By Katharine Harrison, Legislative Team Co-Lead
Do you know what can make a long-lasting impact on climate change? Legislation!
So let’s dive into the process of California legislation and how it plays a role in our work here at SanDiego350. This work is done primarily by SD350’s Legislative Team and Youth v. Oil’s Legislative Team, a group of middle and high school students, working in tandem. Our priorities for legislation and regulatory policy are:
- Keep fossil fuels in the ground.
- Support local renewables and promote energy affordability.
- Reduce tailpipe emissions and support mass transit.
- Promote building decarbonization.
Why is state legislation so important to climate activism? Actual solutions to global warming and environmental justice (pollution, lack of access to the green economy) arrive from a synergy of education and policy. Without laws, or legislation, we have only aspirations, promises, and platitudes. Protests are an important type of education that raises awareness and they are a gatekeeper to policy. And lawmaking, or legislation, is the means by which our ideas for change become reality.
Laws are durable–especially if the law was won by a 2/3 majority of the lawmakers. A proposed law of this type which we will be championing this year is the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund. Stay tuned! Executive orders from the Governor are temporarily useful but are more easily undone than a law. State agencies such as the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) carry out legislation. Laws dictate what agencies must, can, or cannot do according to particular timelines.
How do laws move from ideas to durable actions?
A law may have its origin in years of street activism. To learn how this works we recommend Michael Mendez’s book Climate Action from the Streets. Here we present how lawmaking works within our bicameral California legislature, the Assembly and Senate.
Each legislative session is two years, and there is a regular cycle of decision making for each year. During the fall legislators develop ideas for new laws, from their own passions and priorities, from lobbyists, and from their constituents. Legal staff and co-sponsoring organizations with subject matter expertise help them write the actual bills. Our team meets with our San Diego Assembly members and Senators and we share each other’s legislative priorities for the year.
Legislators introduce bills into their chamber from December to late February. At this point we are scrambling to sift through hundreds of bills pertaining to climate change and environmental justice. Powerful web applications guide us in this process. We also meet regularly with other non-profits and alliances across the state to assist us in this dragnet. As we identify salient bills, we meet as a team and endorse (support) or oppose them.
Each bill passes through its chamber’s relevant policy committees, such as the Utilities and Energy Committee, where it is evaluated, amendments to it are made, and it is voted on. A bill may cease to move forward, or “die,” at any link in the chain. We have opportunities to influence committees by submitting or signing on to letters, lobbying in Sacramento, and making our voices heard before or at hearings.
By mid-May, each surviving bill passes through the final committee, Appropriations, which analyzes its fiscal impact, and may then go to a floor vote (or die). During this time, we prioritize a small slate of high impact bills to lobby for over the summer recess. If a bill passes the floor vote, it moves on to the other chamber and the process starts all over (committee votes, Appropriations, floor vote.) We get busy meeting with San Diego legislators in the other chamber from the bill’s house of origin, urging them to vote for our priority bills, and taking actions to influence committees. The final step is to bring the bill back to the house of origin to concur with amendments.
By early September the bills that have made it through arrive on the Governor’s desk to be signed or vetoed (or simply ignored and pass into law). “Urgency” bills with a 2/3 majority are implemented immediately, according to the timeline in the bill. Other bills can be challenged in court or by a ballot referendum, potentially delaying implementation for years.
Now that you know a little more about the Legislation process – help us turn ideas into action!
There are multiple ways you can be involved with this helping to pass climate legislation and we at SD350 will help you learn. We have tasks and roles aplenty for all levels of participation. As a Legislative Team member you can:
- Join our Zoom meetings with legislators, especially if you are a constituent
- Make calls and send emails to Sacramento at critical times.
- Share in the writing of endorsement requests, an internal document that informs us of a bill’s key features and the arguments for and against it.
- Become a lay “expert” on a particular legislative area or issue
- Participate in regular Zoom meetings with our allies and report back to us.
- Help with organizing communications and events such as our annual legislation training in June.
- Support SD350 campaigns such as last year’s Safe and Healthy California that ended the oil-drilling-setbacks referendum and this year’s Climate Superfund.
- Travel occasionally with a few of us to Sacramento to lobby with our allies.
The Legislative Team meets online monthly on the third Wednesday of the month at 7:00 pm and we pass emails in between, as needed. If you would like to join a meeting to see how we roll, or have an interest in the Youth v. Oil Legislation Team (which meets online every other Wednesday from 6:30 – 7:30pm), fill out our volunteer interest form, and we will reach out to you.