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Some vetoes certainly deserve an override |
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Monday, 14 July 2008 |
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Politics as Usual by Jim Baron Call him Don Veto Carcieri.
The governor rejected 49 bills that the General Assembly passed this year.
For instance, Carcieri received huzzahs in this space last week for vetoing the wrongheaded bill to make Rhode Island a co-conspirator in a plot to circumvent the constitution by short-circuiting the Electoral College.
Some of the governor’s vetoes, however, were stinkeroos, and we will get to them in time.
But for right now, the big question resounding in the Statehouse corridors is “Will the House and Senate come back to override some, if not all, of the governor’s vetoes.”
And the answer? As the old saying goes: them that know don’t talk, and them that talk don’t know. The official line right now is that they are thinking about it as they recuperate from a difficult session.
One school of thought, the one where I happen to matriculate, says it all depends on the renewable energy bill.
If the House and Senate pooh-bahs believe the renewable energy bill is important enough — or if they are just ticked off that Carcieri vetoed a bill they publicly backed — it was sponsored by Senate President Joseph Montalbano and House Majority Leader Gordon Fox — that they will call back members for a special session during campaign season, then they will make that law over the governor’s objection and probably a few others too, but certainly not all 49 (at least some of which are House/Senate duplicates).
If they are content to let the veto stand and pass an even better bill next January (and heaven knows the bill that Carcieri vetoed did have some serious flaws), then that will be it until a new General Assembly lineup is elected in November. No special session. No veto overrides.
That would be too bad, because many of the governor’s vetoes certainly merit an override.
First and foremost on that list is the “Big Brother Is Watching You, Kid” veto, which voids legislation that would have protected school-age children from being tracked by radio frequency devices attached to their backpacks, ostensibly (at least for now) for reasons of student safety. This idea has appalled right-thinking people in places where it has proposed around the country.
If this veto is not promptly overridden, it will represent the first slide down not one but many slippery slopes.
The most grotesque idea that some supporters of this hare-brained Brave New World technology offer is that instead of just clipping the chip to a backpack, why not implant it under the child’s skin? Yes they are serious.
Here’s another slippery slope our civil liberties can take a slalom down: why stop at school children? Microchips are cheap. We can implant one in everybody’s arm. That way the government will know the whereabouts of everybody all the time. Wouldn’t that make us all safer?
And what if it is not just the government? What if your boss comes to you one day and says if you want to keep your job you have to have a chip that will tell him or her where you are at all hours?
Don’t get me wrong, the General Assembly passes hundreds of bills every session that if I had my way would feel the dull thud of the veto stamp. Forty-nine is nowhere near enough.
But the legislature passes precious few bills each session that are actually good, productive, worthwhile ideas. On the rare occasion when that happens, the governor should keep his veto pen in his pocket.
For instance, the bill that would have ended the heinous practice of violating someone’s probation on a mere allegation, and letting that person rot in prison on the parole violation when the subsequent allegation was never proven, or perhaps never followed up on. The person could be exonerated on the second charge, or the arrest could never result in an indictment, yet thanks to the governor, the mere accusation will be sufficient to keep him or her in prison at increasing cost to the state and to society. This practice serves no discernable purpose and repealing it is one of the best things the legislature has done in the past few years.
This is related to the egregious veto Carcieri cast on the law that would have finally got rid of the thoroughly discredited policy of mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug crimes. All the mandatory minimum sentences do is clog the prison with people who don’t need to be there
If anyone in the Carcieri administration wants to debate the last two issues, they should be prepared to answer the following question:
As far as saving money in the prison system goes, are these ideas better or worse than chucking 17-year-olds into the SuperMax at the ACI and spawning a legal debacle that is still being untangled today? Just last week the RI Supreme Court weighed in, finishing the job the General Assembly started last summer when they came back to repeal the law that they had just passed a few months before.
Perhaps the pettiest, the most political, the most mean-spirited veto Carcieri cast was on a bill to create a study commission on whether there should be dispensaries, to provide cannabis to those registered with the health department to use medical marijuana. A study commission! The governor vetoed a study commission.
Presumably, this governor wants the General Assembly to take action on this issue – for or against – out of ignorance. The self-proclaimed “Education Governor” is snuffing out a proposal to have the legislature do research on a subject before voting on it. What is it that he is afraid they will learn?
The governor’s stand on medical marijuana is well-known. He vetoed the original medical marijuana bill, then vetoed the bill that made it permanent; both were overridden. I could understand if he vetoed a bill to establish dispensaries. I wouldn’t agree with it, but I would understand it.
But I do not understand a refusal to allow public officials to learn more about a concept that they are considering making a law about. Carcieri prejudges the intentions of a body that he won’t even allow to be formed, saying, “the study commission intends to create the roadmap for making the state party to the manufacture, processing and distribution of a controlled substance.”
Those are some of the most atrocious vetoes the governor cast this year.
But look at the roster: medical marijuana, lifting mandatory minimums for drug crimes, liberalizing provisions of probation, and monitoring the whereabouts of school children for their own good. That is why I believe that if legislative leaders believe the renewable energy bill can wait, they will not call legislators back for a special veto override session.
What lawmaker is going to take time from campaigning door-to-door for re-election so he or she can cast a vote to help druggies, jailbirds on probation and state-run marijuana shops? Challengers will have a field day rubbing incumbents’ noses in votes like that.
That argues in favor of those who say if there is an override session, it will take place soon, when it will be 1) the middle of summer when few people pay attention to politics, and 2) farther away from the election. Waiting until after Labor Day, when summer is over, would put the override session either just before the primaries, or just after when the general election race heats up for real.
I’m not dumb enough to make a prediction about what the General Assembly will do, but if I had to take a guess, I would say we have seen the last of them until the election.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 26 July 2008 )
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