What’s key are the details he and his allies include in the “trailer bills” to the budget they advance for fiscal year 2015-16, which begins on July 1. According to Brown’s Department of Finance, “Trailer Bill Language is the implementing language of the California State Budget Bill. On this webpage, you can find the Regular Session and Special Session Trailer Bill Language for this year’s Governor’s Budget.”

There are nine categories listed, from “Administration” to “Education” and “Statewide and Other.” The categories currently are blank, but will be filled in as the budget scramble continues.

Sometimes the media cover the details in the trailer bills, and sometimes they don’t. It has become easier to pass these bills with less scrutiny since 2010, when state voters passed Proposition 25, which reduced from two-thirds to a majority the threshold for passing a budget in each house of the Legislature (except for tax increases).

Prop. 25 sharply cut Republican influence on the budget in the Democratic-controlled Legislature. It also made easier the infamous “gut and amend” process, by which a bill introduced earlier in a legislative year is “gutted” entirely of its wording, then “amended” to be something entirely new. This is done in the waning days of a legislative session in late August of each year, giving individual lawmakers little or no chance to review the actual wording.

Trailer bills

Top trailer bill events in recent years have included:

• In 2011, Assembly Bill 114, on education, was introduced just minutes before Legislators had to vote on the budget package.
• In 2011, eight budget trailer bills.
• In 2012, six budget trailer bills.
• In 2012, political analyst Tony Quinn called the budget maneuvering of trailer bills by the governor and Legislature the exercise of the “Divine Right of Kings.”
• In 2013, there were 21 budget trailer bills, of which 17 “made necessary changes in state law,” not just re-appropriations of funding, as described by the California Disability Community Action Network.
• In 2013, Brown vetoed trailer bill AB76 and deleted wording in AB71 that would have suspended provisions of the Public Records Act.
• In 2014, Brown’s reform of the school financing system, shifting funding to schools in poor areas, was buried in a budget trailer bill without much if any public vetting.
• In 2014, there were 19 budget trailer bills “with little public review,” the Sacramento Bee reported.

Following Robert Moses?

Such sharp legislative tactics are not anything new. Some perspective is provided by Robert Caro’s classic book, “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.” Caro since has written four volumes of a projected five-volume history of President Lyndon Johnson.

In both biographies, Caro says he mainly is describing how power is acquired and used.

In “The Power Broker,” Caro wrote how in the 1920s a New York state legislator, Robert Moses, buried details few paid any attention to in the footnotes of the bills he authored. Then Moses got appointed as New York City’s Parks Commissioner, where for decades he implemented the fine print in his bills and gained more power even than two other masters of power, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, later the longest-serving U.S. president at 12 years.

Indeed, Moses’ attitude toward starting new construction projects regardless of the opposition is akin to Brown’s approach to the high-speed rail project. Moses famously said, “Those who can, build. Those who can’t, criticize”

Brown himself said in 2012, when signing an $8 billion high-speed rail funding bill, “You have to take the bull by the horns and start spending and investing in things that make sense…. I know there are fearful men – I call them declinists – who want to hide in a hole and hope something changes. This is the time to invest, to create thousands of jobs like this project.”

On Jan. 6 this year, Brown celebrated breaking ground on the project. The details will be in the 2015 trailer bills.

By Katy Grimes

A new budget trailer bill will gut the state Public Records Act at the local level. The Public Records Act provides Californians the ability to obtain documents about state and local government actions and hold government officials accountable.

What special interest group would have the chutzpah to push for a law to prevent members of the public from obtaining records from local governments?

Until June 12, 2013, California Assembly Bill 76 had been an empty shell for a “budget trailer bill” to be passed as a supplement to the 2013-2014 California state budget.

“Union fingerprints are all over Assembly Bill 76,” said Kevin Dayton, CEO of the Dayton Policy Institute and Labor Issues Solutions, LLC. “Many of the substantive policy changes in the bill are related to union objectives. These proposals have not been considered in public hearings and are too obscure and complicated to recognize unless you are already familiar with the related labor issues.”

Trailer bill process

The empty budget trailer bills, called “spot bills,” usually sit on a shelf until the last minute they are needed, and usually on the day the budget is due, June 15. They are not vetted and don’t go through the usual public legislative committee process. Legislators are asked to vote on these bills, often having just seen them for the first time.

While both parties have been guilty of abusing the trailer bill process, the Democratic Party has been completely controlling the Legislature since 1996.

Republicans used to sneak pork into trailers bills, but Democrats consistently use the trailer bill process to whittle away at Democracy.

The Department of Finance explains trailer bills: “There are generally budget changes proposed by the Governor or the Legislature which necessitate changes to existing law in order to implement the budget changes. If this is the case, separate bills are introduced to implement the change. These budget implementation bills are called “trailer bills” and are heard concurrently with the Budget Bill. By law, all proposed statutory changes necessary to implement the Governor’s Budget are due to the Legislature by February 1.”

But the process has been abused, with trailer bills being used as a conduit for individual pieces of legislation that did not make it into the budget, or for legislation that could not make it through the committee process.

Gutting the Public Records Act

“Legislative Democrats approved a trailer bill, Assembly Bill 76, as part of the majority vote budget plan enacted on Friday that suspends key provisions of the California Public Records Act relating to the ability of taxpayers to request government data and documents from local governments,” Assemblyman Dan Logue, R-Linda, explained in a press statement. “If Governor Brown signs the measure into law, the new provisions would impact cities, counties and special districts throughout the state.

“Gutting the Public Records Act is a dream come true for scandal-ridden local governments such as the city of Bell.  Under this law, bureaucrats would be able to shield corruption and scandal from taxpayers. Time and time again, the majority party has pulled out all the stops to block Californians from knowing how their government is operating.  California’s right to know should not be compromised because the majority party continues to overspend.”

If the Governor signs this measure into law, Logue plans to introduce legislation to restore the Public Records Act.

Specifically, AB 76 would:

* Make optional provisions in current law requiring local government officials to respond to requests from the public for public documents within 10 days of the request;

* Encourage local governments to adhere to the current provisions in law as “best practices,” but give them the ability to announce annually if they are suspending these requirements;

* Eliminate requirements that local government officials must help citizens complete their Public Records Act requests by disclosing what records are available to be requested; and

* Allow local governments to decide whether to provide an electronic copy of documents or provide paper documents.

California receives “F” grade for lack of transparency

Logue noted that California was recently given an “F” grade by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group for its lack of transparency in government spending, ranking 49th out of the 50 states.

He said that the budget trailer bill was one in a series of moves by Democrats to make government less open and less accessible to the people.  Earlier this year, Democrats passed dozens of empty so-called budget spot bills that paved the way for the type of backroom budget deals that included the provision to undermine the Public Records Act.  They also blocked Republican-authored legislation to make the legislative and budget processes more transparent.

“This latest scheme to undermine the Public Records Act will effectively shut the people out of their government if it becomes law,” said Logue.  “Access to public data and records is key to empowering the people to make their voices heard.  Every elected official — regardless of party — should embrace openness and transparency as our key governing principle.  Governor Brown should veto this offensive legislation and reaffirm the state’s commitment to an accessible and accountable government for the taxpayers it serves.”

The Assembly announced late Wednesday it intended to pass the bill on without the records act changes, but only after receiving blistering heat from Republicans and editorial boards around the state.

The Assembly will vote Thursday to annul AB 76 or SB 71, the budget bills which would  change the state records act.