The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday surrounding Gov. Tony Evers’ use of his partial veto power to extend statewide school funding until the year 2425, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
Many states have a line-item veto in place. In Wisconsin the governor has partial veto power, allowing the governor to strike words, numbers and punctuation from both appropriation and non-appropriation bills. This power gives the governor a larger role in the lawmaking process, according to the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau.
Evers was presented with a bill increasing how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year, applying to the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years. Evers was able to use his partial veto power to change the end date from “2024-25” to “2425” by removing the “20” and the hyphen, according to AP News.
Staff Attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, Bryna Godar, spoke about the history of the partial veto in Wisconsin and outlined some of the organization’s arguments against Evers’ actions.
“This type of wholly creative veto is not what was intended to be covered by the partial veto power,” Godar said. “It was really intended to respond to legislative logrolling and lack of fiscal restraints, but governors and the court have stretched that meaning over the years, and the key argument in this case is that this one goes too far.”
In Wisconsin, several constitutional amendments have been passed to walk back the power of the partial veto, according to AP News.
The first, in 1990, banned striking out individual letters to create new words, dubbed the “Vanna White” veto in reference to Wheel of Fortune co-host. In 2008, another amendment was passed that banned striking words in a way that would combine two sentences into one — the “Frankenstein” veto, according to AP News.
The lawsuit before the court argued that Evers’ veto is barred under the 1990 amendment, and is therefore unconstitutional. Evers’ argued the Vanna White veto controls the striking out of individual letters to create new words, not striking out individual digits to create new numbers, according to AP News.
“Ideally, lawmaking should be a deliberative process between the legislature and the governor,” Godar said. “The type of veto that was used in this case really seems to cross that line into being unilateral lawmaking, where the governor is inventing a provision that the legislature did not pass.”
The State Democracy Research Initiative has filed an amicus brief on behalf of legal scholar and Columbia professor Richard Briffault, arguing for striking down the veto in this case.
The Wisconsin Constitution established a balance of power between the governmental branches, according to Godar, adding that the lawmaking process should incorporate bicameralism, requiring the legislation to pass through both chambers of the legislature before being presented to the governor.
“Our argument is that this type of power where [Gov. Evers] can rewrite provisions through creative editing dips the balance too far in the direction of the executive, whereas what the partial veto was meant to do was restore balance,” Godar said.
