TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Kim Alexander, California Voter Foundation
DATE: July 8, 1997
RE: SB 49: July 14th Hearing, Amendments, ColumnsHi Folks:
SB 49, a bill that would mandate electronic filing of, and online disclosure to campaign finance records by 2000, is scheduled to be heard by the Assembly Elections Committee next Monday. Here are the details:
WHAT: Assembly Elections Committee hearing on SB 49 WHEN: Monday, July 14th, 4:00 p.m. WHERE: State Capitol, Room 447 (subject to change) This update will provide a recap of SB 49's history, a discussion of important amendments that will be made to the bill, and some related newspaper columns recently published in the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle.
RECAP: SB 49/Karnette passed out of the Senate on June 4th on a vote of 31-7. The bill now begins its journey through the Assembly: first comes the policy committee hearing (in this case, Assembly Elections is the policy committee), next is the fiscal committee hearing (Appropriations Committee), then, if it makes it through it will go to the Assembly floor where it will need a two-thirds vote (54 votes in the Assembly) in order to pass. The bill may have to go back to the Senate for concurrence in Assembly amendments, then it will be sent to Governor Pete Wilson's desk for his signature or veto.
Typically the policy committee hearings are the place where the merits of a bill are most seriously deliberated, so those of you who are interested in covering or testifying on this bill should consider coming to the State Capitol on Monday, July 14th. I'm told the committee will take up a total of 8-9 bills, so the entire hearing probably won't last too long.
AMENDMENTS: As you may recall from my last email, there have been many discussions in recent weeks over provisions of SB 49 dealing with software and privacy concerns. To refresh your memory: several Assembly Republicans objected to the so-called "software cap" in SB 49, which says that if there are no software programs available for filers for $99 or less, the entire electronic filing system will be scrapped. Senator Karnette has agreed to amend this provision out of her bill.
The Assembly Republicans' second concern was that donors might be subjected to harassment if their street addresses were published online. Current disclosure laws require candidates to file a donor's name, occupation, employer, street address, city and state (whether zip code is included as part of the address has been left up to interpretation by the Fair Political Practices Commission). Cunneen and his caucus originally wanted street addresses and city data omitted from the online records; Karnette's bill as it is currently written only restricts residential street addresses from being published online. A compromise has been reached on this critical issue, so that all street addresses, whether residential or commercial, would be omitted from the online records, while city and state data would be published online. The bill is in the process of being amended to reflect these changes. Now that these differences have been worked out, Cunneen has agreed to become a principal co-author of SB 49.
RECENT COLUMNS: Attached is a column authored by Senator Betty Karnette (D-Long Beach) and Assemblyman Jim Cunneen (R-Cupertino), which appeared in the Monday, July 7th 1997 editorial page of the San Jose Mercury News. The Merc's editorial page also featured an editorial in support of SB 49, and an excerpt from CVF's Digital Sunlight Progress Report.
I am also sharing with you a column written by Rob Gunnison, a Capitol correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. You may be as surprised as I was to see that my meager attempts to improve California politics would merit a civics lesson from a major California newspaper. Civic lessons aside, the column contains several typos and factual errors, the worst being that Gunnison described the Assembly Republican' position as the exact opposite of their true position. Also, please let me state for the record that CVF is not supporting SB 49; rather we are monitoring this bill. We are not a lobbying organization and do not take positions on legislation.
Given the fact that SB 49 represents one of the most significant pieces of legislation under consideration this session, hopefully we'll see more accurate coverage of this bill in the future.
As always, you can find past updates, news articles and much more about electronic filing/online disclosure at CVF's Digital Sunlight Web site, http://www.digitalsunlight.org.
Kim Alexander, Executive Director, California Voter Foundation
cvf@netcom.com
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