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Comment by JustSomeNobody | Hacker News Reader

> The company managed to convince California Assemblyman Miguel Santiago to introduce a series of last-minute secretive Tuesday night amendments that were then voted on without debate during a Wednesday morning hearing...

How is this legal? Why is this legal?

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Which part?

Remember that all of these articles have spin. The spin so far i've seen on this is pretty stupid[1].

One thing it doesn't note: The amendments were approved 8-0, so all the republicans and democrats on the committee were in favor.

But of course, that gets spun as massive conspiratorial collusion by the folks who think it was wrong, and bipartisan cooperation by those who think it was right.

edit: It turns out they were not approved 8-0, despite a number of news stories claiming otherwise. They were approved 8-2[2]

[1] Someone tried to paint the picture that AT&T was a major campaign contributor to him, but they really aren't: https://www.followthemoney.org/entity-details?eid=23421278

[2] https://medium.com/@fightfortheftr/at-t-funded-democrats-in-...

et al

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billPdf.xhtml?bill_...

The amendments weren't approved 8-0, are extremely hostile to the bill as voted on by others, were introduced in a very unusual way and were not negotiated - they just cut out like half of the law including some pretty critical parts.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xht...

Normally (I think) the committee would just refuse to pass the bill and propose amendments that would make it passable, and there would be negotiations. Instead they introduced huge changes the night before the vote and passed a massively modified version of the bill that does not at all reflect the intentions of its authors.

You are correct, i edited the post. It was 8-2

All the news stories that claim 8-0 are wrong, including

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-net-...

https://medium.com/@fightfortheftr/at-t-funded-democrats-in-...

https://www.wired.com/story/california-net-neutrality-bill-w...

The chairman called two votes. The first one came at the opening of the hearing BEFORE any testimony to accept the chairman's amendments. That passed with the help of Republicans and was a rude slap to the entire point of a hearing (voting BEFORE testimony?).

The second vote (8-2) was to pass the bill as amended out of committee. The chairman did not allow Wiener to pull the bill. Several Dems who voted for the final vote say that they did so so the bill would survive, not because they approved of the amendments.

  That passed with the help of Republicans

No, it didn't. It didn't even need a single Republican vote. It's recorded right on the public leginfo site.

Could you copy and explain the relevant part from the leginfo site please? I don't really know what to look for.

Just pull up a given Bill and click on the Votes tab.

It also says it was referred to the Privacy and Consumer Protection committee. As the changes kill the 'consumer protection' aspect perhaps they can be unamended in that committee.

  all the republicans and democrats on the committee were in favor

No, all of the Democrats were in favor. 2/3rds of Republicans were opposed.

Think OP is referring to the last-minute amendments.

I always question what "last minute" really means in these stories. Usually, when i go and look up the legislative calendar, the committee was scheduled to meet and do mark up of that bill, well in advance. So it usually not "last minute" in that sense, only in the sense that "it happened before the vote".

There have been cases where the committee meeting/etc was scheduled last minute, but that's super-rare (and not allowed in a lot of legislatures, actually).

Here, i believe it was scheduled a week ahead of time, from the data i can find.

These change were, from what I'm gathering, introduced the night before the vote. That's pretty last minute.

DannyBee said the amendments were approved 8-0, so presumably that doesn't make them "secretive", nor is it questionable why they are legal: Everyone who is supposed to vote on those amendments did. In favor.

> DannyBee said the amendments were approved 8-0, so presumably that doesn't make them "secretive"

Just because the people who are required to vote on something know about it doesn't mean they are not secret or "secretive." This is the public's business.

> nor is it questionable why they are legal: Everyone who is supposed to vote on those amendments did. In favor.

There are frequently other considerations in whether something is legal than whether the people who needed to vote on it voted for it.

I know, but I'm pretty sure that's what the OP was referring to.

This is standard operating procedure for the CA legislature clear back to the Willie Brown era, or perhaps even Unruh.

"Uh, is this an 'A' vote or a 'B' vote?"

Managed to convince. Would be interesting to learn how one does it.

Unanimity is a shield. They can all mutually defer their reasoning for supporting the bill to everyone else who voted, and say that their vote against wouldn't have made a difference. Any vote against would have put pressure on all of the others.

AT&T came up with a deal that pleased everyone, and therefore immunized everyone. There were only eight; it's not hard, and politicians are notoriously cheap.

Isn't such deal called a bribe in normal countries?

There was a study a decade ago, they found that something like 80% of all bills signed into law in the United States are never read, debated, or even considered by their proponents.

When a big business says bend over, American politicians ALWAYS bend over, be they Democan, Republicrat, or Liberterrorist.

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