The ten-month path
An author in December 2026. A published commission report by July, and a California team negotiating with Washington by October. This is the sequence with every step clearing on its first attempt.
Ten months is enough to take California from a drafted resolution to a published commission report and a negotiating table. None of it needs a new statute or an act of Congress to begin.
1. Where the clock starts
The clock starts on December 7, 2026. The Legislature has been in final recess since August 31, and the 2025–26 session adjourns on November 30, so the Resolution goes in at the start of the new one. The text stands as drafted. It needs an author and a number.
The new Legislature organizes that day and returns for business on January 4, 2027. The Governor Californians elect on November 3 takes office the same day. Counted from December 7, ten months runs to early October 2027.
2. Month by month
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December 2026: a member authors it
One of the Legislature’s 120 members agrees to introduce the Resolution. Once a second member signs on, the rest of the building treats it as a live measure rather than one member’s idea. Supporting a study commits nobody to independence, which is why the list can grow quickly once it starts.
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January to February 2027: adopted by both houses
Ten or fifteen co-authors, a hearing in the committee it is referred to, and a majority in the Assembly and then the Senate. A joint resolution can do all of that in about a month, for the reasons in section 3.
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By April 2027: the commission convenes
The Resolution requires the commission to convene within 60 days of adoption. The Governor, the Senate President pro Tempore and the Speaker appoint three members each. The Secretary of State and the Attorney General jointly nominate three more, and those twelve choose the last three from California’s universities and policy institutes.
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April to June 2027: hearings in public
The commission meets under the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, which bars a state body from restricting the broadcast of its open meetings. Economists, constitutional scholars and former diplomats testify on the seven questions the Resolution names, and any broadcaster that wants to can carry the hearings live.
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By July 2027: findings
A report 60 to 90 days after the first meeting. Twelve months is the latest the Resolution allows, and nothing in it stops the commission filing sooner. The report carries majority and minority findings and goes to the Legislature and the Governor.
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August to October 2027: a negotiating team
With findings in hand, the Governor appoints a team to represent California in talks with Washington, beginning with the state’s own members of Congress. The Legislature can start drafting the ballot question at the same time.
3. Why a resolution can move this fast
Most legislation can’t be heard in committee until 30 days after it is introduced. That rule is in the California Constitution, Article IV, section 8, and again in Joint Rule 55, and it applies to bills. Joint Rule 6 provides that joint resolutions are not bills for either purpose, so the Resolution can be set for a hearing without the wait.
A joint resolution also never reaches the Governor. Once the Assembly and the Senate adopt it, it is filed with the Secretary of State. There is no signature to wait for and no veto to survive.
4. What the Governor can do
A Legislature voting to study sovereignty is news far beyond California, and it gets reported as California weighing independence whatever the Resolution’s text says. That attention lands on the Governor, who has two ways to speed the work up.
The first is the appointments. The Governor holds three of the fifteen seats and can name them the week the Resolution is adopted. Once those names are public, the Speaker and the President pro Tempore are under pressure to name theirs.
The second is the executive branch. Governors create and staff advisory commissions by executive order as a matter of course: Governor Newsom established the Future of Work Commission that way in August 2019, in Executive Order N-17-19. The same authority lets a Governor direct state departments to give the commission staff and data, which is what a report in 90 days rather than twelve months would need.
5. Talks with Washington, and a vote
Under Texas v. White, a state may leave the Union through the consent of the states, and that consent has to be won in Washington. A team appointed on the strength of published findings opens those talks with a record in hand. The legal argument.
Negotiating before a vote has a precedent. On October 15, 2012, the UK and Scottish governments signed the Edinburgh Agreement, which gave Scotland’s independence referendum a legal basis and committed both to a vote that would deliver “a result that everyone will respect.” Scotland voted on September 18, 2014. A California team can seek the same: terms for a vote, agreed before it is held.
The vote belongs to Californians. The Resolution provides for it: on receiving the report, the Legislature may consider “the drafting of legislation or ballot initiatives” to give effect to the findings. That is move 3 of the plan. Why Republicans in Washington might agree to let California go is answered in the FAQ.
6. What sets the pace
Every date on this page runs from a single event: a member of the Legislature agreeing to author the Resolution. Nothing else can start before that, and the people best placed to make it happen are constituents writing to their own Assemblymember or State Senator.
After that, organized constituents in specific districts decide how fast the co-author list grows and how hard the pressure lands on the appointments. Organize where you live.