Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers creatively used his veto powers to make a Republican-approved education budget increase last for four-hundred years, and the liberal state Supreme Court has okayed it.
In 2023, the Republican legislature approved a budget that included the following provision:
For the limit for the 2023−24 school year and the 2024−25 school year, add $325 to the result under par. (b)
This provision increased the school funding by $325 per student for the next two school years: 2023–24 and 2024–25. But Evers used his line-item veto power—which only in Wisconsin can be just portions of a line—to make it read as follows:
For the limit for
the2023−24 school year and the 2024−25school year, add $325 to the result under par. (b)
That’s right. The governor made it read “For the limit for 2023–2425, add $325…” He just turned a two year funding increase into a 400-year funding increase.
Naturally, the Republican legislature cried foul and took their case to the state Supreme Court.
Wisconsin’s governor’s veto power is unique. The few other states with line-item veto power allow the governor to strike entire lines (thus the name), but Wisconsin’s governor can strike individual words.
Republicans argued that Evers’s move violated a restriction on that veto power that had been added to the Constitution in 1990. The so-called “Vanna White Law” banned governors from striking individual letters in words to make different words, after a previous governor had done so to change the plain meaning of a law.
The 4–3 liberal majority on the state Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that the Vanna White Law is silent on the issue of striking individual digits and hyphens from numbers to make different numbers.
