San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, July 30, 2009
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

California's Constitution allows a governor to reduce or eliminate "items of appropriation" without vetoing an entire bill. The action is the line-item veto, which is regularly used to trim newly passed state budgets. That's the authority Schwarzenegger invoked Tuesday when he cut $489 million, mostly from programs serving the poor, sick and elderly, before signing legislation to eliminate a $24 billion deficit from the 2009-10 state budget.

But legislators had already reduced funding for those same health and welfare programs last week when they revised the budget, which they had adopted in February.

Democratic leaders now question whether their reductions in such services as in-home care and AIDS prevention were "items of appropriation" that the Republican governor could legally cut further.

"Reductions to amounts in the various budget schedules do not actually constitute appropriations and thus are not subject to line-item veto," Shannon Murphy, spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County), said Wednesday.

Assemblyman John A. Perez, a Los Angeles Democrat who chairs his party's caucus in the Assembly, said he has obtained an opinion from a private legal adviser concluding that Schwarzenegger exceeded his powers, and has requested an opinion from the legislative counsel's office.

"This is money that's already been appropriated. What we did was limit the ability for money to be spent," Perez said. He accused Schwarzenegger of "trying to rewrite and expand his powers."

California courts have ruled that the governor can use his line-item veto power only to eliminate new state spending, and otherwise must either sign or veto an entire bill. But the courts have never decided whether a governor can selectively veto budget appropriations that the Legislature has already reduced.

An administration spokesman acknowledged that Schwarzenegger is "operating in novel territory" but insisted it is all legal.

Any money contained in the budget bill, whether the Legislature added to a previous sum or reduced it, is intended to pay for state programs and "is, by definition, an appropriation subject to the governor's constitutional authority," said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state Finance Department.

"If it walks like a duck, it's a duck," he said. "Legally, it's a fairly clear-cut proposition."

No one has challenged the vetoes in court yet. But Murphy said a lawsuit is likely to be filed soon from one of the many groups affected by the cuts - children denied insurance coverage in the Healthy Families program, battered women's shelters threatened with closure, AIDS programs deprived of funding, or counties losing welfare and Medi-Cal aid.

In Bay Area: The governor approves construction of a controversial new Death Row at San Quentin. D1

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
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