The History of Pocket Vetoes
LETTING BILLS BECOME LAW
When the July 14 deadline passed for Gov. Jay Nixon to sign or veto bills approved by the General Assembly during the 2011 legislative session, he chose to do neither on three bills. Two, House Bill 213 and Senate Bill 65, are identical measures imposing new abortion restrictions. The third, House Bill 423, would allow Missouri to enter into a compact with other states to ignore the new federal health care law in the unlikely event that Congress passed legislation authorizing such a compact.
With the lack of action by the governor, under Article III, Section 31 of the Missouri Constitution those bills automatically became law. This process is colloquially known by some as a “pocket signature” since it is the opposite of the “pocket veto” that at the federal level prevents a bill from becoming law when the president takes no action on it and Congress isn’t in session. If Congress is in session when the president’s deadline for acting on a bill passes, the bill becomes law.
CONSTITUTIONAL EVOLUTION
Under the Missouri Constitution of 1820 (Article IV, Section 10), the state followed the federal model – a bill not acted upon by the governor becomes law if the legislature is in session; it doesn’t if the legislature has adjourned. The Constitution of 1865 retained that procedure (Article V, Section 9).
Beginning the with Constitution of 1875 (Article IV, Section 40), however, unsigned bills were pocket vetoed under all circumstances, although in such instances the constitution empowered the General Assembly to pass a resolution directing the secretary of state to enroll the bill as law anyway. The original version of the Constitution of 1945 (the now-repealed Article III, Section 33) retained that practice.
Missouri Voters added the existing pocket signature provision to the constitution with the ratification of Amendment 2 in August 1986 with 53.9 percent support.
NIXON EMBRACES THE PRACTICE
Prior to the Nixon administration, a Missouri governor had pocket signed a bill just once since the current procedure was ratified in 1986. That occurred in 1995 when Gov. Mel Carnahan allowed Senate Bill 3, omnibus legislation relating to administrative rules, to become law without his signature.
Nixon, however, has now done it five times. In addition to the three that became law on July 15, he also allowed Senate Concurrent Resolution 1, which rejected an energy efficiency rules approved and later withdrawn by the Public Service Commission, to become law in February without action. His first pocket signature came in July 2010 on Senate Bill 793, which was another bill imposing new restrictions on abortions.
Category: Legislative Action
