Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

This set of statistics about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s legislation veto rate compared with prior governors is making the email circuit today. I can’t vouch for its accuracy as I am not sure where it originated but I have no reason to suspect its veracity:

• Schwarzenegger has set a record for signing the fewest bills in a single year, approving only 632 of the measures that reached his desk in the 2009 regular session.

• The Legislature passed just 872 bills in 2009, the fewest in more than 40 years.

• Schwarzenegger vetoed 240 bills (27.52%), down from last year’s record of 414 vetoes.

• Schwarzenegger signed the lowest annual average number of bills (790 a year over six years).

• Deukmejian vetoed the most bills (2,298 over eight years).However, with 1,673 vetoes over his six years, Schwarzenegger is close to Deukmejian’s rate of 287 vetoes a year.

• Deukmejian vetoed the most bills in a single year (436 in 1990).

• Schwarzenegger has vetoed nearly twice as many bills in six years (1,673) as Reagan did in eight years (843).

• In his five years, Davis vetoed twice as many bills (1,098) as Brown did in eight years (528).

• In 1982, Brown vetoed just 30 bills, setting the record for the lowest number of vetoes.

• Wilson signed the fewest bills of any recent, two-term governor (9,324 over eight years).

• Although political conservatives, Deukmejian and Reagan signed more bills than Brown, the more activist liberal.

• The five years with the highest number of chaptered bills were all with Republican governors (1971, 1984, 1967, 1990, 1988).