Please veto my bill!

You hear plenty of squawking from lawmakers who get upset when the governor either vetoes or threatens to veto their legislation bill. But you very rarely hear a situation where a lawmaker asks to have a bill vetoed. That occurred today when Gov. Pawlenty vetoed a bill dealing with civil commitments. In his veto letter Pawlenty wrote:

"This legislation was requested by the Minnesota County Attorney Association (MCAA) as the result of a Supreme Court decision. The Court held that a person who is subject to a petition for civil commitment as a Sexually Dangerous Person (SDP) or Sexual Psychopathic Personality (SPP) has the right under Minnesota Statutes Section 253B.08 to demand a hearing be hold on the petition within 15 days of the demand. Although this provision of law is appropriate to most civil commitment proceedings, the complexity of SDP and SPP civil commitment proceedings makes trial within the statutory 15 day time period unrealistic.

Unfortunately, the bill mistakenly exempts SDP and SPP petitions from all of the trial timeframes in statute, rather than just the 15 day trial by demand provision.

The bill authors now acknowledge this mistake and have requested this bill be vetoed"

A spokesman for the Minnesota House says a drafting error was made so the bill authors decided the best course was to have the governor veto the bill (which he did) and insert the correct language into the Omnibus Judiciary Policy Bill. The governor said he hopes there is still time to correctly address the concerns.