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Gov. Bev Perdue has five bills left on her desk from this year’s legislative session.

• S133: Register of Deeds Pensions. This never struck me as a controversial bill. As I read it, the bill helps the pensions of Register of Deeds sync up better with the state pension plan, but I could be wrong.

  Reason to veto: I don't see one right off the bat, unless there's a money issue that's not obvious.
   

• H 1329: Consolidate Expunction Statutes.  The bill, among other things, would make someone eligible to have their record expunged if they were 18-years-old at the time of the crime they committed rather than 18-years-old when they were convicted. It also allows for the expunction of misdemeanor larceny. There were many who said this bill would allow people to have items removed from their records who ought not to be able to do so.

  Reason to veto:  It's possible the governor might want to bolster her cred with the law and order crowd. But that cred would come with a price: hacking off progressives in kind of a large way. Also, of the five bills left, this bill was the most controversial when it passed through the House and Senate, passing by much narrower than typical margins.
   

• H 945: Studies Act: Generally this is an internal bill that lets lawmakers study all manner of potential legislation between adjournment of the long session in an odd numbered year and the short session in an even numbered year.

  Reason to veto: Even if there was a bat-snot-crazy study in there, I can’t see the percentage in vetoing a bill like that since it really wouldn’t make anything law. The one thing a veto here might accomplish would be making lawmakers angry.

• H 836: Modify Appropriations Act: This bill tweaks the $19 billion state budget that passed this summer. The bill actually increases spending a bit by doing a few things, including allowing mental health agencies to hang onto some of their fund balance.

  Reasons for vetoing this one: some technical glitch that the governor doesn’t want to allow to go into law; an (albeit unlikely) bid to force the honorables to reconsider something else in the budget; unhappiness with the extra spending.
   

• H 104: Clarify Legislative Confidentiality: I hadn’t paid much attention to this one, but it would make legislative drafting all that much more obtuse. Already, the General Assembly exempts itself form public records statutes that other governments would have to follow. But this would make it harder to figure out where bills came from. Under the bill, requests to state agencies for information that would help in drafting a bill would become confidential.

  Reason for vetoing this one: This measure conflicts with the idea of making government more open and transparent, something that Perdue ran on. Also, it puts members of the executive branch under threat of a penalty to protect legislative confidentiality. 

Place your bets ladies and gentlemen. We have about 37 hours before these laws would go into effect even if the governor doesn't sign them.