Governor Schwarzenegger Has Over 550 Bills to Sign or Veto in One Week

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

By my count, the Governor had approximately 660 bills on his desk when the legislature adjourned on September 12. Since then, he has taken action on about 110 of them, leaving approximately 550 to be dealt with in the coming week.

That's a fairly high number compared with past years, especially 2006 when the Governor used the month long period of time at the end of a year's session given him under the California Constitution to stage elaborate photo opportunities to sign bills as part of a "Rose Garden" strategy during his re-election campaign.

Schwarzenegger dealt with some of the legislation before adjournment that passed in the last two weeks of the session, for instance vetoing vetoed SB 924 (Perata) which would have allowed an advisory vote on the Iraq War. He did so in the waning hours of the session just a few minutes before midnight when the deadline for his action approached. But for any bills delivered to him after September 14, the last day the legislature could have met under their Joint Rules, he has until Sunday, October 14, 2007 to act.

Since the end of the legislative session, 103 bills by both Republicans and Democrats have been signed into law, and 7 have been vetoed all of them by Democratic authors.

The end of the legislative session is like a busy week on the New York Stock Exchange. Not just because of the fundraisers that just happen to be scheduled then, but because of the backlog that occurs at the "desks" of the clerks of both houses. Periodically, we would hear of calls being lifted so that final votes would take place on legislation and the desk could be cleared.

There is a whole chain of possession and command, where bills are then taken to the basement of the Capitol for what is known as "enrollment," a formal acknowledgement that they have passed and then they are delivered to the Governor as the enrolled copy of There's a ton of paperwork, and it takes time under the best of circumstances to carefully process this. Sometimes the process inexplicably--at least publicly--slows down. For instance, the Governor just got AB 8, the Nunez-Perata health bill, this last week. Pony Express?