EXPLAINER: How a budget veto increased school funding by 400+ years

 

MADISON Wis. (CBS 58) -- A partial budget veto by Gov. Tony Evers is catching the attention of many people, including celebrities.

In a surprise move, Evers used his broad veto powers to extend school funding increases for centuries – more than 400 years – in the state budget.

It caught the attention of "Jeopardy!" host Ken Jennings. He joked on Twitter that he'd like to become Wisconsin's governor after seeing how Evers was able to change the spending plan to his liking.

However, Jennings' tweet is inaccurate because a governor cannot wipe out letters, but they used to be able to.

Evers' decision also caused an uproar among conservatives who called the veto absurd, even though Republican and Democratic governors have both used their broad veto authority to drastically change state budgets since the 1930's.

How did Evers do it?

Wisconsin governors have long had some of the most expansive veto powers in the country, and those powers have been scaled back quite a bit over the last few decades.

Currently, a governor can strike out almost anything in the state budget, such as crossing out numbers, words or punctuation to dramatically change what lawmakers intended the budget to look like.

That's exactly what Evers did to secure school funding increases for the next 402 years. He struck out the number 20 related to the 2024 school year and removed a hyphen. That resulted in changing the 2024 school year to 2425, which means how much revenue a school district can raise each year will increase by $325 per student until 2425.

"It's absolutely chaotic, it's deeply precedent and nuts," said Howard Schweber, an associate professor of political science and legal studies at UW-Madison.

Schweber predicts Evers' veto will face a lawsuit because he doesn't think the state has any responsibility to be committed to 400 years of fixed education spending.

"I think the court will look at it for what the problem is, which is, given far too much power to the executive branch in situations when there's split party control to detail or take control of entire legislative agendas," Schweber said. 

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) also hopes litigation occurs. If the per pupil revenue increase remains in place, Vos believes it will result in massive tax hikes. Revenue limits on how much a school district can spend on each student is collected through property taxes and state aid.

"It clearly wasn’t the intent of anyone in the legislature to have property tax increase for 400 years and that's why perhaps someone will sue," Vos said on WISN's Jay Weber Show.

History of Veto Powers, Lawsuits

Before 1990, governors could veto individual words to create new words - known as the Vanna White veto. Up until 2008, there was also in place what's called the Frankenstein veto that would eliminate words and numbers in two or more sentences to create a new sentence.

For example, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle used his partial veto powers to increase the amount the state borrows for highway projects from $140 million to $1 billion.

Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson whipped out multiple words and numbers to create a school tax credit that added $319 million to the budget.

Most of those powers remained in place for decades until Evers' first term in office. In 2019, the conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty sued, arguing Evers overstepped his authority.

In the end, justices on the state Supreme Court failed to reach a majority opinion to set clear rules for what can be done with future vetoes.

"While I appreciate both Democrats and Republicans have done it in the past, it's time to stop," said Rick Esenberg, president of the WILL.

Esenberg said he supports a lawsuit to challenge Evers' school funding veto, but he declined to say whether his firm will be the ones to file it.

"This is not the way laws should be made in this country and certainly not the way we should decide to spend billions of billions of dollars," Esenberg said.

In August, the Supreme Court will have a liberal majority for the first time in 15 years with incoming Justice Janet Protasiewicz being sworn into office.

Schweber said that could put pressure on Republicans to file a lawsuit quickly, or he believes a workaround could be passing a constitutional amendment to specify the governor's veto authority.

For now, the changes Evers made remain in place until the Legislature, courts or the governor act.