Everyone who has taken a high school civics class knows that governors, like the president, have the power to veto legislation. But here’s an interesting tidbit you wouldn’t get unless you were a close observer of state politics: Jim Doyle is, theoretically, one of the most powerful governors in the United States.
Sure, he’s about as lame as lame ducks get. But his power to change spending items through a veto is unmatched by the executive branches of all other states.
A bit of history on vetoes in the state of Wisconsin: Early on in Tommy Thompson’s 14-year reign as governor, he took the notion of executive power to a pretty absurd level.
Dubbed the “Vanna White veto” by journalists of the time, Thompson decided the state’s broad veto laws allowed him to take letters and numbers out of legislation at will, forming new words. Voters in 1990 nixed that power.
But Doyle, too, enjoyed broad veto power early on in his administration. The “Frankenstein veto” allowed Doyle to stitch together words and sentences to essentially legislate by deletion.
For example, Doyle could do this: “The University of Wisconsin’s coal plant shall receive $7,000,000 in new funding. It shall burn nothing but coal each day of the year” could become “The University of Wisconsin‘s coal plant shall receive $7,000,000 in new funding. It shall burn nothing but coal each day of the year.”
Psh, what a coal-hating fascist.
But seriously — Doyle, a Democrat, used the Frankenstein veto in ways that made Republicans’ blood boil. In 2005, his staff somehow found a way to turn a 272-word section of the Legislature’s budget bill into a 20-word sentence. In doing so, he redirected $427 million from transportation to public schools. He used it again in 2007, doubling the rate at which municipalities could increase property taxes.
Regardless of where you think the state’s priorities should lie — teaching students at Milwaukee Public Schools or fixing potholes on US-151 — it’s pretty easy to agree the governor should not have the unchecked power to move one percent of the state budget at will.
Thankfully, 70 percent of voters did agree, and the Frankenstein veto was banned in April 2008.
So fast-forward to last week. Committees in both the Assembly and the Senate voted in favor of a bill that will eliminate use of a line-item veto on spending bills by the governor.
The problem is the new law, which would amend the Wisconsin constitution, leaves the governor’s office with practically no discretionary power on budget bills — arguably the most important pieces of state legislation.
If passed, the amendment would force the governor to either grudgingly sign a bill he has minor problems with or veto the entire bill and send it back to the Legislature, where it would have to be reworked or overridden — the latter being unlikely given the partisan shenanigans of the state’s politicians.
And if passed, the amendment would make Wisconsin’s governor one of the least powerful, since all but six states (Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Vermont) have some form of line-item veto for major budget bills, according to a 2008 report from the National Conference of State Legislatures.
This measure simply goes too far. Yes, the governor should not have the ability to increase or decrease numbers, that’s obviously a form of legislating the executive branch of a government should avoid.
But by totally banning the line-item veto, the governor’s ability to act as a check on a Legislature would be totally eradicated.
It can’t make Jim Doyle any lamer, though. Not only has he worked on his last budget, but the measure still needs to pass both houses in this session and the next, then be approved through a statewide referendum. Yet something tells me what happens in November’s gubernatorial, Senate and Assembly races will greatly alter which party gets behind it in the next session.
Kevin Bargnes ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism.
