DAVIS FACES STACKS OF BILLS MORE THAN 500 YET TO BE SIGNED.

Byline: Harrison Sheppard Staff Writer

As he fights for his political life, Gov. Gray Davis has more than 500 bills awaiting his signature or veto - creating a high-stakes situation with regard to winning or losing campaign dollars and recall votes.

Davis does have an ace in the hole - he doesn't have to decide any of the issues until Oct. 12, five days after the recall election if it goes ahead on Oct. 7 as originally scheduled.

At stake are such controversial measures as Senate Bill 2, which would require every business with more than 20 employees to provide health insurance - a hot-button issue for business and labor.

``I think you could take the ordinary pressure that would face any governor, and increase those pressures by a magnitude of at least 10,'' said Tim Hodson, executive director of the Center for California Studies at California State University, Sacramento.

``He is in a situation where he is in the middle of this campaign and it is a campaign where he needs desperately to shore up his base constituency. At the same time, he is aware of the fact ... rightly or wrongly people perceive him as making decisions on legislation not on merit, but on political expediency.''

Of the almost 1,000 bills sent to the governor at the end of the legislative session Sept. 12, Davis has roughly 500 bills that he has yet to act on.

Among the most watched bills by business and labor groups is SB 2, the health-care package that business groups deride as a ``job killer'' but which labor says will help more than 1 million uninsured Californians obtain health care.

The bill would require many employers to provide health coverage for their workers, and for bigger companies for the workers' families as well, or else pay into a pool to provide coverage for uninsured workers.

Backers say it will cost businesses $1 billion a year; business groups say it will be four or five times that.

Davis has avoided taking a public position on the bill.

If he signs it into law, he alienates business interests and adds fuel to the arguments of recall supporters who say the state is unfriendly to business; if he vetoes it, he alienates his core Democratic voters - particularly labor, which is spending millions of dollars to defeat the recall.

On Thursday, the Coalition for California Jobs, an organization of business groups that includes the state Chamber of Commerce, released a report card giving the state an F for its business climate, and ranking it next-to-last compared with 15 competitive states.

The group said SB 2 ``will impose a new multi-billion dollar health care mandate on California employers - a burden employers cannot absorb on top of the stresses created by skyrocketing workers' comp costs and other expensive legislative mandates passed in recent years. Rather than increase the number of insured workers in California, it will increase the ranks of the unemployed.''

The California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, which expects to spend at least $2 million by the end of this month against the recall, says the health care bill is its top priority right now.

Asked whether the group expects some consideration for the bill because of its work against the recall, federation spokesman Nathan Ballard said: ``Our support for the anti-recall effort is unconditional.''

The bill, he said, should stand on its own merits.

``We're in a health care crisis and the status quo isn't working,'' Ballard said. ``And this is a bill that doesn't expand health care programs. Instead it uses the existing system and it gradually expands coverage for workers by building on that system.''

Russ Lopez, a spokesman for Davis, said the governor does not consider how much a group is helping him in the recall when making a decision on legislation.

If the governor pandered to special-interest groups the way critics charge, Lopez said, he would have approved several major special-interest bills when they came to him last year during his re-election campaign, such as a sacred-sites bill supported by American Indian groups and an education bill heavily supported by the teachers union last year.

``I don't buy that argument,'' Lopez said. ``If he was doing this, he would've done all these controversial bills last year, when he had just as much to lose. We know the vote was close.''

Davis is generally known as a hands-on, detail-oriented person who likes to read the text of bills himself and poses plenty of questions to his aides, a style which can slow down the process of reviewing legislation.

Bob Stern, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Governmental Studies, said it is not the high-profile bills that worry him. Instead, he said, it is the lesser-noticed bills that could slip in under the radar of a distracted governor.

For example, Stern said he recently happened to be on the same airline flight as the governor, who had a stack of bills to sort through on the plane. But instead of going through them, Davis spent much of the flight walking around and talking with other passengers.

``Obviously he's a little concerned about the recall,'' Stern said. ``He's going to be distracted. My concern is he won't be as focused as much.''

l=8Harrison Sheppard, [phone]

harrison.sheppard(at)dailynews.com

BILLS TO WATCH

Here is a sample of the many controversial or notable bills that Gov. Gray Davis has to consider before Oct. 12:

-- SB 2: Help provide health coverage to more than 1 million uninsured Californians by requiring employers to pay into a health care fund.

-- SB 228 and AB 227: Reform workers' compensation system to save employers billions of dollars by reducing claims.

-- SB 288: Prevent air quality districts from rolling back their regulations to standards that existed before Dec. 30, 2002.

-- SB 20: Place a fee on consumer electronics products to fund recycling of electronic waste such as old TVs and computers.

-- AB 68: Add protection for online privacy of Web site users by increasing disclosures about sharing information.

-- AB 231: Expand eligibility for food-stamp program.

-- SB 25: Add protection for consumers from identity theft.

-- SB 489: Require more handgun safety mechanisms.

SOURCE: Daily News research

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BILLS TO WATCH (see text)