California Democrats deserve to be embarrassed for bungling sex trafficking bill | Opinion

Senate Bill 14 had all the ingredients for legislation that was destined to sail through the California Legislature. It elevated the sex trafficking of minors to a serious felony on multiple convictions. It had a boatload of bipartisan support. It sailed out of the Senate on a 40-0 vote.

Then it reached the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

And on Tuesday, it died without a single Democrat voting for it.

Opinion

On Thursday, it was a different story. A bipartisan outcry led by Gov. Gavin Newsom caused the bill to come back before the committee whose members promptly voted for it - save for Mia Bonta and Isaac Bryan, who abstained.

The issue exploded far beyond the merits of the bill and exposed the excesses and arrogance within the California Legislature’s dominant one-party rule. Such power comes with a great responsibility to respect the view of the majority of the Legislature and the public at large. The Democrats on the Assembly Public Safety Committee ignored that responsibility on Tuesday, to their great embarrassment on Thursday.

Efforts to toughen sentences legitimately face questions given California’s prison overcrowding and budget constraints. But as Republican Heath Flora of Ripon told the Assembly on Thursday morning, the choice on SB 14 was straightforward: “Pick pedophiles or children.”

As author Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, told the committee on Tuesday, “Human trafficking is exploding in cities across our country. The horrendous practice could very well easily be defined as the crime of our time. Sadly, California is a hub of human trafficking.”

Because of various credits for reduced sentences, a Californian convicted of felony sex trafficking can only serve a handful of years. Grove spoke of a member of her district who was convicted of sex trafficking involving a 15-year-old girl and was released in less than four years.

The “serious felony” status is the foundation of the “Three Strikes” law passed in 1994. Serious and violent felonies can result in sentences of 25 years to life on the third conviction. Its opponents, then and now, question its value as a deterrent. Supporters say it is a matter of the sentence fitting the crime.

“I hope,” said Grove, “that we can all agree today that repeatedly selling minor children for sex, forcing them to be raped over and over and over again every single day, should be considered a serious felony in the state of California.”

The committee heard directly from a victim of the crime, Odessa Perkins. A survivor, head of the non-profit emPOWERment that seeks to improve conditions for fellow survivors.

“I am here to say, I was molested and raped repeatedly by Black and white men and even some women,” Perkins said. “So it does not matter the race. What matters is saving our children.”

As she testified, Perkins must have had a sense that her words were not reaching the majority of the committee.

“I am here, and I look at your faces and wonder, do you care?”

The eight-member committee’s two Republicans, Juan Alanis of Modesto and Tom Lackey of Palmdale, quickly voiced their support and moved the bill for a full committee vote. That was to be the last support the bill would receive.

Isaac Bryan, D-Los Angeles, shared his reasoning against SB 14. “All evidence has shown that longer sentences don’t actually stop things from happening,” he said. “All they do is increase our investments in systems of harm and subjugation at the expense of the investments that communities need not have this be a problem, to begin with.”

Liz Ortega, D-Hayward, agreed. “Three strikes has shown it has failed many in our community,” she said. “Sending someone to prison for the rest of their lives is not going to fix the harm moving forward.”

Committee Democrats tend to vote as a pack, with Chairman Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, as pack leader. He said there were existing sentence enhancements that prosecutors and judges apparently were not using. “Adding enhancements, they still may not do it,” he said. “At the end of the day, what we want is to protect these women.”

All Democrats on the committee declined to cast a vote. That would normally seal a bill’s fate for the year. Instead, the pack had lit a political fuse that would soon detonate.

On Wednesday in a brief exchange with reporters, Governor Gavin Newsom said he had contacted Senator Grove in appreciation for her “efforts on this and wanted to make sure she knew that today.” The issue is one “I care deeply about. Have since my time as (San Francisco) mayor, as a supervisor, working then with District Attorney Kamala Harris.”

Newsom signaled that the fight over SB 14 was not over. “We will be following that up,” he said Wednesday. “We will have more to say on that very shortly.”

Suddenly, minds began to change.

“On Tuesday, I made a bad decision,” Assemblywoman Ortega tweeted Thursday morning. “Voting against legislation targeting really bad people who traffic children was wrong. I regret doing that and I am going to help get this important legislation passed into law.”

On the Assembly Floor Thursday, Bryan moved to allow the Public Safety Committee to rehear SB 14, which they passed. Jones-Sawyer forbid any committee comments. “It is up for a vote only,” he said.

Bills tend to have their toughest vote in the policy committee in the second house. The author typically does not have friends and connections in the other chamber. And the policy committee has the greatest expertise on the subject. Many bills rightly die there or get amended in significant ways. That is the way the system is supposed to work.

The system can break down, however, under dominant one-party rule. A committee majority can feel emboldened to make decisions that neither reflect the majority of the committee’s own party nor the body at large.

When that happens, democracy fails.

That is precisely what happened Tuesday.

That is the only explanation for the Committee’s sudden and spectacular reversal on Thursday.

In the end, do not blame this or any committee. Blame the legislative leader who picks the committees and allows rogue ones to perpetuate. The Assembly has a new leader now, Speaker Robert Rivas of Salinas.

All eyes should be on Rivas and his next moves. The underlying problem was not resolved on Thursday.