California lawmakers will evaluate 13 laws of their choice

from Yue Stella YuCalMatters

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Chairman of the meeting Robert Rivas claims a new way to hold state government accountable: a series of legislative hearings to test how well state laws are working.

But which laws? State legislators who volunteer for the initiative, elected 13 laws passed in the last decadeoften laws they wrote themselves. Rivas did not give specific criteria for the selection, saying only that it was based on the voluntary participation of the deputies.

Details about the program remain scarce: It’s unclear how many bills have been submitted for consideration, how many hearings and hours of work the project will lead to, or whether and how lawmakers expect to act on the process’ findings.

And any legislative reform needed to strengthen those laws will likely have to wait until at least next January, when a new legislative session begins, Rivas told reporters at a press briefing Tuesday.

Rivas said the new program, called the Outcomes Review Oversight Project, will help lawmakers reevaluate laws they’ve authored or championed and, if necessary, improve them.

Fourteen members of the Assembly will evaluate laws ranging from one in 2015 that authorized the state labor commissioner to crack down on wage theft to one last year that required mortgage forbearance for the victims of the Los Angeles wildfires, according to a press release from Rivas’ office.

Lawmakers will hold committee hearings and community meetings and announce “findings, actions and decisions” in the fall.

“Significant oversight certainly means asking tough questions … about how effective these laws have been, but then being willing to follow the answers wherever they lead,” Rivas said.

But isn’t fixing ineffective laws already the job of state lawmakers, who change dozens of laws each year to address concerns they, their constituents, or special interest groups have?

Rivas acknowledged as much Tuesday, but said the hearings will allow lawmakers to dive deeper into certain laws and create “a new culture here that emphasizes accountability.”

Chairman of the Parliamentary Electoral Commission Gail PellerinDemocrat from Santa Cruz, said the effort recognizes that “passing a law is not the finish line. The real measure of success is whether that law works in the real world for the people it was meant to serve.”

Pellerin will lead the review of a Act of 2024 she is an author who aims to ensure that foster children stay at home while foster care agencies struggle to insure themselves. The law requires the California Department of Human Services to report last year on opportunities for those agencies to be insured, but Pellerin said Tuesday that there appears to be “no progress” on the report. A spokesperson for the department did not immediately return CalMatters’ request for comment.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.