Wilson’s Path of Destruction

By midnight Wednesday, Gov. Pete Wilson had completed action on the hundreds of bills passed by the California Legislature in the final days before the Aug. 31 end of the 1998 session. The swath left by Wilson’s veto pen resembled a forest devastated by chain saws and bulldozers.

The governor killed a third of the 950 measures, often writing churlish or sarcastic messages to justify his vetoes or airily dismissing legislation by declaring it was something his administration already was doing. Executives normally use the veto as a scalpel. Wilson took up a bludgeon, and his veto messages at times were demeaning to the legislation’s authors.

In one instance, Wilson declared he was “frankly disgusted” with Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) for retaining a particular provision in a bill dealing with female contraceptives. In killing a bill to protect religious rights of prison inmates, the governor said the prisoners could argue that “sacred knives, conjugal visits and satanic bibles are all part of the free exercise of religion.” And Wilson vetoed a measure to consolidate 10 separate programs dealing with youth violence by declaring that “this bill is less likely to replace those 10 agencies with one than it is to expand from 10 agencies to 11 agencies.”

Worse than the rhetoric was the manner in which the administration led lawmakers to believe their bills would win approval if they were changed to meet certain objections. In many cases, legislators said they worked to eliminate the offending provisions only to see their bills vetoed anyway, for some other reason.

One such case was the Hertzberg bill to require health care plans to cover birth control prescriptions. Opposition came from hospitals and other businesses run by religious organizations that oppose birth control. Hertzberg worked out a compromise that would allow employees of such businesses to qualify under the state Family Planning Program. Although Wilson supported the major purpose of the bill, he vetoed it because of a provision for state aid that would be available to a small number of recipients.

In similar fashion, Wilson vetoed a number of other bills because he disliked minor or peripheral provisions. But he was not consistent. The governor signed into law a complex bill governing fisheries management in California--something The Times supported--even though it contained “serious flaws” that he said would have to be fixed with further legislation.

Health care and the environment took the broadest hits from Wilson’s veto scythe--the inclusion of some mental illnesses under health plan coverage, the setting of minimum nursing standards, the cleanup of toxins in Santa Monica and San Francisco bays, the protection of schoolchildren from toxic air pollution and others. Thousands of hours of legislative work, by both Democrats and Republicans, were swept away by Wilson for reasons that were often unclear. That work will have to be done all over again beginning in January since most of these bills attempted to deal with problems and issues that will not go away.

During the next three months, Wilson is expected to travel the state boasting of his legacy as governor over the past eight years. There is much for which he can claim credit. That does not include the wreckage left behind in Sacramento by his actions these past few weeks.