In killing this bill, California Democrats proved they’re lap dogs for Gov. Newsom
California Democrats are demonstrating that they view Sacramento as their own little club, where duly-elected Republicans have no power. This malignant feature of California’s one-party state results in a legislature that seems to us like a mere puppet of the Governor.
On Thursday, the state Assembly Democrats made a quick and quiet kill of a bill that would have banned non-disclosure agreements in legislation negotiations in a move that was conniving and obvious proof of an unapologetic cabal with narrow membership — you just need a D next to your name.
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Assembly Bill 2654, introduced by Assemblyman Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield, would have updated the state’s Political Reform Act of 1974 by banning the use of non-disclosure agreements in crafting legislation for lobbyists, the governor’s staff, a member of the legislature or any public official. It was a direct response to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “Panera-gate” debacle last month.
In that case, secret negotiations on the legislation gifted some fast food outlets that produce bread an exemption from having to pay fast food workers $20 an hour. The groups involved in those negotiations signed non-disclosure agreements — NDA’s – that prevented the public from ever finding out who asked for the exemption, or why and how the exemption came to exist. The exemption appeared to benefit the Panera fast food bakery change, and with it, an owner of several franchises who happens to be a billionaire campaign contributor to the governor. The Newsom administration has unilaterally claimed that Panera does not qualify from the wage exemption because it does not make bread dough on site, a condition that isn’t in the legislation itself.
We’re not so naive to think that all bill-making happens in public; after all, both deals and sausage must be made. But according to the California Business Roundtable, the California Business Properties Association and the National Federation of Independent Business — all of whom wrote in support of the bill — the previous four California gubernatorial administrations did not use NDAs to obfuscate the process of legislating from the people and the press.
NDAs may have their role in the corporate world, but they have no place in the legislative process. They certainly should never be used to withhold pertinent information from the public. In the case of Panera-gate, we don’t know how or why the bread-making exemption to the state minimum wage was crafted. Even the author of the bill says he was not a part of the process.
Fong’s bill would have stopped that scenario from ever happening again, but his efforts were stymied almost immediately by a confederacy of Democrats. Had the governor wanted to see the bill on his desk, this bill would not have died Thursday.
Every single Democrat on the committee abstained with one exception.
—The Sacramento Bee/TNS
