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
While the legislative publications of the California State Assembly and California State Senate have the same names and are intended to serve the same purposes, when we look a little bit more closely, there are several keen differences between the Senate’s and the Assembly’s legislative publications.
The Assembly Daily Journal and the Senate Daily
During California’s last legislative session, the 2018 legislative session, the Legislature and Governor enacted 1,016 new laws – most of which took effect on January 1, 2019. This particular statistic raises the age old question – Is the California Legislature too much of a bill factory?
I will leave the answer to that question,
The determination of legislative intent is important because there are instances in which there are legitimate legal disputes between the parties as to what statutory language may mean or what was intended by the language. In these cases, both parties will attempt to argue that their interpretation is the correct one that should be