OLYMPIA, March 29.—Looks like writers’ cramp is going to be the big workplace hazard today in the governor’s office as Christine Gregoire relents on her threat and begins signing bills.
The Washington governor announced two weeks ago that she would cease signing bills and maybe even veto a few if legislative budget-writers didn’t start moving. It came in various forms, sometimes as a threat to veto if legislators didn’t deliver a budget, sometimes a threat to stop signing if legislators didn’t make progress.
Here’s how she put it on March 15: “I want a budget and I want a budget as soon as possible, and to help them hear the message, I have denied the members their bills, I have denied the lobbyists their bills, so now they can go out and be my emissaries and they can tell the members to get together and get the job done.”
But today, on the 18th day of the most inactive special session in Washington state history, there is no budget in sight, and the governor has announced that she will be signing bills en masse. Some 112 appear on the afternoon and evening schedule. The signings commence at 1 p.m.
Or is there a budget in sight? Gregoire spokesman Cory Curtis said Thursday that there does seem to be some movement. House and Senate budget writers met Wednesday for four or five hours, he said, and “everybody felt like there was progress and things were moving in the right direction.”
So the governor didn’t want to hold everything up.
The 112 bills actually aren’t everything, but they are about as many as one governor can sign in a single afternoon and evening, when you consider the time required for setups and ceremony. All-told, there are 177 bills on the to-do list, either requiring the governor’s signature or a veto. And it should be noted that if the governor misses any of them and doesn’t take action by Saturday night, they become law without her signature.
But it seems the official photographers are going to be busy at today’s hastily-scheduled ceremony, and any bill sponsor who wants that official bill-signing pen had better start driving to the Capitol.
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