California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) must be icing his hand Monday. With just over two days to go until the deadline for signing or vetoing legislation passed during the 2014 session, Brown spend his Sunday signing 48 measures into law and vetoing another 14. And he’s far from done: Before Tuesday’s deadline, Brown will have to decide how to act on another 245 measures.
Across the country, state legislatures in 47 states and the District of Columbia’s city council have passed more than 24,000 bills into law this year alone. That’s an average of 462 new laws per state.
Tennessee skews the average: The legislature in Nashville passed an incredible 2,979 bills between Jan. 14 and April 17, when they called it quits for the year. Gov. Bill Haslam (R) must have run out of pens.
Legislatures in Illinois and Rhode Island passed more than 1,000 new laws each. Legislatures in all but 11 states passed more new laws than the 181 that the 113th Congress has passed since convening last year.
Among those 11 states, four — Montana, North Dakota, Nevada and Texas — don’t hold regular legislative sessions during even-numbered years. Nevada legislators met earlier this month for a special session to vote on tax subsidies and enticements for Tesla, the electric car manufacturer.
Here’s a look at how many bills have been passed in each state: