The State Assembly rejected the only sensible reform that would do anything to deal with the root causes of a prison crisis that has been built by 30 years of progressively draconian sentencing laws.  SB110 (Romero) would have created an independent sentencing commission with the ability to rewrite sentencing laws outside of a political culture obsessed with “tough on crime” poses.  Everybody with even a modicum of understanding of the prison crisis knows that the overcrowding (at a time when crime is down) is a direct result of mandatory minimums and three strikes and the multitudes of nonviolent offenders serving long sentences in our jails, some as a result of the War on (some kinds of) Drugs.

Now, there is a bill, AB160 by Sally Lieber, voted out of the Assembly earlier this year, that is similar to the bill Sen. Romero authored.  But, there are some substantive differences, otherwise how do you understand these quotes:

Romero likened the defeat of her bill to the Legislature’s throwing up its hands and telling federal judges to take control of the troubled prison system.

Don Specter, an attorney with the inmate advocate group Prison Law Office, said the vote “certainly emphasizes the one-dimensional approach California has to crime, which is to build more prisons.”

You can read the Romero bill and the Lieber bill, still pending in the State Senate (It passed the appropriate committee by a 9-7 vote).  The Lieber bill can’t touch sentences established through the initiative process (so this is probably about saving three strikes from scrutiny).  The Romero bill would have made recommendations to amend those types of sentences.  Overall the Romero bill is more comprehensive.  This could be some kind of petty jealousy between the chambers.

Hopefully the Senate shows some leadership and passes the Lieber bill, which would at least move things in the right direction.  Until then, on the flip I’m going to list those Democrats who would rather hang on to their little fiefdoms of “tough on crime” sentencing than enact the only proper reform to deal with a crisis that now will almost certainly be handled by the courts.

Voting No:

Arambula, AD-31 (Fresno)
Fuentes, AD-39 (Sylmar) (WHAT???)
Galgiani, AD-17 (Tracy)
Lieu, AD-53 (Torrance)
Nava, AD-35 (Santa Barbara)
Parra, AD-30 (Hanford)
Salas, AD-79 (Chula Vista)
Torrico, AD-20 (Fremont)

Absent, Abstaining, or Not Voting (occasionally a craven tactic often so they can say that they didn’t vote against it):

Charles Calderon, AD-58 (Whittier)
De Leon, AD-45 (Los Angeles)
Karnette, AD-54 (Long Beach)
Levine, AD-40 (Van Nuys) (Maybe he was absent, but EXCUSE ME????)
Wolk, AD-8 (Davis)

These legislators need to answer to their constituents and explain why they want to keep an unsustainable and broken prison system alive.  Furthermore, the leadership needs to explain why they failed to whip the proper number of votes to get this reform passed.

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Photo from flickr user Roadup. Original here.

(I’d like to welcome our newest frontpager, shayera. She’ll add a lot to the discussion as an LA area blogger. Thanks Shayera! – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

With the Senate session starting to wind down, California legislators have been debating a huge number of bills to send up to the Governor.

The LA Times highlights just a few of them. And I thought I’d pass them on to you.

Senate gets heated passing gun bill

The bill that seems to have generated the most discussion was Assemblyman Mike Feuer’s (D-Los Angeles), which require semiautomatic handguns to be equipped with technology that would stamp the bullets fired from the weapon. The measure passed on a 21-17 vote. It was introduced in the Senate by Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch) and will now go back to the Assembly.

Assemblyman Sandre Swanson (D-Alameda) introduced a bill that would require prison officials to allow agencies to distribute condoms and dental dams to prison inmates. The bill was passed on a 21 to 18 vote. Republican legislators argued that the bill “sanctioned prohibited behavior.”

Parents take note. Assemblyman Gene Mullin (D-San Mateo), had a bill passed which mandates that children up to 8 years old must use child safety seats when riding in motor vehicles. The current law requires use up to 6 years of age.

Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) introduced legislation that would allow anyone involved in a marriage or domestic partnership to change his or her surname, regardless of gender.

A total of 100 bills were in discussion yesterday.

In National news, it seems Congresswoman Mary Bono has gotten engaged to a fellow Congressmember Rep. Connie Mack, R-FL. AP

There are a bunch of things that I wanted to post about that I might as well highlight in one post, kind of like when Asia recruited members of Yes, King Crimson, and Uriah Heep to create a “supergroup”:

• BeDevine notes that yet another gender-neutral marriage bill has passed the Legislature, and once again Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to veto it because “the people have already spoken on that issue.”  Apparently the people don’t vote for their own representatives in the state legislature.  And at what point does the statute of limitations run out on referring to a ballot measure from 2000?

• Senator Loewenthal has pulled back the container fee bill that would have charged importers a $30 fee on each cargo container to go towards fighting pollution at the ports.  This will go into negotiation and probably be passed in some form in 2008.  Hopefully it’ll be a form that will still have some teeth.

• Dan Weintraub makes the fallacious argument that the United Farm Workers are somehow betraying their principles by asking for the ability to form a union after a majority of employees sign cards endorsing it.  He thinks that there’s no intimidation in a secret ballot election, apparently ignoring decades of union busting, threats, and workplace closures that have arisen from attempts to unionize.

• As mentioned in the Quickies, the CA Hospital Association has agreed to a tax in themselves… sort of.  In exchange, they would receive money back to them based on how many poor people they treat.  Most hospitals would actually make money on the deal.  It’s also hard to see how this would do anything to fix our state’s strained emergency rooms, which presumably is where these poor people would be encouraged to go for treatment.

• Also in the Quickies is some good news on the enviroment, as new CARB chief Mary Nichols has set some pretty strong targets for emissions cuts.  They’re first steps but they presage positive developments in the future.

• Finally, the Teamsters waged a successful protest at the California-Mexico border against the Bush Administration effort to allow 100 Mexican trucking companies to deliver goods anywhere in the United States.  This will not only damage our environment and public safety by opening up the roads to unsafe Mexican trucks, it undermines American job security for one of the few good union industries left to our working class.  The goal is to marginalize unionized truckers, pure and simple.  Matt Stoller thinks this could be the next “Dubai ports deal” if the word gets out about it.