Isn’t it glorious when our elected officials move faster than we expect in the name of innovation and efficiency?
Yes, glorious and too rare. So let’s celebrate the wizardry of Attorney General Kamala Harris.
Before last week, ballot initiative sponsors had to wait nearly six weeks after filing before they could circulate petitions. That time was taken up by the attorney general’s office drafting of a title and summary, as well as a fiscal estimate by the department of finance and the LAO.
But last week, Harris magically shrunk that pointless, antiquated wait from six weeks down to just two days. That’s right. The compromise tax-hike initiative from Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Federation of Teachers was filed on Wednesday. A title and summary with full fiscal estimate was produced by Friday.
Now, there are a few critics out there who say this speed is not innovation but politics. They say that Harris – and the DOF and LAO — moved heaven and earth because powerful figures – the governor, the unions – on the Democratic side needed this fast so the initiative will have a chance to make the ballot.
Hogwash. Harris is all about justice and giving everyone the same protection on the laws. Just listen to her speeches. The notion that she would expedite just this one initiative for political reasons is simply laughable. (And she did a quick turnaround on an amendment of a spending cap initiative that’s going nowhere – which is really, really strong evidence that her speed was motivated by bipartisanship.)
That’s why I’m 100 percent sure that the era of the six-week wait over. And beginning today, all ballot initiative sponsors will have a full title, summary and fiscal analysis done in 48 hours. It’s probably only a matter of days before the ag’s office and the California Secretary of State publish a new schedule showing the new deadlines under this new time standard for initiative review.
The formalization of this change will almost certainly be followed by the dropping of legislation that tried to charge initiative sponsors thousands of dollars in fees, rather than the current $200, for filing an initiative because of the all the time and difficulty associated with the reviews that produce title and summary. Now that we know this can be done in two days, no one would think of charging more for such reviews.
In these difficult times when there is so much cynicism about the conduct of our elected officials, how refreshing it is to have an opportunity to celebrate a politician who is thinking only of making processes more efficient.
Thanks, attorney general.