PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Hundreds of bills approved in the final hours of the 2013 General Assembly session are headed Governor Chafee's way to be signed, vetoed or allowed to become law without his signature.
But the clock doesn't start ticking until the House and Senate formally "transmit" each of the hundreds of bills passed in the closing days of the session that ended last Wednesday. So far, the House has only transmitted 28 of the 466 bills passed in the final days, and the Senate, 64.
House spokesman Larry Berman explained: "The plan is to transmit all bills to the governor by the end of this week. They are sent in batches in order to give the governor's staff the appropriate time to review them, rather than sending them all at once.
"The Senate has another 195 bills to transmit, while the House has 179 more to send along," he said. While many are House-Senate duplicates, Berman said the bills in the General Assembly's economic-development package were among the first sent to the governor.
Under the state Constitution, the governor has six days -- not including Sunday -- to veto a bill or it becomes operative without his signature. Had the General Assembly formally adjourned, he would have 10 days, but state lawmakers are technically in recess.