Governor vetoes four bills this session, officially

How does a bill not become a law? Either it doesn’t make it through the legislative process, or the governor vetoes it, and the House and Senate don’t override it.

Vetoes are rare in Arkansas, but they happen.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders vetoed four bills this legislative session – two this past week. One would have allowed physicians to temporarily withhold information from patents. The other would have established regional behavioral centers for troubled and potentially dangerous students.

In contrast, she signed 1,026 bills into law this session. Lawmakers proposed 2,652, so about 39% made it all the way into the state’s legal code. The rest were stopped earlier in the process.

The two bills she vetoed effectively are dead. Both had passed one of the chambers, the House or the Senate, with zero votes to spare. The sponsors do not intend to try to override the vetoes when the Legislature briefly returns from recess on May 5 to formally adjourn. Everyone is ready for the session to be over.

House Bill 1961 would have let medical providers temporarily withhold medical records from a patient or their designee for up to 30 days.

This could have been done if the provider believed immediate release could have led to the patient’s misinterpreting the information with negative consequences for their mental and physical health. Providers also could have temporarily withheld the information if they believed they needed time to review the results to prepare a plan of treatment.

In a letter to legislative leaders, Sanders explained the veto by saying individuals have a right to access their personal medical information.

The other bill, Senate Bill 451, would have created regional behavioral health programs to assist schools with finding services for students whose behavior indicated they likely would injure themselves, other students, or staff.

In another letter to legislative leaders, Sanders emphasized the need for student interventions and said she had directed the secretaries of the Department of Education and the Department of Human Services to create a better solution more in line with local schools’ needs.

Both of these bills barely passed in the first place. The medical records bill, House Bill 1961, passed the House, 75-14, but it only passed the 35-member Senate by one vote, 18-10. The regional student behavioral health programs bill, Senate Bill 451, passed the Senate, 30-1, but it squeaked by the 100-member House, 51-22.

Sanders previously had vetoed two bills the day legislators recessed April 16. House Bill 1889 would have allowed marijuana retailers to deliver their products via a delivery vehicle or by using a drive-through window. She also issued a line-item veto of House Bill 1265, in which she vetoed a provision funding a director of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Institute on Race & Ethnicity. 

A line-item veto is when the governor vetoes part of a bill but lets the rest of it stand. The president of the United States does not have that ability. He or she must veto the entire bill.

Arkansas governors use the veto power sparingly for a couple of reasons. One reason is that, under the state’s Constitution, legislators can override it fairly easily. All it takes is a majority vote of both the House and Senate, which is the same percentage required for legislators to pass the bill in the first place. In contrast, the United States president’s veto can only be overridden by a two-thirds vote of both chambers. That’s a much higher bar.

The other reason is that governors have other ways of stopping legislation – an “unofficial” veto that happens without the need of a pen.

Thanks to Sanders’ influence, her popularity in the state’s dominant Republican Party, and other tools at her disposal, if she is really against a bill, it probably won’t make it through the legislative process in the first place.

That’s probably a more important power, even if it’s not spelled out in the Constitution.

Steve Brawner's column is syndicated to 19 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com.

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