Bills of Mass Introduction

Change is a common theme this year. But sometimes, too much change is a bad thing. Change brings division and ineffective policy. We saw this first with incomprehensible pandemic restrictions, impossible to follow due to constant addendums, confusion over jurisdiction, and competing voices. Now, we are seeing it as the 2021 legislative session adjourned.

Lawmakers’ desires to pass bills and improve the state, combined with limited time in session, leaves our legislators with too many bills to pass in too little time. 

Our legislature is held up by an enormous number of bills – over 2,400 introduced this year. This is far too many for any of our legislators to digest. Anyone who keeps up with the legislative session will know that eerily similar bills are often introduced multiple times by different legislators, and they work through the process on totally separate timelines. This is a huge waste of money, time, and resources!

So, what can we do to prevent this? Limit the number of bills that each legislator can introduce in a single session? That is precisely what Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon decided to do this year, limiting each legislator to move only 12 bills to the opposite house during the 2021 session.

Let’s do some math here – how significant is this cap in reality? With 120 legislators, the cap of 12 bills per year would equal 1,440 bills that could move through the legislative process. On average, a whopping 1,000 bills reach the governor’s desk each year, and of those, roughly 85 percent of them get signed into law. There is simply not enough time for our legislators to be scrutinizing and collaborating on this grotesque number of bills.

But who is to say we can’t lower that cap even further, say five bills per legislator, totaling 600 moving bills per year? A lower cap would ensure that bills are laser-focused, comprehensive, and bipartisan, and would improve the chances of thoughtful bills getting passed within the calendar year.

We need to trim the fat on our legislative process. Introduction limits will allow more time for substantive legislation to be made, and anyone who says that limits will restrict members’ rights to carry out legislative responsibilities hasn’t looked through the sheer number of duplicative or textless bills. Sometimes, two of the exact same bills pass through multiple times, all because there is no incentive for legislators to work together and coauthor important legislation.

While the country has gone more partisan, so has the legislature. Limits force legislators to work together to achieve a common goal. If multiple legislators want a bill on homelessness, all legislators who want the bill will have to work together, rather than introducing multiple permutations of the same idea. A stricter limit would require legislators to compromise, something they lack substantial practice on, but necessary to an efficient and effective government.

We also have to look at our governance from a long-term perspective. In 2024, almost half of the California legislature will be termed out, and an effectively “new” legislature will be elected. Allowing free reign to legislators, many of whom will be unfamiliar with the process, will just create more confusion and inefficiency.

It is abundantly clear that there are too many bills introduced, and too many legislators are acting as free agents, not collaborating with their colleagues in ways that are beneficial to Californians. We need fewer bills and more consensus.

The legislature needs to strongly consider extending their current limit or amending it to be even more limiting. Failure to do so will result in the continuation of a seemingly endless cycle of too many bills, too little time, and too little consensus, hurting the chances of substantive laws being made.

If nothing else, let’s just try it. Our government can’t get much less effective than it already is.

Stuart Waldman is president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, a business advocacy organization based in Van Nuys that represents employers in the San Fernando Valley at the local, state and federal levels of government.