Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a new $131.4 billion state budget into law, but not before using the chief executive’s blue pencil to scratch out a few spending items.

First, the headline. The budget is now in place for the new fiscal year that begins in less than 12 hours. That may seem to be cutting it close in the non-political world, but around here that’s a rare amount of lag time. (Trivia: the earliest a new budget has been signed into law in the last 25 years was in 1986, on June 25).

In a signing ceremony under the Capitol rotunda, Schwarzenegger praised the bipartisan effort that led to the on-time spending plan. “The real winners here today are the people of California,” he said. “And this is exactly the kind of government that they want, and they deserve.”

The lovefest continued from there, with congratulatory speeches from all four legislative leaders and the chairmen of each chamber’s budget committee.

Afterwards, the governor’s staff released the list of line-item vetoes. Schwarzenegger rejected 66 different items in General Fund and Special Fund spending, totaling a little more than $112 million.

Some of the interesting vetoes, along with a (hopefully) plain language explanation:

$10 million vetoed from a subsidy to local air quality districts (reason: the money comes from the state’s Motor Vehicles Account, where resources need to go to a CHP radio system upgrade and to implement the federal Real ID security act)… $25 million vetoed for reducing emissions from trains, construction equipment, and dairy equipment (reason: same concerns over using money from the Motor Vehicles Account)… $10 million vetoed from local trauma care services (reason: local governments are being given other money that could pay for these needs)… $10 million vetoed for hiring interpreters in civil court cases (reason: the court system agreed to a “stable funding level” that should pay for these needs without extra cash)… $1 million vetoed for university research on obesity and diabetes.

Some of the clean air vetoes are already stirring criticism in Central Valley air quality circles. And while the governor’s veto message on those issues blames the action, in part, on too many financial burdens for the state’s Motor Vehicles Account (funded through vehicle registration fees, DMV fees, etc.) it should be noted that the same pot of money is where the budget gets $6.5 million for Schwarzenegger’s much-talked about Hydrogen Highway Initiative. The governor’s advisers say as much as $150 million in air quality initiatives were preserved in the new budget.