Acting Governor - Disputes Over Powers of Acting Governors

Disputes Over Powers of Acting Governors

The powers of an acting governor came into dispute during the 1980 Democratic primary presidential campaign of Jerry Brown, then governor of California. When he was campaigning out of state, which was often in late 1979 and early 1980, Mike Curb, a Republican who was then serving as Lieutenant Governor of California often used his position as acting governor to veto legislation, promulgate executive orders, issue proclamations, and to do other things that Brown would not likely have done had he been present in the state. This eventually resulted in litigation, much of which went in Curb's favor.

Powers of an acting governor had previously been questioned in the mid-1970s in Kentucky. In her capacity as acting governor of Kentucky in Julian Carroll's absence, Thelma Stovall, then-Lieutenant Governor, acting as governor, issued pardons, called the Kentucky General Assembly into special session to enact legislation limiting property tax increases, and purported to veto the legislature's repeal of its ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The authority of the Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky to act as governor when the elected governor is out of state was repealed under a 1992 amendment to the Kentucky Constitution.

In 1993, in Pennsylvania, Governor Robert P. Casey underwent surgery that left him incapacitated for months, thus leaving Lieutenant Governor Mark Singel as acting governor. During that time, Singel fulfilled all duties of the office of governor.

Following the death of New Hampshire Governor Hugh Gallen, Vesta M. Roy, as president of the state Senate, served as acting governor of New Hampshire from December 30, 1982 to January 6, 1983.

On December 28, 2006, Kris Kolluri served as acting Governor of New Jersey, while New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine was out of town, as was the Senate president, Assembly speaker and attorney general, all ahead of Kolluri in the line of succession. Under state law, an acting governor has to be appointed whenever the governor is absent from the state. New Jersey will get a lieutenant governor, but not until 2010.

Practices in this area are anything but uniform from state to state. In Rhode Island, for example, the Lieutenant Governor never acts as governor, even if the Governor has left the state. In many states, if the Lieutenant Governor succeeds to the governorship, he or she is regarded as a new and succeeding governor in every sense, just as occurs when the Vice President of the United States becomes President of the United States when that office is vacated by death or resignation.