Call California the state of recalcitrance.

Let’s face it. Efforts to improve access laws here end up going nowhere.

When they pick up even a little momentum, they get hacked to pieces, like Assemblyman Rob Bonta’s bill designed to put some teeth in enforcement of the Public Records Act. AB 1479 passed in the Assembly, but when it got to the Senate earlier this month it was quickly neutered.

A provision that would have allowed a judge to fine a public agency for willfully withholding disclosable records from release — a fact of life here in the state of recalcitrance — was left so convoluted and weak that the bill’s backers fled, pulling their support.

We can thank not the League of Cities or the state Special Districts Association, but the California Professional Firefighters for this hack job. The union was “actively opposing the measure,” the California News Publishers Association staff wrote in a statement.

The firefighters sought ‘hostile amendments that would prevent the application of the (bill’s) penalty provision.” Bonta yielded to the pressure, CNPA reported. The amendments were added. .

So was a sunset provision that will strip away any changes it makes to the public records act in five years. The bill now has all the teeth of a new-born.

Why the firefighters? Whose water was the union carrying? Neither union president Lou Paulson, nor its lobbyist, Christy Bouma, responded to messages I left them.

Bonta’s chief of staff, Evan Corder, told me in an email that the amendments were needed to move the bill forward. Read that as Bonta either couldn’t overcome the union’s opposition or didn’t want to try.

Corder also wrote that the bill “remains an important first step” and keeps conversations about transparency alive.

But the bill is so weakened that it will accomplish little to nothing. If it had any potential, its supporters would have remained.

The bigger question is what’s wrong in this state full of policy wonks, techies and do-gooders? Why can’t good bills to reform an antiquated access law make it through Sacramento unscathed?

The first answer may well be one-party rule. It doesn’t matter which political party has a stranglehold on a state the way the Democrats do in California with their control of both chambers of the Legislature and all statewide elected offices. It simply matters that such a stranglehold exists.

It could just as easily be Republicans in Kansas. (But Kansas has a better open records law than California that include access to public employee personnel and disciplinary records, including those of police.)

Reforms are hard to come by when there is little dissent. One-party rule also creates an attitude of protecting one-party rule and protecting one’s friends. California’s legislative term limits have created queues stretching to the Salton Sea of politicians waiting for their turn to take a step forward — from the water board to the city council to county government to the state capitol and beyond.

Don’t step out of line. Don’t rock the status quo. Do you think anyone who even gets just a sniff of statewide office in California doesn’t immediately dream of national office? No one gets there without as many friends as they can muster. Also, don’t anger the unions.

So why would they pass laws that might make it easier to understand the inner workings of governments that their party controls, laws that would make it easier to root out potential wrongdoing by their friends?

Is it any coincidence that California has some of the most powerful public employee unions in the country, especially in law enforcement and public safety, and some of the nation’s weakest transparency laws generally and about law enforcement specifically?

Of course not.

With deep pockets and the ability to slap “weak on crime” or “weak on public safety” labels on any candidate they choose, law enforcement unions wield immense political power. And they are protected by politicians who have regularly annihilated bills that would open police disciplinary actions to the public.

While this goes against the public good and is antithetical to the kind of transparency and access everyone should want, too many lawmakers in Sacramento lack the intellectual courage to stand for anything other than special interests. The tail constantly wags the dog.

California is the state of recalcitrance. It is also the state of embarrassment.