One could say, perhaps, that the 84th legislative session did not officially end until yesterday – the day that Gov. Gregg Abbott finished vetoing 42 bills. That’s the most vetoes since 2007. Jonathan Tilove covered the session for the Austin American-Statesman, and stopped by the Texas Standard to talk about why the count was so high this year.
Why were there so many vetoes?
“He went through these [bills] one by one and personally looked at all of them. So if he found anything that, as a judge, he would find a problem with, he struck them. Some of the things were relatively small local matters of law rather than policy.”
Which one was the most significant?
“He ended up vetoing the only piece of ethics legislation that got through and that’s because Senator [Joan] Huffman [R-Houston] had sort of slipped in this spousal exception to the ethics laws. You didn’t know how your husband or wife was making some of that money you didn’t have to report it and Abbott, in a very strongly worded veto message, said that that would detract from public trust and he wasn’t going to sign it.”
