Our state elected representatives are at it again, producing a blizzard of new bills—2,255 for the 2013-2014 session. In the 2011-2012 two-year legislative period, lawmakers sent the governor 2,107 bills; he signed 1,906 into law. So in 2013 Governor Brown just signed 800 new laws into action. It is a reduction, but still overwhelming. Just who of the everyday Joes on the streets are going to know anything about any of these?
These bills are for the biggest-paying supporters or the biggest attention getters.
The basic problem is that California has a “full time” senate and assembly, with expense accounts, so these fellows have nothing to do but pass bills.
But each bill passed costs the taxpayer money in taxes! Every bill costs us one way or another. Every bill must be managed, so when your reps stand up before you at town hall meetings and say “look what I have done for you,” remember that they are giving us more taxes and not necessarily a gift. Every aspect of government has to be paid for; the more government, the more taxes for all of us.
We should ask ourselves, why are our reps not telling us how much they have reduced government, and how much they have reduced our taxes? How about giving us the number of cancelled bills each year? Don’t we care? Why don’t we give them incentives to do so? Is voting them out of office the only incentive?
There are so many bills becoming law that the everyday taxpayer has no idea what they are, and without any malice of his own he can be found guilty of one or more of them, only to be told by some politically appointed activist judge that ignorance is no excuse. At the rate we are going, we will all become criminals at some point in our lives in California. It is no wonder that California has more people in prisons and the most highly paid prison guards in the United States.
To help limit this out-of-control bill-passing train wreck from continuing, I have asked my 35th district assemblyman, Katcho Achadjian, to sponsor a bill that I have proposed that would limit the number of bills in every two-year session to one per representative. However, even this restriction, if passed, would still result in 120 bills every two years—still more that any citizen could read. If the governor can pass all those other bills for special interests, why not this one for the taxpayers?
This article appears in Jan 9-16, 2014.
