It’s a holiday weekend, so here is something a bit on the lighter side. The Wisconsin state Supreme Court has ruled that Governor Tony Evers does, in fact, have the power to increase school funding for the next four hundred years. From the AP:
Evers’s partial veto in 2023 increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. 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.
Evers told lawmakers at the time that his partial veto was intended to give school districts increases in funding “in perpetuity.”
The Legislature, along with the state’s largest business lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, argued that the court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare it unconstitutional. They argued that the Evers veto was barred under a 1990 constitutional amendment adopted by voters that removed the ability to strike individual letters to make new words — known as the “Vanna White” veto, named the co-host of the game show Wheel of Fortune who flips letters to reveal word phrases.
Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, they argued.
But Evers countered that the “Vanna White” veto ban applies only to striking individual letters to create new words, not vetoing digits to create new numbers. Evers said that he was simply using the longstanding partial veto process allowed under the law.
I’m sure Evers is at least partially using this situation as a way to draw attention to how ridiculous the WI governor’s veto powers are, but it’s nice to see this kind of weaponization of technicalities working on behalf of the side of good for once.
Open thread.
