Latest legislative twist suggests California won't have a sentencing commission anytime soon

This blog post from the LA Times provides what seems to be the latest news out of the California legislature concerning proposed prison and sentencing reforms in that state.  Here are the basics:

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass has put off a vote on a package of legislation intended to trim spending on state prisons, and she intends to eliminate a provision of the plan that would have created a commission to reevaluate California’s sentencing laws, according to an Assembly source who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

After keeping Assembly members until midnight Thursday in the hope of reaching a deal on prisons, Bass (D-Los Angeles) said she would try to approve it today. But based on conversations over the weekend, she still does not have enough votes from the Democrats who control the chamber....

Although Bass agreed to bolster the law enforcement representation on the sentencing commission, Assembly member Alberto Torrico (D-Newark), one of three Assembly Democrats running for attorney general, said Sunday that a key issue remained: how much power lawmakers would have over whether to implement the panel’s recommendations.
 
Under the Senate’s plan -- and in the Assembly version, until now -- the commission’s recommendations would automatically take effect if the Legislature and governor failed to reject them. That way, even if lawmakers rejected the panel’s findings, they would still go into effect if the governor vetoed the lawmakers’ vote.  “The notion that the Legislature would not be required to vote on a sentencing commission proposal, I just think it’s real problematic,” Torrico said.

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• Debate and drama continues in California over prison and sentencing reform
• California prison and sentencing reforms getting closer to reality
• Possibility of California sentencing commission continues to generate controversy
• Federal judicial panel orders California to drastically cut prison population
• "Free 40,000 California inmates? Not so fast."
• "Gulags in the sun"
• Prison reforms and cuts left uncertain in final California budget deal
• Economic necessity finally forcing long-needed reform in California
• "State police chiefs' association backs prison plan in budget"
• Defending the prison cuts in the new California budget
• "The Fiscal Crisis in Corrections: Rethinking Policies and Practices"
• Reviewing how tough times are resulting in prison releases