Every legislative session has its outrages, and many of them don't surface until bills already are passed and signed into law. This year, we've got a late-breaking outrage involving a veto.

Here's the story, courtesy of Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star:

Fillmore, a small city in Ventura County, cut a deal to create a local sales office for Owens & Minor, a major supplier of medical supplies. Because the sales were officially completed in Fillmore, the city gets the local share of the sales tax. In the past, the orders went straight to distribution centers in Vista, Industry and Livermore, and those cities collected the sales tax. One city raiding another is nothing unusual. This one is worth about $5 million a year. What's different here is the side deal cut by Fillmore: it's giving 85 percent of the sales tax revenue to the broker who arranged the deal. That's a cool $4.25 million a year that won't be paying for cops, firefighters and other public services in Vista, Industry, Livermore or Fillmore.

As my colleague Paul Gullixson put it, this deal would embarrass a Chicago ward-heeler.

Now to the just concluded legislative session and the veto.

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, a Democrat whose district includes Livermore, introduced legislation to undue the kickback. Owens & Minor lawyers pointed out that a contract's a contract, so the bill was amended to prohibit any similar deals in the future.

The bill was supported by the League of California Cities, the California State Association of Counties and nearly unanimous majorities in both houses of the Legislature. And it was vetoed Friday by the governor, who cited his pique with the overdue state budget and invited Hancock to try again next year.

If anything the overdue budget should have underscored the value of this legislation. Cities and counties are in trouble too. It's bad enough that they pick each other's pockets, but skimming money off the top for private interests sounds a lot like Nathan Detroit's floating crap game in "Guys and Dolls."

Well, for one broker, luck was a lady tonight.

-- Jim Sweeney