California public schools will phase out the name “Redskins” as a mascot, day care center workers must be vaccinated, and the state can develop regulations to allow electric skateboards on the road, under three of the final bills Gov. Jerry Brown signed Sunday.
That brings the total number signed this year to 808, according to his office.
The governor vetoed 133 bills altogether, about 14 percent of those he acted on. Among the final 20 on Sunday, the governor vetoed an expansion of when employees can take family leave.
That bill would have allowed parents or domestic partners to take unpaid leave for ill, adult children, as well as for grandparents, grandchildren and siblings. Existing law allows leave for an ill parent, spouse, or a child who is either under 18 years old or a dependent. The California Chamber of Commerce opposed the measure, including it on its list of “job killers”
Brown said he approves of the goal, but the measure, as written, could conflict with federal law.
University of Southern California politics professor Dan Schnur says both the signings and vetoes are consistent with Brown’s philosophy as governor.
“He seems to have established himself as someone very liberal, very tolerant on social and cultural issues, and tends to be much more conservative on budget matters,” says Schnur. “And the one place he and the business community really seem to come to loggerheads is on environmental and climate change issues.”
The governor approved new tax breaks for recycling equipment, a day after vetoing several other deductions due to a tight budget.
“He has been known as the practitioner of the canoe theory of politics,” says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst also at USC. “You paddle a little to the left, you paddle a little to the right, and then you just move down the middle.”
While the governor signed the bill to prohibit "Redskins" as a mascot, he vetoed another bill that would remove Confederate names from public streets and buildings.
“Local governments are laboratories of democracy, which under most circumstances, are quite capable of deciding for themselves which of their buildings and parks should be named, and after whom,” the governor wrote in his veto message.
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