Governor signs two bills into law, then vetoes them

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Democratic Gov. Bob Holden mistakenly signed into law two bills he planned to veto last month but was able to undo the deed with a little help from Republican Secretary of State Matt Blunt, state officials said Friday.

On July 10, Blunt's office received two signed bills, one relaxing standards for out-of-state physical therapists and another dealing with effective dates for bills vetoed by the governor and overridden by the legislature.

Holden accidentally signed the bills after staff included them in a stack of legislation he wanted to sign.

'No big deal'

The next day, Holden contacted Blunt's office and informed them of the mistake. The bills were sent back to Holden on July 12 and vetoed that very day -- the last business day before the deadline to veto legislation.

"It was really no big deal. It was a fixable problem," Holden spokeswoman Chris Kelly said Friday.

But the problem might have been prevented if Holden had signed the front, instead of the back, of the bills.

He would have had recognized the bill numbers and would not have signed them, Kelly said.

Under the Missouri Constitution, "If a bill be approved by the governor it shall become law." Holden's office contends that approval does not mean signature.

A Secretary of State spokesman said Holden's office argued that even though the bills had been signed and received by the secretary of state, the governor did not really approve of them.

"Secretary Blunt took the governor at his word and returned them before they were filed in the archives," said Blunt spokesman Spence Jackson. "We didn't see a need to be necessarily adversarial in this situation. We don't know of any legal precedence for this."

Jackson said Blunt had the option of rejecting the governor's request and added that Blunt's office had advised the governor's staff to keep copies of the bills in case of a lawsuit.

'A very bizarre thing'

Ken Warren, a political scientist and constitutional expert at St. Louis University, said he was shocked by what he called a clearly unconstitutional situation.

"This is a very bizarre thing, I frankly have never heard of such a thing. This is something kind of crazy," Warren said. "It's highly questionable whether a governor can renege on a bill once he signs it into law. It sounds like they are granting him a courtesy, and maybe they can get away with it. If you ask me if it's technically constitutional, I don't think so."

Sen. Wayne Goode, sponsor of the bill regarding overridden vetoes, said Friday that he became aware of the problem shortly after it happened and had talked to the governor's office about it.

Goode said he has no plans to challenge the veto in court, nor in the legislature when lawmakers return for their annual veto session that begins Sept. 11.

"The fact that it was an unusual veto didn't make it any more pressing as far as I was concerned. I'll probably introduce a bill again on the effective date of vetoed bills," said Goode, D-St. Louis. "I suspect that it wasn't an unconstitutional violation or anything like that."

Word of the unusual veto came as a surprise Friday to Sen. Marvin Singleton, R-Seneca, the sponsor of the physical therapy bill. He had no plans to contest Holden's action but found it disturbing.

"We've always thought when the governor signs it, it becomes law. It turns out that's not true," Singleton said.

Meanwhile, Kelly said the governor's staff met after Holden had completed signing legislation to discuss the situation.

"We created some additional checks to prevent something like this from happening in the future," Kelly said without being specific.