Justin M. Ruhge
Our state elected representatives are at it again, producing a blizzard of new bills in 2019 session. Just who of 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. Most of these are “junk bills” like those sponsored by Sen. Hannah-Beh Jackson and her sidekick, Assembly member Monique Limon. They harm people and business. Ms. Jackson has over 40 bills out there.
The basic problem is that California has a 120 “full time” paid Senate and Assembly members, with expense accounts, so they have have nothing to do but pass bills. Each representative is allowed 40 bills, but this was increased to up to 50 bills for the Assembly in the 2019 term. If you thought what we had was bad, they just made it worse. For 2017, Gov. Jerry Brown signed 857 bills into law and rejected only 118. Already for 2019, there are 1,000 new bills proposed.
Each bill passed costs the taxpayer money in taxes. Every bill costs us one way or another. Every aspect of government has to be paid for; the more government, the more taxes for all of us. The new gun laws, for example, will require thousands of new state employees to register the thousands of guns and ammunition applications.
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 canceled old 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?
Let’s insist that our representatives sponsor a bill that limits the number of bills in every two-year session to one per representative. A provision of this bill will be to review and eliminate past bills, every year, with public notice. However, even this restriction, if passed, would still result in 120 bills every two years, still more than any citizen could read. If the governor can pass all those other bills for special interests, why not this one for the taxpayers?
