Governor vetoes first bill
Easley cuts appointments measure, surprising legislative leaders
Easley's veto message is marked with a stamp his office acquired a few months ago.
Staff Photo by Sher Stoneman
WHAT THE NORTH CAROLINA CONSTITUTION SAYS ABOUT VETOES:
The governor must sign or veto a bill within 10 days of receiving it during a legislative session or within 30 days of adjournment. Otherwise, the bill becomes law.
If the governor objects to a bill, he may return it to the General Assembly with a veto message stating his reasons.
The governor then may reconvene the General Assembly to reconsider the bill within 40 days of adjournment. Otherwise, even with the veto, the bill becomes law.
If a majority of lawmakers say in writing that a reconvened session is unnecessary, the vetoed bill does not become law.
A three-fifths majority in both chambers is required to override a veto.
The General Assembly may consider only returned legislation during a reconvened session.
The governor may not veto state or federal constitutional amendments, joint resolutions, redistricting bills or some local bills. The governor also may not veto appointment bills -- unless they contain other matter. The governor would have been prohibited from rejecting this year's appointments bill had it not also expanded some boards and commissions.
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Text of Gov. Mike Easley's objections and veto message
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By AMY GARDNER, Staff Writer
Five years after North Carolinians granted governors veto power, Gov. Mike Easley issued the state's first veto, rejecting an arcane but intensely political bill designating dozens of appointments to boards and commissions.
In a hand-written message punctuated with a large, red veto stamp, Easley cited a series of technical problems with the bill, including the fact that two appointees have since died.
But Easley also said he disapproved of the General Assembly's expansion of some commissions during an ongoing budget crisis, "continuing a troublesome trend of expanding government in a time when we need to make every effort to be more efficient and lean."
That larger point is a symbolic one because many of the dozens of state boards and commissions have small budgets and are financed by fees from the professional licenses they issue.
The point is directed squarely at the governor's Democratic allies in the House and Senate, who wrote the appointments bill and are presumably attached to their choices for boards such as the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, a new nine-member toll-road authority and even the state Board of Athletic Trainer Examiners.
GOP is suspicious
The veto came with no warning, and the governor offered no public objections to the bill while lawmakers were debating it. That left both Democrats and Republicans wondering Wednesday why he chose such an obscure and usually noncontroversial measure for the state's first veto.
Republicans questioned whether the governor had an ulterior motive of bringing lawmakers back to town next week for some other issue, such as a lottery or other budget matters.
But Easley spokeswoman Cari Boyce noted that the state constitution prohibits consideration of other matters in a veto session.
"The governor was not going to sign a bill that appointed members to boards and commissions that were not statutorily qualified," Boyce said, "and I think his message speaks to the reasons why he vetoed the bill."
GOP lawmakers also criticized the governor for signing the veto Sunday but not releasing it until Wednesday -- which an Easley spokesman said was simply to give legislative leaders a chance to digest the message.
"He's up to some mischief, I think," said House Minority Leader Leo Daughtry, a Johnston County Republican. "The whole thing is bizarre."
And politicians on both sides of the aisle wondered why Easley would risk alienating the legislature's Democratic leadership, which, after the outcome of Tuesday's election, is sure to have a diminished majority in both chambers come January.
"We have to better understand it, and I think our staff is working with his staff to understand his complaints and work it out to his satisfaction -- if we can," Senate leader Marc Basnight said. "If the governor wants us to come back and fix the appointments, we will come back and fix the appointments."
Basnight said he disagreed with Easley's premise that larger boards are inefficient or unnecessary, but he said they had an amiable discussion Wednesday afternoon about the possibility of a veto session next week.
But Basnight's pique with the veto became clear with his next remark, when he noted that calling the General Assembly back to town costs far more -- $65,000 per day -- than paying the travel expenses of a few extra board and commission members.
"The numbers should be up on these boards and commissions unless there's some down side, and we can't find a down side," Basnight said.
Speaker surprised
House Speaker Jim Black expressed a similar opinion in an e-mail message Wednesday.
"I was not aware that the governor had problems with this bill when it was being considered by the General Assembly," Black wrote.
Black and Basnight have reason to bristle over the veto, which invalidates one of the most influence-building, if invisible, prerogatives of legislative leadership: appointments.
With control of two-thirds of the rosters of dozens of boards and commissions that help set state policy, Black and Basnight together wield indirect power over professional licensing, hunting and fishing regulations, and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on pollution control, park construction and road-building, to name a few.
Easley controls the other third of appointments.
Easley's veto message, handwritten on official stationery and marked in red with a large veto stamp acquired by the governor's office just a few months ago, made no mention of his budgetary concerns.
The governor said he was rejecting the appointments bill because two of the appointees have died, five are not qualified under state statutes to sit on the designated board and six are gubernatorial appointments that the General Assembly improperly made.
One of the deceased appointees is state Rep. Larry Justus, a Republican from Hendersonville who died Oct. 20. Black had appointed him and seven others to the N.C. Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Task Force.
A question of power
North Carolina was the last state in the nation to give its governors veto power, doing so in a 1996 statewide referendum that pitted those who believed the state's governors had too little clout in the legislature against those worried that a veto would grant too much executive power. The measure took effect in 1997.
Easley has threatened a veto before, promising throughout much of this year to reject a budget that did not preserve education spending.
As of Wednesday evening, the governor had not officially called the General Assembly back for a veto session, which he must do by next Wednesday if at all, according to the state constitution.
Legislators could vote to override the veto with a three-fifths majority in both chambers. Or Easley could avoid a session by securing a majority of signatures that the veto should stand. If he fails both to call a session and to get the signatures, the appointments bill will become law.
Staff writer Amy Gardner can be reached at 829-8902 or
agardner@newsobserver.com.
704) 358-5941;