Governor Turns to Annual Grind: Bushel of Bills

Ronald Reagan said he signed them in bed while watching television with Nancy. Jerry Brown reviewed them in the back seat of his famous blue Plymouth. And Pete Wilson sometimes spreads them out on the kitchen table of his suburban Sacramento home long after his wife, Gayle, has retired for the night.

Bills by the bushel confront every California governor in the weeks after the frantic end of each year’s legislative session, when lawmakers leave town after disgorging hundreds of proposed new laws in a matter of days.

This year’s measures range from the momentous (a new cigarette tax to pay for breast cancer research) to the mundane (a bill setting standards for the size, shape and location of for-sale signs in mobile home parks).

But they must all be dispatched by midnight tonight, Wilson’s deadline for finishing this year’s version of an annual, 30-day marathon. By day’s end, Wilson will have reviewed and signed or vetoed more than 1,100 pieces of legislation--nearly 40 a day.

Unlike the Legislature’s end-of-session sprint, which happens under the glare of television lights and the scrutiny of the Capitol press corps, the governor enacts laws in private, usually in his inner office.

But the process is hardly less frantic.

“It’s an almost impossible task for any individual human being to make an informed decision on that much information in that short a period of time,” said Allan Zaremberg, who was legislative secretary for former Gov. George Deukmejian and for Wilson before becoming a California Chamber of Commerce lobbyist. “I’m damn glad I’m not there.”

Working from early in the morning to well past midnight, the governor during this period will make decisions that reach into the lives of nearly every Californian. He will weigh new taxes and new spending, consider social policy and look at scores of bills to crack down on crime.

“It’s a crazy process,” Wilson said over the weekend during a short break from the grind.

On just one day last week, Wilson signed legislation requiring child bicycle riders to wear safety helmets and enacted a measure requiring children under 6 to wear life jackets when riding in boats; he vetoed a bill to extend unemployment insurance payments for hundreds of thousands of the state’s long-term jobless, and he rejected a measure that would have allowed drug addicts to obtain sterile needles from government-sponsored programs to fight the spread of AIDS.

As the governor plows through the bills, a small army of aides serve as his supply line--organizing, analyzing and packaging the legislation for his review.

Each bill, upon its arrival from the Legislature, finds a home in a crisp manila folder, which soon begins to fatten. Copies of earlier versions of the bill, a letter from the bill’s legislative author, a sampling of mail from constituents and lobbying groups, and a note about the volume of phone calls to the governor’s office are usually inserted into the file.

Analyses of the measure from Administration agencies and departments with an interest in the subject are included, along with a cover sheet summarizing the arguments for and against the bill and a recommendation from the governor’s legislative advisers.

As the days go by, the bills begin to pile up. They are sorted into boxes according to their possible fate: likely to sign, consider for signing and consider for veto. (Any bills the governor does not act upon by the deadline become law without his signature.) Extra secretaries and policy aides are called in from Cabinet agencies to work overtime sorting through the material and fending off curious callers.

“You suddenly realize you don’t know what day it is,” said Bob Williams, who served as deputy legislative secretary for four governors, two from each party. “You just know you’ve got a deadline to meet.”

Any bill that is the slightest bit controversial goes to the governor equipped with a veto message, even if the staff has recommended that he sign it. Files holding bills recommended for veto are flagged with a red tag.

These standby veto messages are a must--there is no time to write them at the last minute if the governor decides to veto the bill. But their very nature--a strong argument, in the governor’s words, against a bill he might decide to sign--makes them a risky item.

Once, Deukmejian’s press office inadvertently distributed a veto message on a bill the governor had approved. Five days later, his office sheepishly announced that Deukmejian had signed a bill that his veto message had said would give “preferential treatment” to the cable television industry and interfere with the efforts of tax officials to determine the fair market value of industry holdings.

As a governor’s deadline for acting on bills approaches, lobbyists flood the office with calls, seeking to squeeze in one last word before it’s too late.

The most effective advocates are those who are accessible at any hour of the day or night to answer queries from the governor or his staff.

“Sometimes you have a question on a bill and you find out the lobbyist is sailing somewhere near the Bahamas,” Zaremberg said. “You try not to let that color your view of the legislation.”

Each governor has found his own method amid the madness.

Although Reagan took some bills home and at times reviewed legislation while vacationing at a friend’s Malibu beach house, he preferred to weigh the most controversial measures in formal meetings with his Cabinet.

Reagan’s successor, the decidedly informal Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., took a different approach.

“Jerry tried the Cabinet one day, and that ended that,” Williams said. “I don’t think he was comfortable with the structured environment.”

Instead, the restless Brown preferred to keep on the move, and Williams had to follow him wherever he went, bills in hand.

“I got quite experienced working out of the back seat of the blue Plymouth,” he said.

Deukmejian’s approach was more solitary. He would take boxes of bills into his office and go through them alone, setting some aside if he had questions.

“We had to infer from his decisions what his thinking was,” said Maureen Higgins, who worked for Deukmejian and now serves as Wilson’s legislative secretary.

Wilson favors more interaction, and tends to go over the bills with an aide or two present to handle questions on the spot. When time permits, the staff will even organize a debate session on an especially controversial bill so Wilson can hear a full airing of the issues at stake.

Although Wilson starts slowly each day, his stamina is unquestioned, and he routinely outlasts the staff, sending them home at midnight or a bit later and then working alone until 2 or 3 in the morning.

The governor admits, however, that even he reaches a point when the words in front of him begin to blur.

“There are moments when you get both brain-dead and your rear end goes numb,” Wilson says. “That’s when it’s time to quit.”

Wilson Signs Bill Allowing the Sale of Pepper Spray

Gov. Pete Wilson has signed the following bills into law, his office announced Sunday:

* Pepper spray: Adds pepper spray to the list of allowable tear gases and overhauls the regulation of all tear gas weapons. The bill will allow people to buy and possess any tear gas weapon certified by the state Justice Department, after passing a test given by a licensed retailer or certified tear gas training school.

* Firearms: Prevents a person from possessing a gun for 10 years if that person has been convicted of spousal abuse, stalking or violating a restrictive order.

* Support: Eliminates, in most cases, the use of income from a parent’s subsequent spouse or unmarried partner when determining or modifying child support. Exceptions are made when ignoring the extra income would lead to extreme and severe hardship to the child.

* Health: Prohibits insurance companies from cutting off coverage to people after they become ill with AIDS or other long-term diseases.

* Catalina: Makes permanent the provision that closes the northern half of Santa Catalina Island to the commercial take of marine species for the aquarium trade and closes the southern half of the island for the same purpose until 2000.