Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Ninety-Seventh Regular Session
The Chief Clerk makes the following entries under the above date.
__________________
The Chief Clerk makes the following entries dated Thursday, January 5, 2006.
__________________
The Chief Clerk records:
Senate Bill 58
Senate Bill 70
Senate Bill 138
Senate Bill 171
Senate Bill 402
Presented to the Governor on January 5, 2006.
__________________
The Chief Clerk makes the following entries dated Friday, January 6, 2006.
__________________
Read first time and referred:
Senate Bill 498
Relating to: excavation notices and installation of certain water and sewer laterals.
By
Senators
Leibham and Kanavas; cosponsored by Representatives Nass, LeMahieu, Hines, Hahn, Pettis, Ainsworth and Montgomery.
To committee on Natural Resources and Transportation.
Senate Bill 499
Relating to: recording and filing transportation project plats.
By
Senators
Grothman, Roessler, Lassa and Kedzie; cosponsored by Representatives Hahn, Krawczyk, Hines, F. Lasee, Albers, Gunderson, Strachota, Ott and Van Roy.
To committee on Natural Resources and Transportation.
Senate Bill 500
Relating to: the applicability of rules concerning the storage of bulk fertilizer and bulk pesticides.
By
Senator
Olsen
; cosponsored by Representatives Hines, Towns and Gronemus.
To committee on Natural Resources and Transportation.
Senate Bill 501
Relating to: damages for frivolous claims.
By
Senators
Grothman, Stepp, Roessler, Darling, Reynolds and Lazich; cosponsored by Representatives Gundrum, Travis, Gard, Kestell, Hahn, LeMahieu, Van Roy, Hundertmark, Musser, Jensen, Pettis, Nischke, Gottlieb, Vos, Gunderson, Ballweg, Krawczyk, Owens, Bies and McCormick.
To committee on Judiciary, Corrections and Privacy.
__________________
State of Wisconsin
Office of the Governor
January 6, 2006
The Honorable, The Senate:
I am vetoing Senate Bill 58. The bill makes sweeping changes to Wisconsin's product liability law and places a larger burden on consumers to prove the defective condition of products.
I am committed to investing in all of our industries and fostering a business climate in Wisconsin that promotes growth. However, growing Wisconsin's economy should not be at the expense of injured consumers' and workers' ability to hold wrongdoers accountable. For example, the bill grants automatic immunity for any product that has been in the marketplace for 15 years. This arbitrary time limit is inherently unfair and puts consumers and workers at a disadvantage, given that a defect in a product may not manifest until years after the product is placed in the stream of commerce.
In addition, the bill creates a presumption that a manufactured product is not defective if it complies with the relevant state and federal laws, at the time of sale. Unfortunately, history is full of examples – like the Ford Pinto – where manufacturers complied with existing government regulations, all the while concealing information about a product that threatened public health and safety. Producers who hide information from government regulators and the public shouldn't have an advantage against more responsible companies.
The bill also provides a liability shield for distributors and sellers when they receive products in a sealed container. By shielding these two groups from liability, it takes away the incentive of the industry as a whole to produce, sell, and market the safest products possible. Moreover, there is no definition of sealed container in the legislation, making this a dangerously vague exception.
This bill simply goes too far. Protecting products like the Ford Pinto doesn't help consumers or the economy; it simply puts the public at risk. Companies should be held fully accountable if they make a product that hurts people – especially if they knowingly do so and conceal information from government regulators.
Growing Wisconsin's economy and protecting the safety of consumers in Wisconsin are both priorities of my Administration. Any legislation must fairly balance the interests of consumers with those of manufacturers, distributors, and sellers.
Sincerely,
JIM DOYLE
Governor
Office of the Governor
January 6, 2006
The Honorable, The Senate:
I am vetoing Senate Bill 70. This bill would change the state standard for admissibility of lay and expert witness testimony in our courts and administrative hearings. Under current law, juries weigh the reliability and credibility of witness testimony while challenges are made through cross-examination. This bill would require judges to act as "gatekeepers" of information and the arbiters of what is allowable expert testimony based on what they perceive to be sound scientific method.
