California lawmakers are adept at avoiding accountability. Two shadowy practices — the suspense file and strategically skipping votes — deny voters the transparency they deserve.

The “suspense file” was in action on the Friday before Labor Day, a day when politicians like to schedule things to avoid public attention.

Any Assembly bill that would cost at least $150,000 and any Senate bill that would cost at least $50,000 winds up in the suspense file. Then, in rapid fire votes, the appropriations committees advance some bills to the floor and leave the rest to die in the suspense file.

During those votes, the public doesn’t get to comment, and little discussion occurs. What really happens is that bills that are controversial or politically difficult suffer a quiet death without most lawmakers having to vote on them.

Lawmakers don’t like taking tough votes, especially against popular bills with powerful opponents. For example, this time appropriations committees killed or postponed until next year several bills to regulate artificial intelligence. Lawmakers were stuck between the many Californians who want the state to rein in AI and a deep-pocketed industry.

As a result, Californians won’t see new rules prohibiting landlords from using AI to set rent, auditing how the state uses AI nor requiring data centers to report how much water they use.

The suspense file also gobbled up legislation to speed up high-speed rail construction, expand health care coverage and more.

If Californians aren’t happy about that, there’s no good way to hold lawmakers accountable. The suspense file shielded legislators from difficult votes that opponents could use against them and voters might not like. All told, about a quarter of the remaining bills died in the suspense file, 70 in the Assembly and 117 in the Senate.

The suspense file is not lawmakers’ only defense. Lawmakers can kill a popular bill by simply not showing up. Because their non-votes count as “no” votes, a bill can fail when enough people simply hide in their offices. Those absent lawmakers avoid the taint of voting against something popular while still achieving the outcome they want.

The same trick works with popular bills that will pass but a lawmaker could take heat for supporting from, say, a business in the district. If it has enough votes already, that lawmaker can skip the vote. If anyone asks, they supported the idea, but if the business asks, they can say they didn’t vote for it.

Like the suspense file, this practice avoids forcing politicians to take controversial positions. There’s nothing for voters to get upset about and nothing for a future opponent to turn into an attack ad.

According to a CalMatters analysis, current Democratic legislators have voted “no” less than 1% of the time in recent years. They kill bills without getting their hands dirty.

CalMatters also found that of the 2,403 bills that died in the two-year session that ended last fall, only 25 fell because a majority voted against them. The rest died in the suspense file, with lawmakers skipping votes or in backroom deals.

These practices cheat voters of the transparency and accountability that are the foundation of a functional democracy. It’s past time that the Legislature reforms them.