Sacramento Bee/McClatchy: California lawmakers use secretive process to kill would-be laws: ‘Where good bills go to die’

Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham, R-San Luis Obispo, went into the last month of California’s legislative session somewhat hopeful about prospects for his biggest bill.

Cunningham co-authored a law that would have allowed prosecutors to sue big social media companies for addicting children and teens to their online platforms. Companies like Meta, which oversees Facebook and Instagram, hated the bill and deployed lobbyists to fight it.

Even so, it advanced easily through the Assembly and the Senate Judiciary Committees before landing in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

On Thursday, Assembly Bill 2408 died there without a vote or any public explanation.

Twice a year, a legislative instrument called the suspense file leaves many lawmakers, lobbyists and members of the public seething. Appropriations committees in the Senate and Assembly use it to kill or quietly amend bills before they can reach the floor. …

Proponents say the suspense file is a tool of efficiency, essential for screening the hundreds of bills that come through the legislature each year for their potential fiscal impact. Detractors call it a burial ground, used by lawmakers for decades to inter politically hazardous measures before they are forced to vote on them.

“This is a tale as old as time. Everybody knows there is a massive transparency problem at the heart of California’s legislative process,” said Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause, a good government watchdog.

It may be old hat for longtime members of the Capitol community, but Stein said that every time a new employee joins his organization, they are shocked to discover that there is a process where bills can be killed or amended with zero public scrutiny.

“It is just so established that it doesn’t get scrutinized in the way that it probably should,” he said. …

Stein, of California Common Cause, was reluctant to prescribe a specific solution. But he offered up that “the general idea would be to create more transparency and make more votes on the record.”