Intro to the California Legislature Process
From somebody that didn't grew up in California
This is a live post; I’ll keep updating as I find more useful resources.
I didn’t grew up in California, which means I didn’t learn about civics and government in school. For many years I was barely tracking the activity in our legislature, beyond voting on propositions and voting for elected officials, but in recent years I’ve been more involved in the process and I’ve been learning.
This living post captures some of the resources I’ve discovered and I’ve started using. Bear with me as I flesh it out over time to incorporate new discoveries
I may write another post focused on the local (City/County) actors.
Key Actors
The Governor (Gov Newsom)
The Senate
The Assembly
Your Representative
As a resident of the state you have a representative based on where you live. There are 40 senators elected to 4 years terms and 80 assembly members elected to 2 years terms.
You can find your representative only using your address:
Each representative has a website. For example, as of this writing my two representatives are
Senator Josh Becker, Senate District 13 - website
Assemblymember Marc Berman, Assembly District23 - website
The websites (notice the URLs, nice!) have plenty of information, including contact, their press releases, events, legislature work.
Your representative is always happy to hear from you
Position Letters
In addition, you can also submit a position paper on a bill, see the Advocacy Quick Reference Guide. Each committee will have a calendar for their hearings; here is an example:
Other Legislators
Contacting a legislator not in your district is usually not useful, but there are some exceptions.
On the Senate side:
Senate President Pro Tempore
Senator Mike McGuire (Senate District 02)Senate Appropriations Committee Chair
Senator Anna Caballero (Senate District 14)
On the Assembly side:
Speaker of the Assembly
Robert Rivas (Speaker Site, Assembly District 29)Assembly Appropriations Committee Chair
Buffy Wicks (Assembly District 14)
Tracking Bills
The official way to track the legislature bills online is Leginfo. Leginfo provides the text of the bill, the sponsors, changes to the bill, votes, etc. You can create a free account and then track bill changes as they happen.
I also like BillTrack50 and Legiscan.
You can also check out the actual hearings via video, live and archived. The UCLA Law school has a page listing video and audio links of the legislature. Notable are:
Senate TV Schedule
Senate Daily File and Calendar
Assembly Daily File and TV Schedule
Assembly Media Archive
Senate Media Archive
Some Process Rules
The legislature process is quite complicated. I’ll capture snippets as I encounter them. Here is the Senate Legislative Process but I believe the description covers both houses. Below is my version of it, though I am sure it has mistakes.
The rough process is:
Bill is introduced in an originating house (Senate or Assembly) by some sponsors
The rules committee then assigns it to some committee.
Once approved by that committee, any bill that costs more than $150K is placed in a suspense file to be reviewed by the appropriations committee.
The appropriations committees works in batches off from the suspense file; see this article.
Then it needs to be approved by the whole originating house
Then it will need to be approved by the “other” house (Assembly or Senate)
Then it will need to be signed by the Governor, who can veto it
If the Governor vetos a bill, the legislature can overturn the veto, but this has not happened in decades in California.
Once signed, the bill becomes chaptered, and it is inserted in the proper section of the legislature.
There are 3 “readings” of the bills. One as it comes in, one after going through the appropriations committee, and one before the final vote (in the house of origin). The bill can be amended at any time (I was tracking an EV bidirectional charging bill AB-233 that became an abortions right bill after the second reading!).
This is the 2025-2026 Legislative Calendar, and these are the official Assembly and Senate deadlines.
The Process Diagram
This image, from LegInfo, summarizes the process:
Assembly
Bills first go to the Rules committee and then go to a committee that corresponds to the bill. Here is a list of All Assembly Committees.
Appropriations Committee Rules
Bills with financial impact need to be approved by the Appropriations Committee
The suspense file is a process to batch bills. Bills past a committee can be placed in the suspense file, and then they will get voted.
Senate
I don’t know where are the suspense files for the Senate
Key Committees
I’ll expand this section as I encounter committees hearing bills I track. For each case I indicate the name of the committee and the abbreviations used for the Senate and the Assembly version, with links.
Senate Energy Utilities and Communications (SEUC)
Assembly Utilities and Energy (AUTL aka AUE)
Assembly Conveyance and Communications (ACom)Senate Housing Development (SHOU)
Assembly Housing and Community Development (AHCD)Senate Local Government (SLCL)
Assembly Local Government (ALCL)Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development (SBP)
Assembly Business and Professions (SBP)Senate Environmental Quality (SENV)
Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials (AESM)Joint Committee on Emergency Management (TBD)
Assembly Emergency Management (AEM)
Additional Acronyms
Aye/No/NVR - Vote conventions. NVR stands for No Vote Recorded and it is a common way for Democrats to vote against a bill without really voting.
More Useful Links
Summary of Legislature Process from the California State Association of Counties
Another Summary, from Politico Pro
UCLA Law School:
Politico Pro has another good description of the California Legislature process. https://www.politicopro.com/California%20-%20Guide%20to%20Legislation/POL-06jun2019-CA-Legislation-Guide-r3.pdf