done very quietly, secretively. There was no vote of the council to hire an attorney, an outside counsel for this. We still, to this day, the residents, I should say, because I don't live in Yucaipa, but the residents to this day still don't know how the city funded this attorney.

And they not only did the attorney file, but they filed against... So we had three recalls. There were 60 signatures on each. That meant they actually filed against all 60 on each one. It was over 197 people individually, some of them seniors, and they all had to find legal representation. They didn't sign up for that. They didn't have the funds for that. Many are on fixed incomes. So the city, with unlimited resources, was able to effectively punish people for exercising their constitutional right to a recall.

Then the process was drawn out because of the courts, the reality of the court system. And then once the 90 days that we had for collecting signatures elapsed, it became moot. At that court, I was present for all the court hearings. At that court hearing, the judge said, you've seen my schedule. You've seen how impacted the courts are. What do you say about the fact that this is now moot? And he said, the attorney said that the City Clerk doesn't want to drop it. I mean, it was pretty obvious that they wanted to continue it and continue to exhaust the time, money, and the patience of...

Thank you for your answer. Senator Newman, was that...

Yeah, I guess. I mean, the thing that I guess sort of puzzles or troubles me here is we made that change recently, and you touched on it, to raise the threshold for... And to be clear, it's the number of signatures needed to start a recall process. Right. There's actually two petitions. Right. There's the initial sort of taking out of papers, and then there's the signatures gathered during the qualification period.

And I do worry... The reason we made that change was precisely because the threat of recall or the cloud hanging over the local elected official is in many ways as damaging or preoccupying as the actual threat of a vote. And I worry about giving folks a chance to extend that leverage by willfully starting and stopping this process. So that is a concern. I think if you can identify an opportunity to game a system, generally speaking, somebody will use that loophole to game that system. And so I really am. And I would hope as this moves forward, you'd give some consideration to putting some guardrails around that. Because otherwise it seems fairly vulnerable to that kind of gaming.

Well, in some respects, if you let the time, which is the way it is now, you let the timeframe elapse, you can start another recall right after that.

I appreciate that. But, you know, there's something almost tantalizingly, I don't know, sort of irresistible. Like if you were an elected official, and I had a gripe with you and I had enough influence to do that, you know, there's nothing to stop me from torturing you that way. And, you know, local recalls happen more often than state recalls. I have some familiarity with this thing. But at the local level, you know, quite often, it's not really about the vote. It's about making the point.

And you can make that point in a way that I find really troubling. If the proponents of a recall could continually start and restop it, you know, Charlie Brown and the football kind of thing. So again, I appreciate the intent of this legislation, but I worry about that possible loophole.

Thank you. His questions answer a lot of the questions that I had. I do have one more. Do you think it makes any sense that the deadline to approve the petition is the same as the deadline for the writ of mandate?

It doesn't make sense in this regard. When you file the notice of intent, it's really a letter with a bunch of signatures. So it's kind of like that kind of a petition. It's not the official kind you get at the supermarket. Right. And you serve it on the elected officials first. And then what really starts the clock is when you take it to the elections official. And that starts the clock. But by that time, it's public information.

The next step is that you print it in the newspaper. So what would make more sense is make the corrections at that time, not at the time when... So here's what happened in Yucaipa. We got a letter from the Clerk authorizing moving forward with the petition. Because you have to comply with the code. Right. So we've got permission to move forward, and at the same time, I'm suing you, all 197 residents.

And in the letter, it said, if you proceed gathering signatures, and it's found to be that the language changes, that changes the petition. And we've already circulated it with her permission, and now it's all moot. All that work for nothing. What would makes sense is to do it prior to the petition, is to get the language. If the language needs to be altered, changed, withdrawn. Do that in advance before you go through all the other expense and the time of circulation of the actual petition. Because it's, on the petition, it's really one block. It's 200 words or less.

Thank you. Is there any witnesses in support? Any witnesses, lead witnesses in opposition? Any witnesses in opposition? Actually, we did that already. Huh. Okay, never mind. Okay. There you go. I'm going to hand over the gavel to you because I would like to make the motion. I can't do it as Chair. Unless Senator Newman is graciously moving the...

I will graciously make the motion.

Okay, thank you. This is do pass to the Committee on Appropriation. The measure has been moved by... I'm sorry, Senator, would you like to close?

Yes. Thank you. Let me just say that we would be happy to amend the bill if it gave an opportunity cure. That would also be, I think, a component that would be very, very helpful in this scenario on that end. So thank you for the motion, Senator Newman, and for the questions that the Committee Members have asked.

While it's important to safeguard the right to recall an elected official, it is also important to ensure that, if a writ of mandate is filed and there is not a timely ruling from the court, that the proponents be allowed to withdraw their petition. Not all counties have judges specifically assigned to writ of mandates. So for some courts, you can have a decision within one to two weeks.

For other counties that don't have these special or these judges specially attending to the writ of mandates, then it's taking them months to be able to do that, and very, very costly for all parties. So with this particular bill, we're trying to address those issues, and I would respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. It's been moved by Senator Newman. Do pass to Committee on Appropriation. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

We'll leave the call open, and at this time, we'll go on recess. We'll go on recess and allow other Members to come forward. Committee Members who are on Election, please come in so that we can get your vote on the bills. Thank you.

Okay, the Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments will reconvene. We'll give Senator Menjivar a moment to catch your breath. So we will now lift the call on the remaining items. There are two items. Those are items number two and number three, as well as the consent calendar, which we'll do after. So, Assistant, please call the roll on all of those items.

File item number two. SB-1181. Motion is do-pass as amended to appropriations. Current vote is 5-0. Chair voted yes. Vice Chair voted yes. [Roll Call]

All right, that item has six votes, and it is out.

Next item, please.

File item three. SB-1294. Motion is do-pass to appropriations. Current vote is 1-0. Vice Chair voted aye. [Roll Call]

This is item number three for Senator Ochoa Bogh.

[Roll Call]

Okay, that vote has one vote for, one vote against, and it is dead. The author's not here to ask for reconsideration, so reconsideration will not be given unless we have the consent calendar.

Filing the consent calendar. SB-1111. Current vote is 5-0. Chair voted aye. Vice Chair voted aye. [Roll Call]

Consent calendar has six votes, and it is out. Thank you, Senator Menjivar. This concludes the hearing for the Senate Committee on Elections. Thank you to all the individuals who participated today. If you were not able to testify today, please submit your comments or suggestions in writing to the Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments. Your comments and suggestions are important to us, and we want to include your testimony in the official hearing records. The Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments is hereby, adjourned.