Gov. Drops Nurse Ratio Challenge

His endeavor helped spark the public employee union rebellion that led to the defeat of his special election agenda Tuesday.

Schwarzenegger last November had set aside rules that required hospitals to employ in some wards one nurse for every five patients instead of every six. His administration said it was concerned hospitals could not handle the financial costs involved in hiring more nurses.

But a Sacramento County Superior Court judge rejected the administration's effort in March, and the ruling was upheld by an appellate court. While the administration continued to try to overturn it, hospitals had to follow the new rules and discovered they were not as burdensome as they had feared.

On Thursday, the same day Schwarzenegger publicly pledged to be less combative with those who had opposed his special election, the administration dropped its appeal. "We had 10 months of experience with the court-mandated ratios and there seems to be no negative impact on the healthcare system," Sabrina Demayo Lockhart, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Agency, said Friday.

"Our data shows that hospitals have been able to meet the lower ratios," she said, "and some hospitals have even signed it into their labor contracts."

Leaders of the California Nurses Assn., which persuaded a judge to reinstate the rules in March, said they viewed Schwarzenegger's action as both a "strategic retreat" from a court case that could not be won and an effort to mend relations with those who had defeated the four initiatives he backed on the Nov. 8 ballot.

"The governor did extend the olive branch and we don't want to be ungracious," said Rose Ann DeMoro, the union's executive director. "But as he extends this branch, we will never take our eye off the tree. What we are focused on is that this governor takes his direction from corporations."

The nurses declared it as a victory in a campaign that saw them hound Schwarzenegger at appearances throughout California, holding 107 protests. At one of the earliest, in December, Schwarzenegger told his audience those "special interests" were angry because he was "always kicking their butts."