The governor signed a 144 bills passed by the General Assembly.

He vetoed 27.

He talked about some of the bills he signed and the ones he vetoed during his weekly news conference today.

He defended his decision to sign House Bill 509, a bill that would amend the state's open records law.

The change has been criticized by open government advocates and many in the news media.

Critics of the bill say if state workers personal cell phone messages are not subject to open records laws, they might deliberately communicate that way in order to avoid any public scrutiny.

We have the governor's response in tonight's legislative update.

First, the part that is addressed by this bill, which is text messages on personal phones, has only been a part of the open records law.

If you look at what when court decisions came out for about five months.

And so this idea that it would destroy the open records law when it's only been a part of the open records law for a brief period of time, we look at all the great journalism that's been done through the open records law as it existed before.

You know, I think is is an overreaction.

The second is it is specifically tailored for the court decision that came out.

What the advocates, those being quoted said in arguing that case was that Fish and Wildlife refused to provide state email addresses to the commissioners, and therefore they were forced to do public work on their private cell phone.

Well, the current bill says you have to give them an email address and they have to use it.

And if not, they violated the law.

Now, I can say from enforcement, when we actually pull records, especially when there's bad actors, unless we get it on that public email and on that public email, then a bad actor is ultimately not going to turn it over.

Now I get that there are members in the press that have a very different opinion of it, but I've been transparent in my reasoning and in talking about it.

How do I communicate with my staff?

I communicate with them face to face.

I do it orally over the phone.

That's that's how we do.

I'm still the generation where we talk into a phone instead of just type.