Schwarzenegger Terminates California Anti-Outsourcing Bills

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday vetoed three bills aimed at restricting the ability of companies doing business in the state to send IT-related work to low-cost overseas locations.

Schwarzenegger nixed a bill sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Liz Figueroa that would have prohibited the offshoring of personal data such as Social Security and driver's license numbers. He also terminated Democratic state Sen. Joseph Dunn's bills to prohibit overseas outsourcing of data related to homeland security projects and healthcare.

In vetoing Dunn's bill, Schwarzenegger said in a statement that he doesn't believe work performed in the United States is inherently more secure than that performed in another country. "The types and levels of security measures taken to protect such information whether here or abroad is a better indicator of how safe that information will remain," the Republican governor said. Schwarzenegger said he vetoed Dunn's proposal to limit the offshoring of healthcare data because the federal Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act affords such protection.

Schwarzenegger vetoed Figueroa's bill with a statement indicating that he wasn't opposed to the legislation in principle but thought that "ambiguous wording" in the bill could place it into conflict with existing California laws. "This bill is well intentioned, and I would consider signing a similar measure in the future," Schwarzenegger said.

A spokesman was not immediately available to clarify why Schwarzenegger seems to think that homeland security data could be well-protected overseas while personal consumer data should stay in locally maintained databases.