Government Vetoes Two Digits, Ensures School Funding for Four Centuries

The governors of Wisconsin possess a unique power known as “partial veto,” which allows them to edit legislation by removing letters, numbers, and punctuation. This week, Gov. Tony Evers used this power in a creative way, extending a public school funding increase for an additional 400 years. In the two-year budget bill, the Democratic governor removed the “20” and the hyphen from a reference to the 2024-25 school year, effectively extending a $325-per-student annual increase until the year 2425, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Gov. Evers also made numerous other changes to the bill, including the removal of a tax cut for the state’s wealthiest residents.

To override Evers’ veto, the state legislature would need a two-thirds supermajority, which the Republicans currently lack. The power of partial veto was introduced in a 1930 constitutional amendment, and ever since, there has been a battle of wits between lawmakers attempting to draft legislation immune to such “creative” use of the veto, according to the AP. In 2017, former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, used the partial veto to extend a state program from 2018 to 3018. Additionally, former Gov. Tommy Thompson, a Republican in power from 1987 to 2001, was known for using the so-called “Vanna White” veto, which involved striking letters inside words to create new words. However, in 1990, this power was removed by voters.

In 2008, voters also eliminated the “Frankenstein” veto power, which prohibited governors from constructing new sentences from parts of other sentences. Republicans are considering legal challenges to Evers’ recent use of the partial veto. Nonetheless, former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, commends Evers’ move as “masterful” and remarks that Republicans should have anticipated it. Doyle points out that Evers has essentially restored an automatic school funding increase that was introduced in the 1990s and later removed by Walker. (Read more Wisconsin stories.)