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‘Frankenstein’ veto’s day in court

When voters hit the polls Tuesday, they will have a chance to rid the state of what some call a monster of a law.

If passed, the referendum would amend the state constitution to put an end to the so-called “Frankenstein” veto, in which the governor takes words from different parts of the legislation and strings them together to form a new sentence.

The referendum was put on the ballot as a bipartisan way to keep the balance of powers.

“Having that much power makes the Legislature and governor’s office unequal, and they were meant to be equal powers,” said Carrie Lynch, spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, a supporter of the referendum.

Proponents of the amendment point to Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s most extreme use of it: In the 2005-07 biennium budget, the governor deleted five pages of text and left about two dozen words, allowing him to shift $330 million from the state’s transportation fund to aid local schools.

This was done without approval from the Republican-controlled Legislature, which could not gain the two-thirds vote needed to override the veto.

“We’ve seen abuses over the years from the governor,” said Ryan Murray, spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau. “The original idea wasn’t to allow him to rewrite legislation or to allow him to write new legislation.”

Doyle spokesperson Jessica Erickson said use of the veto on that budget was necessary to “protect education and make sure our schools had the resources they needed.”

“The Wisconsin governor’s partial veto power has been an important check on a Legislature that has gone to the extreme,” Erickson said.

This is the second time such a referendum has gone on the ballot in recent history. In 1990, voters eliminated the so-called “Vanna White veto,” named for the co-host and puzzle board operator from TV’s “Wheel of Fortune.”

By using that veto, governors could delete certain letters from words in order to change legislation.

According to Murray, no major opposition to the referendum has surfaced from any legislator or special interest group.

“It seems that there’s one person in the state that doesn’t support this, and that’s the governor himself,” Murray added.