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The General Assembly is due to reconvene Wednesday to consider overriding Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto of the Racial Justice Act, which allows death row inmates to challenge their sentences based on statistical data.

As with the approach of any legislative session, 1,000 rumors have bloomed. The most persistent one this time around — passed on by a couple folks last week — is that lawmakers may try to take up more veto overrides than just the RJA. Raleigh TV station WRAL talked about that potential in a piece yesterday.

Here’s why that is unlikely**.

Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue's veto message (.pdf) only calls the General Assembly back to Raleigh in order to override the RJA veto. And the constitution seems pretty clear that when the governor calls lawmakers back for a veto override, they can only consider overriding the vetoed bill. The other vetoes Republicans would like to get at — especially one dealing with Voter ID — were passed, vetoed and shelved earlier in the year during the RJA veto, which was handed down following a short session at the beginning of December.

In 2007, Gov. Mike Easley vetoed a bill dealing with incentives for tire manufacturers. In order to pass a compromise bill, the legislature had to convent what was technically an entirely different session from the session to consider the veto override. And that was back when the governor and legislature where controlled by the same party and played nice together.

Now, lawmakers could of course call themselves a whole other session while they’re in town to take up those other vetoes. But in order to do that without the help of the governor, lawmakers would need to collect signatures amounting to three-fifths of both chambers. While Republicans who want to override vetoes have those numbers in the Senate, they would need help from their Democratic colleagues in the House.

It seems to me unlikely that the Democrats would be all that cooperative, given that allowing an extra session could set a fellow Democrat up a high profile slap in the face. They’ll also be worried that with some members still unavailable from illnesses and holiday travel, Republicans may have the upper hand in shoving through legislation of all sorts that Democrats have been trying to block.

Still, those who think the legislature is up to something say that lawmakers will tweak their adjournment resolution to come back for a separate special session Wednesday. But in order to tweak that resolution, they need to be in session. And it doesn’t appear to me that tweaking of the adjournment resolution would be an eligible activity during the veto override session.

I have shopped this take to a couple of my more knowledgeable lobbyist friends as well as staff who work for the House Speaker and President Pro Tempore. They have all said their understanding is the same as mine and all they expect to be doing Wednesday is dealing with the RJA veto.

That said: I’ve been wrong before and perhaps there is some more creative mind than mine that can figure out how to get around the constitutional constrictions involved.

If I am correct, Wednesday will be a short day and the honorables will next be back in February.

** Update: Here's a caveat that outlines how lawmakers COULD return (link).