Behind the Scenes: Sierra Club California’s 2023 Legislative Report Card

Sierra Club California’s 2023 Legislative Report Card will be released this week, and I wanted to give a refresher on how it’s developed and how it can be used. 

In our effort to influence legislation and ensure accountability for lawmakers, Sierra Club California places great importance on the annual release of our Legislative Report Card. Every fall, our dedicated team at Sierra Club California meticulously assesses the voting records of all California state legislators, and considers 10-12 key bills from the legislative session.

Our report cards have been produced annually by Sierra Club California staff since at least 2003, and all of the issues since then are posted on our website. We don’t know until after the last day of the legislative session which bills will be included in that year’s report card. Often, legislators or their staff ask us if a certain bill will be included, and our honest answer is we don’t know. Therefore we can’t share what bills will be on the report card until the session is over.

While we identify priority bills early in the year, there's no guarantee they will make it onto the final list. Bills and legislative priorities can change significantly during a session, particularly in its last month. As such, we wait until the session concludes to make our selections.

While we identify priority bills early in the year, there's no guarantee they will make it onto the final list. Bills and legislative priorities can change significantly during a session, particularly in its last month. As such, we wait until the session concludes to make our selections.

Our staff lobbyists and I select the report card bills together. We look for bills that closely align with our organizational goals and our members' views  on policies that safeguard California’s environment and communities. Equally important, we seek out bills where voting records clearly distinguish pro-environmental legislators from others.

Our members and volunteers live everywhere in the state, and different policies affect their communities differently. We always try to vary the subjects of the bills we score, to make sure we’re addressing the issues that impact our supporters across California. Some bills may be of greater interest to members who live in urban areas that are highly impacted by vehicle pollution or oil drilling activity. Other bills may be of more importance to our rural members who live near depleting ground water resources or at-risk ecosystems. 

To ensure transparency and fairness, we only select bills for the report card if they were included in our floor alerts, and if Sierra Club California actively lobbied on them. This preemptively addresses any claims that we failed to provide adequate notice about our stance on a bill.

We typically try to keep the list of bills to about 10 in each house. This can be a variety of bills that we supported or opposed, bills that made it through both houses, and bills that were held. Once we identify those bills, we use the legislature’s own vote recording system to compile the scores. Before publication, we share individual legislators' scores with their respective legislative offices to verify the accuracy of our records.

Once we release the Report Card, then comes the fun part. We actively encourage our members and volunteers to schedule meetings with their legislators in-district and hold them accountable for their votes on the environment. Assemblymembers and Senators who receive low scores often find this annoying, but our goal with the report card is not to please legislators. It is to inform the public about how their elected officials are voting on crucial environmental issues. 

The Report Card also includes a section that evaluates the Governor's performance during the legislative session and which bills he ultimately signs or vetoes. This section serves as a vital tool to assess the alignment between the Governor's rhetoric on climate change and his actions. (This is my favorite section, personally). 

Again, the 2023 Report Card will be out this week so stay tuned! While I can’t give you all the details, one spoiler I will share is that you will be pleasantly surprised at Sierra Club California’s efficacy to get good bills over the finish line and stop the bad bills. We couldn’t accomplish this without your support.

Thanks for being a champion for the environment in California!

Sincerely,