Opinion ID: 1364850
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The First-Generation Approach Johnson v. Walters [31]

Text: The purpose of the last sentence of § 56 [32]  the single-subject mandate  is (a) to prevent legislators from having their vote impermissibly coerced or impaired by being confronted with improper choices and (b) to prevent the legislature from defeating the governor's veto power in the same manner. In either case an elected official may be required to vote in favor of one provision which he disfavors in order to enact provisions which he supports. In both instances, an affirmative vote is the product of impermissibly coerced decision-making. Miscombination of subjects often leads to logrolling or improper inducement into voting for the lesser of the evils in the bill. The § 56 single-subject mandate was designed to prevent this kind of intimidation to make a bill saleable. Our jurisprudence teaches that in a pure (general) appropriations bill, agencies with unrelated functions may be included without offending the § 56 single-subject mandate. [33] It is only when substantive-law components are included within an appropriations bill that the § 56 command is implicated. In Walters [34] the court became belatedly converted to the concept of rigorously enforcing the § 56 single-subject mandate, announcing for the first time since statehood mandatory compliance with the § 56 strictures. In accordance with Walters, if a bill fails to pass constitutional single-subject muster, the governor must condemn it by the use of an appropriate veto message and return the bill to the legislature. [35] Walters expressly overruled Wiseman v. Oklahoma Board of Corrections, [36] which gave birth to the rule that the governor must either accept or reject in toto a bill's substantive-law provisions (Art. 6, § 11 veto power) [37] and confined his line item veto power solely to the appropriation items (Art. 6, § 12 veto power). [38] While I joined the court's Rip Van Winkle conversion, I counseled in Walters (a) against overruling Wiseman's teaching and (b) against pronouncing that the governor must declare the bill violative of the single-subject command. [39] B.