Digging Through the Pile That Has Left Schwarzenegger's Desk: Bills Signed--And the 22% He Vetoed This Year

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

By the time he put his pen down less than two hours before the midnight deadline, Governor Schwarzenegger disposed of 964 bills dropped on his desk by the legislature this year. He signed 750 of them and vetoed 214--meaning that 22%--between one-fifth and one-quarter of the measures that ran the gauntlet and received majority votes or higher levels of support in both houses of the legislature--are dead for the year. The only exceptions to this are bills that may pass in the special sessions on health and water that are ongoing. Yesterday, the last day, he signed 80 bills and vetoed 72.

The winners: The highlights of last minute bills signed into law include a massive alternative fuel and clean air bill, the release of some terminally ill prisoners, the banning of toxic phthalates from children's' toys, banning transfats in food in school cafeterias and vending machines, requiring the microstamping of bullet cartridges fired by semiautomatic pistols, consumer protection and labeling requirements for bottled water, banning lead shot in areas where the endangered California Condor lives, requiring the truncation of social security numbers on government documents to prevent identity theft and measures to look at what can be done similarly with the use of these numbers in colleges and universities, a package of increased protections for crime victims, bills amping up and harmonizing California's discrimination laws, allowing name changes by those who marry so that a man can take his wife's last name and also making name changes easier for domestic partners, outlawing the involuntary implantation of identification devices (RFID chips)below the skin as a requirement of employment, prescription drug labeling and another bill that will protect water and the environment from disposal of these drugs, improving safety with the hauling of dangerous and flammable materials on the state's freeways (such as the one that resulted in a conflagration near the San Francisco Bay Bridge earlier in the year, and the list goes on.

At the end, the Governor vetoed two major water bills by Senator Perata, one of them SB 1002 that would have appropriated $610.89 million in bond money already passed by the voters in last year's infrastructure bonds and Prop 84 on for various water projects, much of it for the Delta. This means that unless legislation passes in the special session on water, there will be a delay in getting started on what is immediately needed to be done on water.

If you want to find out what happened to a particular bill or sift through the lists yourself, we have listed some of the online sources available. We will have more analysis of different policy areas and the winners and losers, but let's take a look at some of the ones from the weekend:

The last bill signed by the Governor was AB 118 by Speaker of the Assembly Nunez, the Vehicle Technology, Clean Air, and Carbon Reduction Act of 2007--a major alternative fuels and clean air bill. Among its many features, it will give the California Air Resources Board, in conjunction with the Bureau of Automobile Repairs the daunting task of putting together a program for the voluntary retirement of vehicles ranging from cars to trucks that are high polluters. It is funded through a $1 increase in the annual vehicle registration fee over the next 7 years, raising approximately $30 million a year.