Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.
Okay, hats off for the creative use of a veto, but that’s a fucking stupid power for a governor to have.
I was curious, so I looked up the amended wording, which is
(b) If the governor approves and signs the bill, the bill shall become law. Appropriation bills may be approved in whole or in part by the governor, and the part approved shall become law.
(c) In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill.
I guess I don’t know how strictly laws are usually interpreted with respect to the distinction between letters in words vs digits in numbers, but I think I would expect the court to rule against Evers here; striking digits seems to be clearly against the spirit of the amendment. On the flip side, though, the partial veto has enough of an established history of gamesmanship that I would also buy the argument that an amendment intended to ban striking digits should be expected to spell that out.
To reply to myself again as I keep going down this rabbit hole, the opinion in Citizens Utility Board v. Klauser, 534 N.W.2d 608 (Wis. 1995) includes
Thus, the amendment as ratified by the citizenry only limits the governor’s veto of letters and keeps intact the Wisconsin Senate conclusion that the governor has the authority to “reduce or eliminate numbers and amounts of appropriations” and exercise a “partial veto resulting in a reduction in an appropriation.”
A “reduction in appropriation” is clearly not what happened here, but the distinction between letters and numbers is apparently, at least in the opinion for this case, intentional.
It’s a stupid power indeed. How is this even acceptable? I mean, how could anyone working with the governor say “oh yeah, that veto is valid” without question or protest?
Can you imagine?
“This bill states that we will not use the death penalty to jaywalkers.”
And in comes the governor vetoing the “not.” Like, what the fuck?
Fucking incompetents.
Edit: and I commend the governor’s intention to make sure that schools are funded. But this is not the way. Have Republicans done bullshit like this in the past? It’s the only way I can think of as to why he did this.
Then let this guy play the Satanic Temple strategy and get line item veto power restricted or removed because the other side screams “no, not like that!”
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