A friend of mine has a saying: “Sometimes you wonder; and other times you know.” In the latest California budget, state assemblyman Chuck DeVore successfully convinced the senate to pass a bill—ABX4 23—to open up the possibility of off-shore oil leases to help balance the California budget—without building more oil rigs. On July 24, the assembly killed it on a nearly straight party-line vote.

But you won’t find that vote in the California assembly’s record. Immediately after the vote, assembly majority leader Alberto Torrico (D-Fremont) made a motion to expunge the vote. I knew nothing about it until I read part two of Gabriel Malor’s DeVore interview on the Ace of Spades, where DeVore mentioned it in passing:

The only piece of recurring, non-tax revenue that was in the budget was something I authored. It was a bill that would have opened up the first off-shore oil leases in California in 40 years. It passed the state Senate and then the Sierra Club and other radical environmental groups did a full-court press to kill it. They were able to succeed in the Assembly where it died, I think, on a 43-28 vote. So 43 no, 28 yes. There were a couple Democrats voting for it. And then, of course, the vote was expunged, which got me on Stuart Marty’s show and talking about that.

Apparently the California assembly expunging votes is not unheard of, but it usually happens late nights when no one’s watching, not in the middle of the afternoon. Agree or disagree with the bill, expunging the votes is bullshit. Sometimes I wonder how screwed up California politics is; other times, I know. This is screwed.

You can see the votes at sfgate.com at the bottom of Erase the cowardice or Glenn Beck’s Vote Expunged.