Gov. Brown vetoes high percentage of bills.

by Brian Leubitz

Every year, legislators from each house get a certain number of bills they can carry. It varies from year to year, depending on leadership, but can vary from as little as 10 to well more than double that number.  Every year, legislators basically go shopping for bill ideas. Some of them come in through the normal constituent relationships. Others from lobbyists of sponsoring organizations, and well, various other sources.

The interesting part of this is that legislators typically want to get their total up to the line.  Whether that is to make it appear that they have a lot of accomplishments, or to look busy is a matter of perspective.  However, every year we get a slew of bills at the end of session, many very important. Others, well, less so.

Gov. Brown prefers a less is more approach, and when it has come to vetoing bills that have come across his desk during this bill frenzy, it has shown.

From mid-September to late Sunday night, Brown signed 466 bills and vetoed 97, his office said.

Brown’s veto rate for the year overall was slightly lower, at about 14 percent. In the first year of his third term, Brown signed 760 bills, vetoed 128 and allowed one bill to become law without his signature, his office said. (SacBee)

Now, the 17.2% veto rate isn’t astronomical, as it is far lower than Gov. Schwarzenegger’s rate. However, given that his party is in control of the Legislature, you would expect that number to be slightly lower. But, again…less is more in Jerry’s world.

There were a few bills on the recent action pile that are worth a bit of note.  Sen. Juan Vargas’ bill against supercenters, SB 469, got the veto stamp.  The bill would have required supercenter developers to conduct an economic impact report to disclose impacts upon local economies prior to being approved to build in a local jurisdiction.  But, with the false notion that we don’t want to slow Wal-Mart from “creating jobs”, nobody has really sat back and thought of the real economic toll on the economy.  And apparently, it won’t be happening in 2012 either.

Brown also vetoed a bill regulating “debit card paychecks”.  These debit cards are targeted at low income workers and carry some pretty onerous fees, as part of the high cost of being poor.  But banks generally get their way when their lobbyists are involved, and they were able to get Gov. Brown to kill the bill while saying that he wants to work with the institutions and the Legislature to find a “compromise” for the debit cards.

Finally, in case you didn’t hear, the Governor signed the shark finning ban, at least one bill that environmentalists and progressives could count as an accomplishment.