California Proposition 54 is nominally about mandating a 3-day waiting period between the time when legislators change a bill and when they vote on it, and it’s about requiring public online posting of the text of said bill and amendment for that same duration.
If that were all it was about, I’d tend to favor of that idea. I’ve done some work in the legislature at one point, and before that time and afterward I’ve also advocated structural governmental reform (with varying degrees of activism). Given that perspective, Prop. 54 does have a lot of upside. The state Assembly and Senate’s current ability to replace an entire bill in an instant ("gut and amend") is particularly galling.* That said, it’s pretty clear that the main intent of the measure is to gum up the works in the too-short legislative session (e.g. this year the many hundreds of bills that passed in one house had under four weeks to be heard in committees in the other house) and to degrade legislators’ power relative to corporate lobbying and corporate public relations power.
Then there are the important details that, as all too often happens, the pro/con arguments miss:
Sec. 4.1 lets a corporation sue to guarantee its ability to pay someone to aim an HDTV camera and a parabolic microphone at a legislator's face at all times during hearings and session, which is just inhumane. Look, they’re people too. If a legislator can’t so much as whisper to an aide during a hearing, then that individual is less a living, thinking representative, possessive of independent judgment, and more an amoebic responder to outside stimulus. If the attitude toward legislators is “screw those bastards,” as seems to be the prevailing (if loosening) mood in California, with our still-too-short term limits and mandated low legislative salary, then bastards is what we’ll keep getting. Sec. 6.1 insidiously lets the corporations and Charles Munger Jr. (who brags about pushing the party-destroying "top two" elections initiative [shaking fist])** that are backing the bill (together to the tune of $10.7M) act in lieu of the state attorney general in court cases about this amendment. They’re reacting to the way that the state attorney general rightfully declined to defend Prop. 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage, in court. x Embedded ContentCalifornians, please vote no on Prop. 54. There are better ways to do this. Don’t saddle us with a bad one.