Disappearing Bills: More than 2,300 Bills Died Without a Vote in the Last Two Years

We know how legislatures work: lawmakers introduce bills, debate on them and vote yes or no.

Right?

Not exactly. Of the 2,403 bills that died in the recent two-year session, CalMatters’ Digital Democracy data found just 25 failed because a majority of lawmakers voted “no.”

Most of the remaining bills disappeared through procedural tactics that leave little trace of responsibility for the policy decisions. Rather than vote no, lawmakers typically find ways to sideline bills they don’t want, causing them to fail when they don’t meet procedural deadlines.

“Allowing bills to die behind closed doors for reasons that are never made known publicly runs contrary to the purposes of having an open, transparent and accountable government,” said Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause.

Bills can disappear in various ways:

• The number of bills that died through the notorious “suspense file” was 1,045. That’s where the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees send bills that the ruling party would like to avoid, either for cost or for political reasons.
• The number of bills that disappeared because a committee chair never brought them up for a hearing totaled 668, while another 274 had at least one hearing, but were not taken up by a second committee or by the floor.
• Twenty-seven bills died because a majority of legislators did not vote, which counts the same as a vote against the bill.
• There were 364 bills withdrawn by authors.

Another 166 bills, in addition to the 2,403, were introduced, but they were just used as placeholders for budget negotiations and were never intended to pass through the Legislature.

Lawmakers introduce nearly 5,000 bills each two-year session and nearly all that proceed to a public hearing or floor vote will pass. As Digital Democracy reported earlier, Democratic legislators voted no less than 0.5% of the time in 2024. They sent 2,252 bills to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vetoed 189 of them, more than seven times as many as the Legislature voted down.

CalMatters provided the data to the offices for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, who both pointed to the many bills that do go through public discussion and votes.

“It’s important to highlight that the vast majority of proposals and bills experience thousands of hours of public discussion and testimony, with legislation often receiving multiple hearings, across both houses, in addition to several thoughtful written analyses and, ultimately, thousands of up-or-down votes from lawmakers,” said Nick Miller, spokesperson for Rivas.

McGuire, in a statement to CalMatters, said policy measures “are carefully considered by Senators from both parties who are accountable to voters and neighbors back home. As is the case every year, not all bills will have the votes necessary to move forward – it happens to all of us.”

But for some who invest time and money into lobbying on legislation that disappears, the process can feel like a black hole.

City of Stanton officials, for example, tried for months to lobby for Assembly Bill 2646, which sought to reinstate some authority for law enforcement to address solicitation —  a long-standing issue in the city. That bill responded to a law passed in 2022 that decriminalized loitering for purposes of prostitution. The law was meant to protect transgender Californians, women of color and victims of trafficking from being unfairly targeted by law enforcement.

The bill was pulled before it reached one of the first stages: a policy committee hearing. The Speaker’s office declined to comment on why the bill was pulled.

“I was deeply disappointed to learn that the bill will be killed without being granted a hearing,” Republican Assemblymember Tri Ta, the bill’s author, said via email. “Every bill deserves to be heard and voted on, ensuring a fair and transparent legislative process.”

Stanton City Manager Hannah Shin-Heydorn said that while they were open to hearing from opponents to figure out a workable policy, the process was frustrating for a smaller city that doesn’t have the resources to lobby heavily on state legislation.

“We don’t get to go represent our community members before [legislators], who then have the discretion to either agree to move it along or not,” she said. “That is unfortunate, because we’re supposed to be providing that vehicle to our community to express their concerns, and it feels like that’s getting left out.”

How bills die

Digital Democracy gathered data about the status and progress of bills  from the government website California Legislative Information. The data shows each bill introduced and every time it is considered in a committee or in a floor session. But many bills officially die because, for various unseen reasons, they fail to progress past key deadlines in the legislative calendar.

According to the Digital Democracy analysis, of the 25 bills that failed from “no” votes over the last two years, 23 were by Republican authors. Another 18  were voted down, then granted “reconsideration,” or a second chance, but did not get taken up by the committee again. That’s often a formality that allows lawmakers to be polite to bill authors.

Of the 27 bills that died from NVRs, or “no vote recorded,” 14 were authored by Republican members. Another 16 were granted reconsideration, but were not taken up by the committee again.

One of the most controversial steps of the legislative year is the suspense file hearings in the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees. Twice each year, both committees consider hundreds of bills that are estimated to cost more than $50,000 from the state’s general fund or $150,000 from one of its special funds, although politically dicey bills are sometimes sidelined too. The bills they reject are placed on the “suspense file,” where only bills that pass have vote counts read out.

It’s a process that advocates for government transparency find especially problematic. “The idea that the California state Legislature has created a mechanism for killing difficult bills in a way that enables no one to take a tough vote feels really contrary to the whole point of electing leaders to handle our toughest decisions in the state’s Capitol,” Mehta Stein said.

Some bills are introduced only to make a political statement or they are found to duplicate existing laws. Still, Mehta Stein said those decisions should be made transparent.

The first stop after a bill is introduced is the Rules Committee, where legislative leaders decide which policy committees should consider the bill. This is where some bills disappear because they are never assigned to a committee. Many more bills disappear when they are assigned to a committee, but never scheduled for a hearing while others have a hearing but are set aside and never reconsidered.

Authors also withdraw their own bills, sometimes because they learn in private discussions that the bill will not pass.

The authority for who decides how bills might fail varies  — some leaders give more decision-making power to committee chairs, for example. The rules are typically communicated to members in caucus meetings at the beginning of each legislative year.

Some speakers have also had a policy that lawmakers must “show their vote cards” — in other words, prove they have the votes for the bill to pass before it is heard, according to Mike Gatto, a former Democratic Assemblymember.

That can be a way for leaders to protect other members from having to publicly oppose issues their constituents support — or saying no to colleagues who may do the same on their bills.

It also saves the lawmaker from humiliation, he said.

“There has always been a perception among Speakers that for a bill to hit the floor without the support it needs to pass would humiliate both the author, and to some degree, the speaker,” he said. “Authors are loathe to bring up a bill and watch it die spectacularly on the floor … watching it hang there while people make the bomb noise with their mouth. That is very humiliating.”

Other states do it, too

California is not unique in its approach of killing bills by shelving them. In fact, there’s a term political scientists use to describe the process: negative agenda control, according to Jeff Harden, a politics professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies legislative transparency.

Not taking up bills can be a way for legislative leaders to represent the needs of constituents, by not wasting resources on bills that don’t merit consideration.

But the issue of secrecy became so controversial in Colorado that voters in 1988 passed the “GAVEL ACT” — or the “Give A Vote to Every Legislator” Act — requiring a public hearing for every bill. That, too, has its downsides, notes Peverill Squire, a politics professor at the University of Missouri who specializes in legislative studies.

“That complicates the legislative process and makes it harder for things to work efficiently, and it’s not clear that it really produces more in the way of transparency, because there are many ways to prevent things from really getting thoroughly debated — but it is a concern,” he said.

To some advocates in California, reducing the number of bills can improve the process. This week, legislative leaders lowered the number of bills authors are allowed to introduce each two-year session, from 50 in the Assembly to 35, and from 40 to 35 in the Senate.

“If every lawmaker has fewer bills, they care more about each one, and they might demand answers on each one to a far greater extent,” said Mehta Stein. “It would also allow committee staff to focus more intently on each bill and work on improving them meaningfully, as opposed to drinking from a fire hose and having to just kill stuff that isn’t fully baked.”

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.