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SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The public isn't aware of it, but there is a long tradition in Sacramento that important news often happens on Friday evenings. That's particularly true with major announcements by the bureaucracy and decisions by the governor on controversial bills. The theory is that the later the announcement, the harder it is for reporters to get reaction from those affected by the event. Offices are closed -- even the offices of those who made the decisions -- and people have left for the weekend.

And politicians believe Friday is a good time to act on potentially controversial issues because reporters are writing for Saturday newspapers -- the most lightly read edition of the week.

And so it was last Friday night, when Republican Gov. Pete Wilson announced his vetoes of two of the most important health care-related bills of the year. Both bills, authored by liberal Democrats and backed by consumer groups, would have made major differences in the way health management organizations, or HMOs, operate in the state. The HMOs have about 17 million members, and polls show that health care issues are among the hottest political topics in this election year.

One bill by Sen. Herschel Rosenthal of Los Angeles would have removed state authority over HMOs from the Department of Corporations and placed it in a major public commission answerable to the Consumer Affairs Department. The commission would have been empowered to conduct public hearings on HMO-related issues, and would have created a special advisory panel of physicians, insurers, members of the public, consumers, health care professionals and others to offer guidance and recommendations.

The other bill by Assemblyman Michael Sweeney of Hayward would have allowed patients to get a second, outside opinion if they were refused treatment by their HMO.

The governor said the Rosenthal bill was deeply flawed and would have failed to provide the reforms it promised. Regulation of HMOs by a gubernatorial appointee -- the way it is handled now -- is better because it is more efficient and carries a greater degree of political accountability, the governor said.

There was no need for the Sweeney bill, the governor said, because there is no evidence that a patient can't get a valid, professional opinion from another doctor within the patient's medical group.

Not unnaturally, consumer groups argued just the opposite -- that a public commission would have more credibility deciding HMO issues than a sole bureaucrat, and that a second, outside opinion would carry greater weight.

One critic of the governor, echoing the thought in some suspicious reporters' minds, accused the governor of a "sneaky Friday night massacre" on behalf of his political supporters, who include insurers and HMOs.

In any event, look for more late-night actions by the governor this week as he wraps up actions on the bills sent to his desk in the waning moments of the 1997-98 legislative session.

Are we not tired yet of hearing about the [Clinton/Lewinsky] case? There are a lot of problems that our government could concentrate on, so why don't we just let it go, since Clinton admitted it? We should focus more on the economy, education, crime, etc. To me, it's just a waste of our money. The working people are the ones sufferring and we are not getting anything out of it. I hope they will just forget the past. Good luck to all of you if you guys want to listen to that garbage that we hear every day.

-Anonymous

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