I am vetoing this bill for many of the same reasons that I vetoed the similar, Senate Bill 49, from last session. As I previously stated, I am aware of no evidence that Wisconsin's existing rules governing the admissibility of lay and expert witness testimony have produced unfair results and require revision. Wisconsin judges are already empowered under current law to reject evidence because it is superfluous, prejudicial or inherently improbable.
Moreover, SB 70 would hinder the efforts of state prosecutors in criminal prosecutions. Under this bill, state prosecutors would face an additional obstacle in introducing key expert testimony that relies on disciplines such as psychiatry, DNA testing, fingerprinting or forensics.
In short, this bill is a solution in search of a problem, and it would only make the job of prosecutors in Wisconsin harder. Judges and juries can already reject evidence if it is superfluous or improbable, so there is simply no reason to add additional procedural hurdles to the system. I trust juries in this state to properly weigh the credibility and reliability of evidence when making their decisions, and I must therefore veto this bill.
Sincerely,
JIM DOYLE
Governor
State of Wisconsin
Office of the Governor
January 6, 2006
The Honorable, The Senate:
I am vetoing Senate Bill 138, which requires doctors to make certain statements to women seeking abortions.
A woman considering an abortion is confronted with a profoundly personal dilemma. Her decision making process becomes more difficult the further along the pregnancy. Few abortions occur after the twentieth week of gestation and when they are being considered it is often because of serious, sometimes fatal, health care complications for the fetus and/or the pregnant woman. In any such circumstance, it is my hope that a woman's family, friends and personal physician will be available to assist her in making the best decision for her and her family. Certainly, they are the individuals best positioned to do so.
The state already intervenes in this decision making process by requiring that a woman considering an abortion provide informed consent. Her physician must provide information on fetal development and the risks of undergoing an abortion. According to state law the information currently provided must be objective and accurate.
The required notice of fetal pain in this bill fails to reflect a consensus of medical opinion. In fact, a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that after a thorough review of the available literature, there is no conclusive scientific evidence of when a fetus first feels pain. Many of the studies reviewed indicate that pain perception probably does not function before the third trimester.
For any medical procedure, the information that a doctor provides to a patient should be based on the best available science and proven medical practice. All the more so when the medical procedure involves a pregnant woman with potentially serious medical complications. It would be reckless to inject a requirement that doctors communicate unproven science to their patients during an already difficult and sometimes traumatic time. Certainly, the legislature is in no position to decide what is and what is not settled medical fact.
This bill intrudes on the doctor patient relationship in a heavy handed manner and contravenes the requirement that doctors provide objective and accurate information to their patients. In any case, I trust doctors, not the Legislature, to make medical judgments. We should keep the doctor-patient relationship between doctors and patients and keep the Legislature out of it.
Sincerely,
JIM DOYLE
Governor
State of Wisconsin
Office of the Governor
January 6, 2006
The Honorable, The Senate:
I am vetoing Senate Bill 171 in its entirety. This bill prohibits school boards from calling a special election to hold referenda to seek voter approval for the purpose of borrowing money or exceeding the revenue limit applicable to the school district.
Under current law, school boards must obtain, through referenda, approval of the school district's electors for either of these purposes. Referenda may be held at the next regularly scheduled primary or election held at least 45 days after adopting the borrowing resolution or at least 42 days after adopting the resolution to exceed the limit is filed. Additionally, referenda may be held at a special election. This bill prohibits a school board from calling a special election for either of these purposes, except that a special election could occur in the odd-numbered years on the second Tuesday in September and the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Under the bill, referenda to borrow money or exceed the revenue limit could be held on just four possible dates in any year.
I am vetoing Senate Bill 171 because I believe it places an unnecessary and burdensome restriction on local communities. Current law already requires school boards to provide ample notice for upcoming referenda held during a special election. This bill would limit the ability of school boards to respond to emergencies or financial crises. The children in a school building where a roof collapsed should not have to wait an additional three months or more for repairs simply because the roof happened to collapse just after a regularly scheduled election.
