I haven’t done my random bill blogging for a while, so I fired up the ol’ (and by ol’, I mean circa 1996) Senate website.  I tried to be as random as I could be and chose 1279.  Of course, that was too high to get a Senate bill, so I was stuck with only one choice: AB 1279 by Assembly  member Bill Monning (D-Monterey).

AB 1279 is a short bill.  So short, in fact, that it is likely just a placeholder bill for a program to be later defined.  Here’s the entirety of it as it currently stands:

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

 SECTION 1.  It is the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would fund salmon restoration projects.

I suppose I agree with the merits of the sentence, despite any issues with the budget.  Both the environmental and financial impacts of the death of the salmon are enormous. So, go salmon restoration.

If anything, I suppose this can be a testament on some legislative principles. First, there’s the gut and amend process.  Basically this allows one house to pass an innocuous measure like this, and then either stick in a real bill in its place on the subject matter at hand or an entirely new bill. It’s not necessarily the most transparent process, and shouldn’t be used on a regular basis.  However, it can be used to help with some important legislation.  Marriage equality comes to mind.  When the Assembly did not have the votes to pass then Asm. Leno’s marriage equality bill, a bill passed by Asm. Yee was gutted on the Senate side and replaced with the civil marriage language.

While this could, in theory, be a holding bill for some legislation to be passed in the normal course of business, the bill deadline for all policy committees in the Legislature to pass out bills that will have a fiscal impact on the state is this Friday.  If Asm. Monning really wants to fund salmon restoration, he would need a real bill pronto.