Well, the governor didn’t get the water deal he wanted – at least not yet – but he decided to declare victory anyway and sign the bills on his desk by the midnight deadline.
Some of them, anyway. Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger finally announced around 9:30 p.m. Sunday that he would “weigh all the bills on their merits,” plenty of them came up short on his scales. Of the 685 bills released by 3 a.m. this morning, the governor signed 456 and vetoed 229. That’s less than last year’s record rejection rate of 36 percent.
Although you’ll never hear it from Team Schwarzenegger, the threat to veto virtually every bill passed by the Legislature last month ultimately turned out to be little more than bluff and bluster. Or, to put it more delicately, a negotiating ploy. By the end of the evening, his loud demand for a complete, signed and sealed water deal had morphed into a vague statement that “we have made enough progress in our negotiations … while we still have a few remaining issues to work out.”
But as Attorney General Jerry Brown noted Friday in response to legislators screaming that Schwarzenegger was blackmailing the Legislature with the veto threat, “the veto power of the Chief Executive has long been recognized as a powerful weapon for shaping policy.”
The first batch of 183 bills came out just after 3 p.m., while the governor and legislative leaders were still meeting in his office trying to hammer out a water plan. Another 168 were released around 7:30 p.m., with a third batch of 100 turning up at 11:30 p.m.
The governor has called a special legislative session on water policy, starting today, although there is no guarantee anything will happen in a hurry. Darrell Steinberg, the Democratic leader in the state Senate, did say, however, that he expected there would be bills up for public hearings later this week. Of course, getting the needed votes for those bill is another thing altogether.
While the governor commended the legislative leaders on “their focus and commitment to solving this crisis,” it’s worth remembering that when the session ended last month, legislators were saying they had made huge progress on the water question and just needed a teeny bit more time to get the final issues settled.
That was Sept. 11. A month later there are still “a few remaining issues to work out,” which has a distressingly familiar ring to it.
As far as the bills are concerned, it’s often more interesting to look at what the governor vetoed than focus on what he signed, especially since the individual veto messages can bring a little personality to a process that feels more like an assembly line of legal verbiage than a studied and reasoned look at the future laws of the state.
Generally, the vetoes fell in one of three categories, at least as far as the governor was concerned:
1. It wasn’t necessary.
2. It would cost money.
3. He didn’t like it.
While most of the veto messages were plain vanilla, Schwarzenegger – or the aides who wrote them – occasionally let their pique shine through.
For example, SB 315 by Democratic Sen. Carol Liu of La Canada Flintridge would allow school districts to use a “walking school bus,” where a group of children can walk to and from school, accompanied by an adult.
The bill, according to the veto message, is “one of the least substantive education bills approved by the Legislature this year,” since nothing in the current law prohibits an adult from walking a group of children to school.
“Common sense should not require legislative authorization,” the message harrumphed.
The governor also got a bit of payback when he vetoed SB 641 by Democratic Sen. Ellen Corbett of San Leandro. Among other things, the bill allows the State Bar to collect dues from California lawyers in 2010.
Schwarzenegger is more than a bit miffed that the State Bar panel that reviews the qualifications of potential judges not only rated Fresno’s former GOP state Sen. Chuck Poochigian “not qualified” for the state appellate court post the governor nominated him for, but also leaked that confidential evaluation to the press.
While Poochigian was approved anyway, that didn’t make the governor any happier. In his veto message, Schwarzenegger said that unspecified “recent actions” by the judicial rating panel “call into question the State Bar’s impartiality in considering judicial appointments” and warned that they better solve that and other problems if they want him to sign a bill that let’s them collect their dues next year.
It’s good to be the king.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.