Features

The Associated Press 

SACRAMENTO — For the third year in a row, Gov. Gray Davis has vetoed a bill that would have required employers to tell employees in writing if they monitor their workers’ e-mails. 

The Democratic governor on Tuesday also turned down several bills he said the state couldn’t afford in the face of a potential multibillion dollar budget shortfall. 

But he signed dozens of other measures, including a bill that authorizes an income tax credit for individuals and small businesses that buy and install solar or wind-powered generators. 

Davis said the e-mail bill would have placed “unnecessary and complicating obligations on employers” and could have led to lawsuits by employees alleging that the notice was never provided. 

Employers have the right to monitor office e-mails since they could be held liable for illegal conduct by their workers, and employees “in today’s wired economy” know that e-mails can be monitored, Davis said. 

But the bill’s author, Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey, said Davis had missed “the larger point of a person’s right to, and expectation of, privacy.” 

“Just because employers own the computers and pay for the Internet access doesn’t mean they have the right to spy on their workers any more than owning the telephone and paying the phone bill allows them to monitor or record their workers’ personal phone conversations without telling them,” she said. 

A written notice to each employee would discourage them from using computer e-mail for personal reasons, Bowen said. 

The senator rejected amendments proposed by Davis, which a Bowen aide said would have required employers only to post a monitoring notice in the employee break room. 

Davis also vetoed bills that would have: 

• Provided grants to public libraries for after-school youth programs. 

• Authorized scholarships and grants for students who agreed to practice in the fields of geriatrics or gerontology for three years after graduation. 

• Provided additional funds to help school districts in colder areas of the state pay for snow removal. 

— Required the Department of Education to publish a report on the Internet each year revealing the distribution of uncredentialed teachers in California schools. 

In each case, Davis cited the cost of the bill, the slowing economy and a $1.1 billion revenue shortfall through the first three months of this fiscal year. 

The alternative energy bill, by Senate Minority Leader Jim Brulte, R-Rancho Cucamonga, will allow individuals and small businesses to take a state income tax credit to cover part of the cost of buying a photovoltaic or wind-driven power system with a generating capacity of up to 200 kilowatts. 

The credit will be equal to 15 percent of the purchase price or $4.50 per rated watt of the generator, whichever is less, for the 2001 to 2003 tax years and half that amount for the 2004 and 2005 tax years. It will expire on Jan. 1, 2006. 

Brulte said the measure will help ease future energy shortages.