The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a challenge to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' partial veto locking in a school funding increase for the next 400 years.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a challenge to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto that locked in a school funding increase for the next 400 years, the justices announced Monday.

The Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center filed a lawsuit in April arguing the governor exceeded his authority. The group asked the high court to strike down the veto without waiting for the case to go through lower courts.

The court issued an order Monday afternoon saying it would take the case. The justices didn’t elaborate beyond setting a briefing schedule.

At issue is a partial veto Evers made in the state budget in July 2023 that increased revenue public schools can raise per student by $325 annually until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.

  • @[email protected]
    10•5 months ago

    Line item vetoes are one thing (which I oppose, but can understand).

    The veto in question turns “2024-25” into “2425”

    Looking the the Wisconsin constitution, there seems to be 2 relevant sections:

    The first is the authority for partial vetoes.

    Appropriations may be approved in whole or in part by the chief executive officer.

    In my opinion, this already does not authorize, the type of creative vetoing the governor tried.

    However, the constitution goes on to clarify:

    In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill.

    It would take an obtusely literal reading of these provisions to allow for striking individual digits and puncuation marks to create new numbers.

    https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/constitution/wi_unannotated

    • @[email protected]
      5•5 months ago

      Do we have a original textualist group in Wisconsin? Otherwise I have trouble thinking a governor would expect this to actually fly. Is this a contrived case to get this potential loophole to court to close it? Or am I too optimistic about governer thought processes?

      • @FeathercrownEnglish
        3•5 months ago

        iirc it was a “fuck you” to the other party because of their reluctance to provide school funding. I doubt the governor expected it to stay for the next few hundred years.