The lawsuit being heard by the state’s high court alleged that Wisconsin law “forbids the governor from striking individual digits in an enrolled bill to create a new year.” The group behind the lawsuit, the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce’s Litigation Center, believes Evers’s use of the veto violates a constitutional amendment Wisconsin voters passed in 1990, which banned the use of “Vanna White” or “pick-a-letter” vetoes, which previously allowed governors to delete phrases, single digits, letters, or words to create new words or sentences.
The action in question stems from Evers’s partial veto last year, when he increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425.
Evers used his partial veto powers to strike through a hyphen and “20” from a reference to the 2024-25 school year in the state’s budget. In doing so, he increased school funding by $325 per student per year for the next 402 years. Before his partial veto, the budget was set to increase school funding by $325 per student only through 2025.
Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers used a line-item veto to change a Republican budget and increase state funding for public schools for the next 400 years.
By striking out the characters in red below, the new law adds school funding until 2425.https://t.co/TcZR5ycCfh pic.twitter.com/X4s3YGOPZU
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) July 6, 2023
“The Legislature enacted a policy that was going to extend a revenue limit increase for two years, sunset that increase after two years,” Evers’s attorney Colin Roth said. “The governor struck that and effectively removed the sunset. To me, removing a sunset is not a radical policy change.”
During oral arguments Wednesday, the justices seemed to agree that limits were needed, but they did not agree on the exact limitations.
“They think it’s crazy because it is crazy,” Justice Brian Hagedorn said of legal scholars who look at what previous courts have allowed on partial vetoes.“We allow governors to unilaterally create law that has not been proposed to them at all. It is a mess of this court’s making.”
“The governor is becoming the most powerful person in the state, arguably, to just make the law whatever he declares,” conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley said.
“It does feel like the sky is the limit,” liberal Justice Jill Karofsky said. “The stratosphere is the limit.”
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Wisconsin governors from both sides of the aisle have long taken advantage of the partial veto. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker used his own partial veto powers to allow one state program to last indefinitely in a move known as the “thousand-year veto.”
“People are saying, ‘How can he do this?’” former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson said of Evers’s veto. “Well, he did it.”
