The more than 1,000 men and women who lobby Capitol politicians on behalf of thousands of clients don't approach their jobs with high levels of expectations for procedural purity.
They know that the California Legislature is more a bazaar than a deliberative body. They know that legislators have ideological biases, often tilt toward their big campaign supporters and are prone to other exterior influences. They expect to see a certain quota of grandstanding. They often watch procedural rules bent, or even violated, in pursuit of certain predetermined ends.

That said, even the most blasé Capitol lobbyists are shaking their heads these days at what they regard as a complete breakdown of the process, a semianarchy in which complex measures are zipped through committees with not even a pretense of dialogue with those affected by their provisions.
"I've never seen it this bad," one veteran lobbyist confided recently. "Not only won't they let us talk at hearings, but we can't even talk to their staffs. They just want to push the stuff through."

What happened one afternoon this month in Room 4202 of the Capitol is, unfortunately, typical of the new mode of operation in the Capitol, especially in the Assembly.

A hearing of the Assembly Judiciary Committee was scheduled to take up four bills relating to a burgeoning legal scandal, in which law firms have filed, or threatened to file, lawsuits alleging unlawful business practices against thousands of small businesses, then agreeing to drop the suits if payments were made to the law firm. It's a shakedown scenario, pure and simple, and the attorney general and the State Bar had moved against one law firm that was most active in the practice.

The question before the committee was whether the underlying "unfair competition" law should be modified to make these legal shakedowns more difficult, and the Consumer Attorneys of California, the powerful lobby that represents personal injury attorneys, was resisting any change.

The hearing was scheduled for some undeclared time after the Assembly's floor session had adjourned, which made it impossible for anyone affected by the legislation to know for certain. Assemblywoman Ellen Corbett, the committee's chairwoman, couldn't even say for certain whether the hearing would, in fact, be held after the floor session or during it. And, really, it made no difference because the script had already been written.

The majority Democrats had already decided to kill three of the bills that would change the law and pass, instead, a measure that had been in print just 24 hours -- one written by the Consumer Attorneys of California and carried by Corbett herself with no outside input. It not only didn't change the unfair competition law to make extortionate suits more difficult to pursue, it actually made it easier for lawyers to sue and collect.

The hearings and votes on the four bills went exactly according to plan. Corbett allowed just two witnesses to talk for and against each of them and limited their presentations to two minutes each. There was not even a pretense of engagement or dialogue. The fix was clearly in place.

The "committee process" is often said to be the heart of legislative procedure. Committees are supposed to take the raw material of legislation and massage it into workable form while giving at least a fair hearing to those who oppose it or seek amendments. When the committees don't do their work, however, legislative floors are clogged with half-digested, even half-baked, measures.

Critics of the current situation tend to blame it on term limits, but the relative inexperience and weak leadership that term limits spawn are just part of the problem. The effects of term limits have been magnified by the redistricting plan that the Legislature adopted a couple of years ago, which renders incumbent legislators immune to the wrath of voters, weakens leadership even more, and shrinks the ranks of moderates in both parties.

This procedural breakdown is very evident as the Legislature grapples, not very successfully, with the budget crisis. But it affects everything that's happening in the Capitol. The place simply doesn't work very well -- and that's a crisis that transcends the budget.