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.