UNDERSTANDING ARNOLD GOVERNOR'S VETOES FOLLOW MONEY TRAIL.

Byline: Thomas D. Elias

REAMS of newspaper copy have been written analyzing the veto pattern of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as he acted on the 844 bills placed on his desk by state lawmakers when their session ended a little more than a month ago.

The general consensus: Schwarzenegger showed himself a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. But understanding Arnold takes a little more digging than implied in this simplistic conclusion.

A closer look at the 571 bills Schwarzenegger signed and the 273 he vetoed demonstrates that anyone wanting to predict what this governor would do needed only to observe an age-old dictum of journalism: If you want to understand a story, follow the money.

Yes, Schwarzenegger was a social liberal in some areas. He signed a bill giving same-sex domestic partners the same health insurance benefits as married couples. He signed a law protecting transgender individuals from discrimination and he OK'd nonprescription sales of syringes to drug addicts. Schwarzenegger also paroled more murderers in his first eight months in office than ex-Gov. Pete Wilson, a fellow Republican, released in eight years.

For all that, he was castigated as a ``social engineer'' by conservative groups like the Campaign for California Families.

Besides the fact they were opposed by conservatives, the liberal-leaning bills Schwarzenegger signed had one other thing in common: None was of much interest to his major campaign donors.

But the moment a proposed law threatened to clamp down on any questionable practice by a significant Arnold donor, it became a ``job killer'' and drew a veto. This was true no matter how innocuous or obvious a vetoed measure may have seemed.

One example: Schwarzenegger nixed a bill giving customers at least 30 days to apply for rebates when retailers offer them. That bill also would have required companies to send out rebate checks within specified time periods, varying by the type of business.

Many companies impose time limits on rebate applications so short that a majority of customers can't get their paperwork done in time, effectively rendering some rebate offers bait-and-switch schemes. That didn't bother Schwarzenegger, who has taken hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars from big retailers.

Similarly, he torpedoed a bill making it illegal for car dealers to ``pack'' contracts by inflating monthly payments beyond what customers verbally agree to or to ask customers to sign contracts whose fine print includes charges the customer didn't verbally accept.

The state Chamber of Commerce, whose membership includes scores of car dealers, called this a ``job killer'' bill, without explaining how car dealer chicanery and dishonesty might produce more jobs. Schwarzenegger's veto message mentioned neither that he's accepted well over $1 million from automobile dealers nor that many of his campaign rallies have been staged on new- or used-car lots.

The governor proudly donned an environmentalist mantle in a campground while signing a bill to set up a Sierra Nevada conservancy, but quickly took it off when he vetoed another law aiming to clean up smog produced by ships, trucks, trains and wharf equipment at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, the nation's largest seaport and the single biggest source of smog in California.

Again, the donor-packed Chamber of Commerce called the vetoed measure a ``job-killer.'' In fact, Schwarzenegger nixed every single bill on the chamber's ``job-killer'' list, in effect rubber-stamping the business lobby's entire wish list.

To some this seemed like a conflict of interest, because of the gigantic sums he's taken from chamber members. But conflicts of interest rarely seem to bother this governor, especially when they involve business interests. He vetoed one bill barring anyone from serving as a peer reviewer for the California Environmental Protection Agency or any of its boards if that person has a financial interest in the agency's decision.

He dumped another that would have forced California State University campuses to hire outside investigators to check out complaints of harassment or retaliation against employee whistle-blowers. Both bills aimed to fix obvious conflict-of-interest situations.

Those vetoes should have been no surprise, considering the plain conflicts of interest of some Schwarzenegger appointees. Examples: The director of his Office of Administrative Law, which makes regulations for insurance companies, was previously an insurance industry lobbyist. And Schwarzenegger's cabinet secretary, a close aide who helps oversee the state Department of Financial Institutions, this fall became a director of a bank holding company that owns an Orange County trust company.

There's a shameless quality here. Whatever profits his donors or his associates, that's what Schwarzenegger has so far done - and none of it hurts his enormous popularity one bit.

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Paul Sakuma/Associated Press