PD Editorial: Senators take a break from fundraising

The 2015 legislative session adjourns Sept. 11, barely two weeks from now.

Hundreds of bills are awaiting action, including proposals to mandate a 50 percent reduction in the amount of gasoline consumed in California by 2030, raise the minimum wage by $3 over the next 2½ years, require warning labels on sugary beverages and lower the threshold for voter approval of special local taxes from two-thirds to 55 percent.

These are the sorts of high-stakes measures that turn the final weeks of the legislative session into a bottom-line bonanza for legislators, with fundraising breakfasts and luncheons, cocktail parties and dinners scheduled around committee hearings and floor sessions.

Anyone wanting a legislator’s ear needs only buy a ticket.

Anyone who doesn’t might be left wondering about a missed opportunity to sway someone one way or the other on a close vote.

There’s no practical way to get money out of politics. It’s expensive to run for office, and there’s limited public support for public financing of campaigns.

But these end-of-session cash grabs contribute to public cynicism about government and politics.

To their credit, state senators adopted new rules last year that prohibit fundraising during the final 30 days of the legislative session and also during the month prior to the deadline for adopting a state budget.

The Senate acted unilaterally after the Assembly rejected legislation that would have placed the fundraising blackout in state law.

Which, of course, means that Assembly members are still raising money, only with less competition from the Senate, during this crucial legislative period. On Wednesday alone, a capital newsletter reported that 18 Assembly members - almost one in four - had fundraisers scheduled.

The new Senate rules aren’t the product of enlightenment. They aren’t even uniformly popular with state senators. Senate President pro tem Kevin De León, D-Los Angeles, pushed a fundraising blackout through after three of his members were indicted, two of them in cases directly related to money.

That may be one reason the new rules haven’t gotten a lot of attention. But they are still a step in the right direction.

Writing in the Sacramento Bee this spring, former Fair Political Practices Committee Chairman Dan Schnur said: “Fundraising blackout periods do not carry the sweep or grandeur of public financing of campaigns, the overturn of Citizens United or unilateral limits on either corporate or union contributions. But it represents the first substantive step toward campaign finance reform in California politics in many years: De León deserves applause for being willing to brave the insults of his colleagues and his donors in order to do the right thing.”

We don’t hesitate to criticize the Legislature for its many failings. Sometimes lawmakers do the right thing, and that too should be recognized.