California Assembly Bill AJR3 Amended / Bill

 BILL NUMBER: AJR 3AMENDED BILL TEXT AMENDED IN SENATE MARCH 1, 2010 AMENDED IN SENATE AUGUST 27, 2009 AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY APRIL 20, 2009 AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY APRIL 2, 2009 INTRODUCED BY Assembly  Members   Nava     and Evans   Member   Nava   (   Principal coauthor:   Senator   Hancock   )   (   Coauthors:   Assembly Members   Ammiano,     Bass,     Beall,     Blumenfield,     Brownley,     Caballero,     Carter,     Coto,     Davis,     De La Torre,     Eng,     Feuer,     Fong,     Fuentes,     Furutani,     Hayashi,     Hill,     Huffman,     Jones,     Krekorian,     Lieu,     Bonnie Lowenthal,     Ma,     Mendoza,     Monning,     Price,     Ruskin,     Salas,     Skinner,     Audra Strickland,     Swanson,     Torlakson,     Torrico,     and Yamada   )   (   Coauthors:   Senators   Pavley,     Wiggins,     and Yee   )  JANUARY 23, 2009 Relative to  offshore oil drilling   campaign finance reform  . LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST AJR 3, as amended, Nava.  Offshore oil drilling.   Political campaign funding.   This measure memorializes the Legislature's disagreement with the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and requests the Congress of the United States to pass and send to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress and state legislatures to place appropriate limits on political campaign contributions and expenditures made by corporations in connection with elections.   This measure would request that the Congress of the United States reinstate the federal offshore oil and gas leasing moratorium for the 2009 fiscal year and beyond. This measure would also memorialize the Legislature's opposition to the proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling off the Pacific Coast and any federal energy policies and legislation that would weaken California's role in energy siting decisions by those policies.  Fiscal committee: no.  WHEREAS, The protections afforded by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution to the people of our nation are fundamental to our democracy; and   WHEREAS, The First Amendment was intended to ensure that the government could not infringe on the right of the people to freely assemble and to express their beliefs and opinions freely; and   WHEREAS, While corporations make important contributions to our society, corporations, as legally created economic entities, do not and should not share all of the same rights and privileges as natural persons, such as the right to vote and the right to seek public office; and   WHEREAS, The opinion of the four dissenting justices in the recent United States Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), No. 08-205, noted that corporations have special advantages not enjoyed by natural persons, such as limited liability, perpetual life, and favorable treatment of the accumulation and distribution of assets, that allow them to spend prodigious sums on campaign messages that have little or no correlation with the beliefs held by natural persons; and   WHEREAS, Under previous Supreme Court decisions and existing campaign finance law, the individual shareholders of every corporation remain entirely free to state their opinions and to contribute money so that their opinions and beliefs can be disseminated by whatever media they choose and to the extent they choose outside of the corporate form; and   WHEREAS, In the unanimous decision in the United States Supreme Court case Federal Election Commission v. National Right to Work Committee (1982) 459 U.S. 197, Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the Court that Congress's "legislative adjustment of the federal electoral laws, in a cautious advance, step by step, to account for the particular legal and economic attributes of corporations ... warrants considerable deference" and "reflects a permissible assessment of the dangers posed by those entities to the electoral process," and, as Justice Rehnquist went on to write, "The governmental interest in preventing both actual corruption and the appearance of corruption of elected representatives has long been recognized, and there is no reason why it may not ... be accomplished by treating ... corporations, and similar organizations differently from individuals"; and   WHEREAS, The general public and political leaders in the United States have recognized, since the founding of our country, that the interests of corporations do not always correspond with the public interest and that, therefore, the political influence of corporations should be limited; and   WHEREAS, In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country"; and   WHEREAS, In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln wrote, "As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed"; and   WHEREAS, In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt said, "All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders' money for such purposes; and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts"; and   WHEREAS, In 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, in reference to the rise of defense industry corporations, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist"; and   WHEREAS, In 2002, recognizing the deleterious effects that corporate influence can have on democracy, Democrats and Republicans in Congress worked in a bipartisan manner to limit corporate contributions to election campaigns through legislation sponsored by Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002; and   WHEREAS, Congress has placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations ever since passage of the Tillman Act in 1907; and   WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission invalidated critical provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which sought to limit the influence of special interests, especially corporations, in elections; and   WHEREAS, The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission overruled