The Wisconsin Supreme Court has upheld a ruling allowing the Democratic governor to lock in a school funding increase for 400 years. The decision highlights the governor's powerful veto power, which is the broadest in the nation, the AP reports. The court's four liberal justices affirmed this power, ruling that it permits altering digits to extend funding durations. Wisconsin is the only state where a governor can reshape spending bills by striking out words, numbers, and punctuation.
In 2023, Gov. Tony Evers used his partial veto power to strike the "20" and the hyphen from a reference to the 2024-25 school year in two-year budget bill, extending a funding increase that was meant to expire in 2025 to 2425. In the majority opinion, Justice Jill Karofsky wrote that the court is "acutely aware that a 400-year increase is both significant and attention-grabbing," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. "However, our constitution does not limit the governor's partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable."
The unusual veto power was introduced in a 1930 amendment to the Wisconsin's constitution, which stated, "Appropriation bills may be approved in whole or in part by the governor, and the part approved shall become law." It was rarely used for decades but governors started using it extensively—and creatively—in 1969, per the Legislative Reference Bureau. Voters limited the power in 1990 by eliminating the "Vanna White veto," in which governors could eliminate letters to create new words. In 2008, they did away with the "Frankenstein veto," in which governors could create new sentences by striking words from multiple sentences. (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)
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