OUR LEGISLATION PROCESS
Myriad bills that mention mediation and arbitration are introduced in the California Legislature each year. Our lobbyist collects them for our Mediation and Arbitration Legislation Committees, made up of CDRC members, who sift through them to determine which ones have a potential impact on our field. The committees recommend positions on the bills, consonant with our Principles. We also hold regional forums to give members a personal voice in shaping legislative policy. As the bills move through the legislature our lobbyist constantly monitors them so we can respond when the legislation is adverse to ADR by design, oversight or lack of understanding.
As part of our overall educational role, we provide materials on arbitration and mediation to new legislators appointed to key committees. Our lobbyist educates their staffs on the basic terminology of dispute resolution. In 1995 when legislators and their aides confused arbitration and mediation and were about to write legislation that failed to distinguish between the two, we wrote a Primer which explained the differences and distributed it to legislators and their staffs.
Most of our membership dues are dedicated to our lobbying effort.
Some of our legislative accomplishments
Arbitration was under attack because many folks saw medical malpractice arbitration with Kaiser as fundamentally unfair, the Senate Judiciary Committee proposed massive changes in arbitration law. The CDRC Arbitration Legislation Committee and lobbyist Donne Brownsey testified at Senate Judiciary Committee and then assisted the Senate Insurance committee in writing legislation which addressed the specific problem in Kaiser arbitration system rather than drastically overhauling the arbitration statute, which would have dramatically altered arbitration in California.
When the Law Revision Commission re-wrote the mediation confidentiality law, CDRC’s Mediation Legislation Committee and our lobbyist worked closely with the Commission so that the final version enacted into law the definitions of mediation contained in our CDRC Principles.
At one point, the legislature passed three different and conflicting arbitrator disclosure laws, CDRC worked on clean-up legislation which removed many conflicts between the various provisions of law.
CDRC lobbied for enhanced funding to insure community mediation programs could continue to operate when DRPA funding for ADR was in danger.
When opponents of arbitration used scare stories to have the legislature re-write the law -- making arbitration complicated and more expensive than litigation -- we worked to separate fact from fiction and give the legislature a reasoned view of how arbitration actually works.
Our lobbyist discovered proposed legislation which could have made unintentional behavior by arbitrators a felony. When our lobbyist contacted the sponsors of the legislation she found that they did not know criminal acts are not arbitrated. When she explained this to the legislators they removed arbitrators from the bill.
We lobbied for funding for juvenile dependency mediation when it was threatened because legislators did not understand its value.
When opponents of mediation tried to amend arbitration disclosure laws to include unworkable requirements for mediation, we were able to stop them. We educated legislators about the differences between arbitration and mediation and helped them recognize how their fundamental differences mean you can not simply apply the same rules to both processes.
Right now CDRC is fighting to continue pilot programs in court annexed mediation , to restore arbitrator immunity, to allow people to bring whoever they want to represent them in an arbitration, and to insure that any regulation of ADR recognizes the important distinctions between arbitration and mediation.
As you can see, in its brief history CDRC has become a major force for educating the legislature and helping shape legislation which affects the dispute resolution community. We are proud of our accomplishments as the voice of ADR in the Sacramento. Remaining up to date on what is happening in Sacramento is easy if you can access the Web. Go to www.sen.ca.gov and select legislation. When you type in the bill number you can choose the latest amended version for your viewing.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON PENDING BILLS...
You can get additional information and text of bills currently pending in the California State legislature. Go to www.sen.ca.gov to find out what is currently pending and where each bill is in the legislative timeline.