Jerry Brown's bill actions frustrate, elate, confound
By David Siders The Sacramento Bee
Published: Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1A
Copyright 2011 The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
For a week, the political moderation of Gov. Jerry Brown could be measured by the Legislature's yo-yoing mood. Day by day, sometimes hour by hour, lawmakers of both parties hailed, then disparaged him.
Brown signed many Democratic and labor-backed bills, but not all. He vetoed four of five bills the California Chamber of Commerce considered "job killers."
He rejected a measure requiring helmets for young skiers and snowboarders, citing concerns about the "continuing and seemingly inexorable transfer of authority from parents to the state."
Then he frustrated family rights advocates by signing legislation to let children 12 and older seek medical care to prevent sexually transmitted infections without parental consent.
"This is back to the future," said Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College. "This is the unpredictable Jerry Brown of the 1970s, sometimes showing a liberal side, sometimes showing – if not a conservative side – at least a side that's not predictably liberal."
Brown, a Democrat, finally dispatched early Monday the last of hundreds of bills sent him this fall.
He received rare applause from Republicans early last week, when he vetoed legislation that would have let unions organize child-care providers who work out of the home.
But he quickly raised their hackles, first signing legislation restricting California ballot initiatives to November elections – when turnout is far higher for Democrats – then signing the California Dream Act, allowing undocumented immigrant college students access to public financial aid.
Republicans threatened referendum campaigns to undo both measures.
When the dust settled Monday, leaders of both the California Chamber of Commerce and California Labor Federation – two groups that often lobby at cross-purposes – issued statements commending Brown.
The labor federation's Art Pulaski said Brown "moved the state in the right direction by signing into law a number of critical bills that address our deep jobs crisis and other challenges facing workers."
Chamber President Allan Zaremberg said Brown's "commitment to 'do no more harm' to California's economy will send a strong message that eliminating economic uncertainty is the first element of any program to make California more competitive."
Brown once compared successful politicking to paddling a canoe, both to the left and to the right, and his record of frustrating lawmakers of his own party is long. When asked Monday if there were any inconsistencies in his veto and signing messages, Brown said there were not.
"I look at each bill," he said at a business event under drizzling skies in Belmont. "Since the same mind is looking at each bill, there's at least a modest consistency."
Brown was so annoyed last month by the volume of legislation the Democratic-controlled Legislature produced that he suggested cuing the "veto blues," though lawmakers sent him fewer regular session bills, 870, than to any governor since 1966.
He did veto proportionately more bills than when he was governor before, from 1975 to 1983, when he vetoed fewer than 5 percent of regular session bills.
Brown's veto rate was about 14 percent, slightly above the annual average for governors since 1967, but was nowhere near as high as the more than a quarter of regular session bills vetoed by his predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In his veto and signing messages, Brown urged restraint, saying some bills weren't necessary and others cost too much. His messages were sometimes lyrical, sometimes crabby, but rarely plain.
"Instead of recognizing that perhaps we have reached testing nirvana, editorialists and academics alike call for ever more measurement 'visions and revisions,' " Brown said in vetoing legislation to change how high school performance is measured.
Brown's quote from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" did nothing to inspire the bill's author, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.
The Sacramento Democrat had other occasions to cheer Brown, but following the veto of his education bill, he said in a prepared statement that the governor had left in place "a narrow accountability system that is failing our students, teachers and schools because it is based 100 percent on standardized test scores."
Steinberg was upbeat the next afternoon, when Brown signed his bill requiring health insurers to cover certain autism treatments. Opponents had said the measure would drive up health insurance costs.
"This is a critical victory for thousands of California children and families," Steinberg said in a prepared statement. "For many of them, having this therapy covered by their insurance is the difference between despair and hope."
He rejected a measure requiring helmets for young skiers and snowboarders, citing concerns about the "continuing and seemingly inexorable transfer of authority from parents to the state."
Then he frustrated family rights advocates by signing legislation to let children 12 and older seek medical care to prevent sexually transmitted infections without parental consent.
"This is back to the future," said Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College. "This is the unpredictable Jerry Brown of the 1970s, sometimes showing a liberal side, sometimes showing – if not a conservative side – at least a side that's not predictably liberal."
Brown, a Democrat, finally dispatched early Monday the last of hundreds of bills sent him this fall.
He received rare applause from Republicans early last week, when he vetoed legislation that would have let unions organize child-care providers who work out of the home.
But he quickly raised their hackles, first signing legislation restricting California ballot initiatives to November elections – when turnout is far higher for Democrats – then signing the California Dream Act, allowing undocumented immigrant college students access to public financial aid.
Republicans threatened referendum campaigns to undo both measures.
When the dust settled Monday, leaders of both the California Chamber of Commerce and California Labor Federation – two groups that often lobby at cross-purposes – issued statements commending Brown.
The labor federation's Art Pulaski said Brown "moved the state in the right direction by signing into law a number of critical bills that address our deep jobs crisis and other challenges facing workers."
Chamber President Allan Zaremberg said Brown's "commitment to 'do no more harm' to California's economy will send a strong message that eliminating economic uncertainty is the first element of any program to make California more competitive."
Brown once compared successful politicking to paddling a canoe, both to the left and to the right, and his record of frustrating lawmakers of his own party is long. When asked Monday if there were any inconsistencies in his veto and signing messages, Brown said there were not.
"I look at each bill," he said at a business event under drizzling skies in Belmont. "Since the same mind is looking at each bill, there's at least a modest consistency."
Brown was so annoyed last month by the volume of legislation the Democratic-controlled Legislature produced that he suggested cuing the "veto blues," though lawmakers sent him fewer regular session bills, 870, than to any governor since 1966.
He did veto proportionately more bills than when he was governor before, from 1975 to 1983, when he vetoed fewer than 5 percent of regular session bills.
Brown's veto rate was about 14 percent, slightly above the annual average for governors since 1967, but was nowhere near as high as the more than a quarter of regular session bills vetoed by his predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In his veto and signing messages, Brown urged restraint, saying some bills weren't necessary and others cost too much. His messages were sometimes lyrical, sometimes crabby, but rarely plain.
"Instead of recognizing that perhaps we have reached testing nirvana, editorialists and academics alike call for ever more measurement 'visions and revisions,' " Brown said in vetoing legislation to change how high school performance is measured.
Brown's quote from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" did nothing to inspire the bill's author, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.
The Sacramento Democrat had other occasions to cheer Brown, but following the veto of his education bill, he said in a prepared statement that the governor had left in place "a narrow accountability system that is failing our students, teachers and schools because it is based 100 percent on standardized test scores."
Steinberg was upbeat the next afternoon, when Brown signed his bill requiring health insurers to cover certain autism treatments. Opponents had said the measure would drive up health insurance costs.
"This is a critical victory for thousands of California children and families," Steinberg said in a prepared statement. "For many of them, having this therapy covered by their insurance is the difference between despair and hope."
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