February 22 was the deadline for the introduction of bills for consideration during the 2019 California Legislative Session. A total of 2,576 bills were introduced by the deadline. There are about 1,800 Assembly Bills and over 775 Senate Bills that were introduced. This is a higher number than has been introduced in more than half a dozen years.
So, how many of these bills will reach Governor Newsom’s Desk and how many will he sign? So far, two budget/appropriations bills have reached his desk and both were signed earlier this month.
We obviously will not know the answer to this question until the final bill is acted upon in mid-October; but, if history is a guide, we would expect over 1,000 measures to be signed this year, with about half of those that were introduced to reach the Governor’s Desk for final action.
There were 1,217 bills that reached Governor Brown’s Desk in 2018 out of 2,225 bills introduced (694 Senate Bills and 1,531 Assembly Bills). 55% of the bills introduced made it to the Governor’s Desk last year with 45% of the bills introduced getting signed into law and 9% of the bills introduced getting vetoed.
During the last eight years that Governor Brown served in office, he received a low of 870 bills (his first year in office) to a high of 1,217 (his last year in office). His veto rate was a low of 10.7% (his third year in office) to a high of 16.5% (his last year in office).
I’ll venture a guess. If history is a guide, I am going to speculate that roughly half of this year’s bills reach Governor Newsom’s Desk (1,285), and that he vetoes about 12% of them (155) and signs about 88% of them (1,130). We’ll check back after September 13!
Chris Micheli is a Principal with the Sacramento governmental relations firm of Aprea & Micheli, Inc.