Veto Brand Warming Up

Governor Brian Schweitzer began to put his “VETO” brands to good use over the past few days.

First, on Friday he issued an “amendatory veto” to SB106, which would require the Attorney General to join frivolous lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act. In his veto of this bill, the Governor laid out several conditions for signing the bill into law. First, he restated what legislative lawyers have already said–that the legislature can’t force the Attorney General to do anything–so he said the legislature must change to state they are simply urging him to join the lawsuit. Second, the Governor acknowledged that joining this lawsuit would be extremely costly to Montana taxpayers, so to offset the costs, the Legislators who supported the bill would be required to give up half of their health insurance stipend paid for by the taxpayers.

The legislature can either accept, modify or reject the Governor’s changes to these bills. If they reject or modify the changes the Governor gets another shot at vetoing the bill.

The Governor also released an outright veto of a bill that would make it nearly impossible for Montana women to receive abortion coverage if they bought their insurance through the soon to be established health insurance exchange. This follows up on Schweitzer’s long-standing promise to veto any bill that infringes on a woman’s constitutionally protected right to reproductive health care.

In order to overturn the veto, legislators must secure 2/3 of the votes in each house of the legislature.