Is Your Representative Spending Too Much Time Out Of the District

The California State Assembly enforces compliance of the residential criteria for its members when running for office, not the Secretary of State or the Courts. They are the authors of penalties for violation of residency requirements for elected officials in the State, County, and City.

AB1676 was enacted in 2010 as an amendment to Section 1065 of the California code. It includes resignation, jail time, and financial penalties for violation of residency requirements BUT the bill specifically excludes the authors, members of the Assembly, from penalties for residency violations.

1065. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a person elected to a nonjudicial public office for a county, a city, or a school district, shall continue to maintain his or her domicile within the jurisdiction in which voters are qualified to vote for the office during his or her term of office. A person does not violate this subdivision if, after being elected for a term of office, the boundaries of the jurisdiction in which voters are qualified to vote for the office are changed during that term of office so as to exclude his or her domicile.

The Secretary of State website states an assembly candidate must “Be a registered voter and otherwise qualified to vote for that office at the time that nomination papers are issued to the person.”

So, while Article IV, Section 2( c) of the California Constitution requires one year residency in the district and three years residency in California, the California SOS website includes this caveat; “however, it is the legal opinion of this office that these provisions violate the U.S. Constitution and are unenforceable.”

The reality is this. If you started a job but it did not require you to disclose if you lived in or if you “knew the territory”, wouldn’t your superiors grow suspicious if you never gave any indication you were engaging with the existing clients and generating new business? If all your time was spent generating contacts outside your assigned territory wouldn’t your superiors suspect you were not planning to stay long?

Too many of our current representatives of the West San Fernando Valley are doing exactly this to us, the voters, their employers. They are spending so much time out of the district we have to ask, who they are beholden to and if they actually could drive in the district without getting lost.