Today I’ll be taking an in-depth look at California’s Constitution, and also do a brief comparison of California’s Constitution to the U.S. Constitution.
California’s Constitution was adopted in 1849, just prior to California becoming a state in 1850. It is the governing document for the state of California. By most accounts, our state’s constitution
Like the federal government, California laws are found in three places: the state constitution, the codes or the statutes, and regulations. The hierarchy of laws in California is the same as under federal law, with the Constitution on top, statutes in the middle, and regulations on the bottom. The following is a brief overview
Lobbying is advocating on behalf of a client or cause – generally for payment but also sometimes on a volunteer basis – to attempt to influence official action of either legislative or executive branch officials, and their staff. Individuals, or groups of individuals, lobby elected and appointed officials and their staff in an attempt
During the legislative session there are more than 2,500 bills usually introduced and hundreds of these are spot bills or intent bills. So what are they are why are they used?
According to California’s Legislative Counsel, a spot bill is one that does not make any substantive change to the law and would not
Today’s podcast covers a list of resources that my colleague, Ray LeBov, and I have put together. You can find a full list of these on Ray’s website.
What are some of the resources we cover on Ray’s site? For one, The Institute of Governmental Advocates
There are some firms that work to support lobbyists through managing coalitions, directing grassroots campaigns, conducting public outreach, or other indirect efforts to enhance or promote the efforts of lobbyists. There are a handful of public affairs firms in Sacramento that do this type of work. There are firms that specialize in social media
The state of California has three forms of direct democracy and they are found in Article II of the state constitution. Those three forms are the initiative, referendum, and recall processes.
The initiative begins with presenting a petition to the California Secretary of State that includes the text of the proposed statute or
Today I will be discussing the stages of the lobbying process. These four stages were put together by my colleague, Ray LeBov. A lobbyist needs to be aware of the work to be done in each of the four stages as part of the strategic and tactical work that they do for their clients.
There are mainly two types of lobbying at the state level in California – legislative and regulatory. Some advocates may add budgetary and procurement lobbying to this list, but the main two types involve lobbying the legislative and executive branches of state government. At its core, legislative lobbying is advocating for or against legislation
Negotiating bills and amendments in the California legislative process is an important skill for lobbyists and others to have as they work measures through this process.
Many advocates spend their time supporting or opposing bills on policy or fiscal grounds and they don’t engage in the actual negotiation of bill language for any number