the United States Supreme Court's previous decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) 494 U.S. 652 and overruled in part the Court's previous decision in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003) 540 U.S. 93; and   WHEREAS, Notwithstanding the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, legislators have a duty to protect democracy and guard against the potentially detrimental effects of corporate spending in local, state, and federal elections; now, therefore, be it   Resolved by the Assembly and the Senate of the State of California, jointly, That the Legislature of the State of California respectfully disagrees with the majority opinion and decision of the United States Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission; and be it further  Resolved, That the Legislature of the State of California respectfully requests that the United States Congress pass and send to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment to restore the power of Congress and state legislatures to safeguard democracy by placing appropriate limits on the ability of corporations to influence the outcome of elections through political campaign contributions and other expenditures; and be it further   Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of this resolution to the President and Vice President of the United States, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to each Senator and Representative from California in the Congress of the United States, and to the author for appropriate distribution.   WHEREAS, The United States Department of the Interior, acting in President Bush's final days in office, on January 16, 2009, proposed opening up six million acres off of California's coast to drilling for oil and natural gas; and   WHEREAS, While the Obama Administration has put a hold on the Department of the Interior's January 16th plan in order to consider various possible impacts of offshore oil development as well as consider input from the public, the expansion of oil development in areas previously protected by the outer continental shelf moratorium remain under consideration; and   WHEREAS, Proposed drilling areas include areas off Humboldt and Mendocino Counties and from San Luis Obispo south to San Diego; and   WHEREAS, Following the infamous January 29, 1969, oil spill that resulted in the spillage of 3,200,000 gallons of crude oil and that fouled Santa Barbara County's ocean beaches, Californians became even more wary about offshore oil drilling, continuing with the passage of additional oil and gas leasing prohibitions in 1969, 1970, and 1971; and   WHEREAS, In 1994, the California Coastal Sanctuary Act of 1994 (Chapter 3.4 (commencing with Section 6240) of Part 1 of Division 6 of the Public Resources Code) became law, creating a comprehensive statewide coastal sanctuary that prohibits, in perpetuity, future oil and gas leasing in state waters, from Mexico to the Oregon border, and that adds leases to the sanctuary as they are quitclaimed to the state; and   WHEREAS, In addition, the protection of California's spectacular 1,100-mile coastline is of the utmost importance to a number of our state's coastal and ocean-dependent industries, including tourism and commercial fishing, which contributed over $50 billion to California' s economy in 2003; and   WHEREAS, California's ocean waters are also home to four important sanctuaries, that are, by definition, areas of special conservation, recreational, ecological, historical, cultural, archaeological, scientific, educational, and aesthetic qualities and are particularly sensitive to the impacts of oil development; and   WHEREAS, Additional offshore oil leasing and production would degrade the quality of our air and water and adversely impact our marine resources, including seismic surveys that could severely impact marine mammals, including threatened and endangered species such as the blue and humpback whale; and   WHEREAS, Offshore oil development poses a serious risk of oil spills, especially with the introduction of deepwater drilling technologies and floating oil storage and processing vessels, thereby threatening marine ecosystems, and could have devastating effects on the southern sea otter, listed as a threatened species since 1997, as well as onshore wildlife, birds, and their habitats in the ocean, in estuaries, and on beaches; and   WHEREAS, Offshore oil development also leads to the industrialization of the shoreline, creating land use conflicts, visually degrading coastal areas, damaging coastal habitat, and posing potentially life-threatening public safety risks; and   WHEREAS, The further development of nonrenewable resources that degrade our air, water, and land is contrary to our state's goals of reducing emissions that cause global warming, improving air quality, and increasing the use of renewable energy; now, therefore, be it   Resolved by the Assembly and the Senate of the State of California, jointly, That the Legislature of the State of California respectfully requests that the Congress of the United States reinstate the federal offshore oil and gas leasing moratorium for the 2009 fiscal year and beyond; and be it further   Resolved, That the Legislature of the State of California respectfully opposes the proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling off the Pacific Coast and any federal energy policies and legislation that would weaken California's legitimate role in energy siting decisions due to the threat posed by those policies and legislation to the integrity of California's coastal and ocean dependent tourism and fishing economies and the consolidation of project review authority with the federal government; and be it further   Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of this resolution to the President and Vice President of the United States, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to each Senator and Representative from California in the Congress of the United States, to the Secretary of the Interior, and to the author for appropriate distribution.