Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Gov. Rick Perry vetoed 37 pieces of legislation last week, including 12 measures that passed the Legislature without opposition.

A dozen of the 37 pieces of legislation that Gov. Rick Perry vetoed late last week moved through the Legislature without a single opposing vote.

The various measures would have, among other things, changed the makeup of the Teacher Retirement System board, allowed authorities to more quickly erase criminal records when someone is arrested but not charged with a crime, and given college students more time to graduate before they faced tuition increases for staying in school too long.

Most of the other bills Perry vetoed drew just a handful of dissenting votes — fewer than five in the 31-member Senate or 10 in the 150-member House.

"There's no check on the governor's power to veto bills that have been through an entire process," said Sen. Jeff Wentworth, a Republican from San Antonio who represents part of southern Travis County. Wentworth sponsored legislation that would have given lawmakers an opportunity to convene for three days after a regular session to override gubernatorial vetoes. It did not pass.

The Perry vetoes highlight the fact that most bills that pass the Legislature do so with overwhelming support, especially when they are locally focused bills such as several of those on Perry's veto list. Lawmakers are particularly inclined to support legislation in the final days of the 140-day session, when they're hit with a stampede of bills trying to make it to the governor's desk before the clock runs out.

The scrutiny is more intense earlier in the session. Bills have to pass through numerous committees, often leading to hours of public testimony and several drafts before they even reach the floor of the House or Senate. Then the process begins again in the other chamber, and the two sides must ultimately reconcile the different versions of the legislation they approve.

"The members of the Legislature look to see how people voted in committee because they want to see if there is a wide consensus for a bill, and we would hope that the governor would take that into consideration as well," said Rep. Veronica Gonzales, D-McAllen. "But, of course, that's a power that he has, and he fully exercises it."

Gonzales was the House sponsor of a measure that no member of the Legislature voted against. Under current law, if college students take more than 30 hours of coursework beyond what their degree plan requires, they have to pay out-of-state tuition. Gonzales' bill tried to make it easier for students who start in community colleges to fit under that cap, but Perry vetoed it, saying it erased "important incentives for students and community colleges to focus on degree completion."

Terral Smith, who was legislative director for then-Gov. George W. Bush, said Bush sometimes vetoed bills that had unanimous legislative support.

"My feeling always was that if a bill was fully debated and the members really knew what was going on and then they voted almost unanimously for the bill, that would be a hard one to veto," Smith said.

"But there are many situations where you can't say that actually happened — that they fully debated it, that they knew what was going on and that members would actually vote that way if they had all the facts."

The House overwhelmingly approved a proposed constitutional amendment this year that would have allowed lawmakers to come back into session after the veto period and, with a two-thirds vote, override some of those vetoes.

Wentworth sponsored the measure in the Senate and said that 26 of the 31 senators supported it. But Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate, would not recognize him to bring it up.

"I believe it should have passed and would have had Perry not badgered Dewhurst," Wentworth said. "Dewhurst told me that Perry talked to him about that bill 20 times, he was so opposed to it. And Dewhurst told Perry that he would kill the bill."

Dewhurst generally calls up bills that have support from at least 21 senators. Wentworth said Perry's office persuaded six senators to change their minds, giving Dewhurst the cover he needed to stop the bill from moving forward.

Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said she wouldn't discuss the governor's private conversations with Dewhurst. A Dewhurst spokesman said the bill didn't come up because it didn't have adequate support.

Lawmakers can now override vetoes during the regular session, but the overwhelming majority of bills do not receive final passage until it is too late to do so. Wentworth said constitutional rules that limit their activity in the first couple months of the session make it difficult for lawmakers to move faster on bills.

"When senators and representatives from all 254 counties overwhelmingly — in some instances, nearly unanimously — pass legislation that's been through a really tortuous path to get to his desk, for the governor to veto it seems a bit unusual," Wentworth said.

Asked whether Perry takes the margin of passage into consideration when considering a bill, Castle said, "He takes numerous issues into consideration when reviewing a piece of legislation, and his decisions are based on whether or not a bill is good public policy and how it impacts the people of Texas."