Court takes case against Evers’ vetoes
Decisions have sided with governors in past
MADISON - The state Supreme Court accepted a case Wednesday challenging budget vetoes Democratic Gov. Tony Evers issued this summer.
Three taxpayers represented by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty asked the high court in July to take their challenge directly, without making them first go through the lower courts.
The court agreed to do so Wednesday, according online court records. A ruling is expected by summer.
The lawsuit argues Evers exceeded his authority by issuing vetoes that enact policies the Legislature hasn’t endorsed. It’s a practice that governors from both parties have engaged in for decades. The state Supreme Court has repeatedly sided with governors over the years, granting them extensive veto powers.
Wednesday’s decision to take the new challenge means the high court is willing to at least consider whether it should reverse its long-standing precedents. Conservatives control the court 5-2.
Evers spokeswoman Britt Cudaback in a statement said the governor’s vetoes “were entirely consistent with the Wisconsin Constitution, decades of decisions by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and vetoes by prior governors.”
Rick Esenberg, president of the legal institute behind the challenge, issued a statement Wednesday saying he was pleased the court would take up the case.
“Governor Evers abused his partial veto to create new laws out of whole cloth,” Esenberg’s statement said, arguing vetoes were never meant to allow a governor “to legislate on his own.”
The lawsuit asks the court to block vetoes that set new taxes and regulations on vaping products; put taxpayer money toward electric vehicle charging stations; lifted restrictions on how $75 million in transportation funding could be spent; and required owners of heavier trucks to pay higher vehicle fees than owners of lighter trucks.
Evers in July issued 78 vetoes, including ones that sent an extra $65 million toward schools, canceled plans for a new prison and took away funding to enforce drug testing and work requirements in the state’s food stamp program.
The lawsuit does not challenge all of
the vetoes, such as the one that increased school spending. Instead, those bringing the lawsuit are asking the court to reverse vetoes that effectively rewrote parts of the budget written by Republicans who control the Legislature.
In their version of the budget, Republican legislators directed $25 million from a court settlement toward purchasing fuel-efficient buses. Evers used vetoes to create a new program to have the state help pay for electric vehicle charging stations using $10 million that would have gone to buy buses.
He did that by strategically striking out words in the budget.
The Legislature wrote that the state was to “establish a program to award grants of settlement funds … to school boards for the replacement of school buses owned and operated by the school boards with school buses that are energy efficient, including school buses that use alternative fuels.”
Evers erased almost all those words, rewriting the phrase so that the grants would be used “for alternative fuels.” Evers said that gave him leeway to spend money on electric vehicle charging stations — an idea the Legislature hadn’t approved.
Case takes unusual path
Ordinarily the Supreme Court waits for cases to go through lower courts before taking a case. But Esenberg asked the justices to take the case immediately so that the case could be resolved quickly.
He acknowledged this summer that lower courts would have been required to side with Evers because of Supreme Court precedents. But the high court is free to rule on the case as it sees fit.
Esenberg is seeking to overturn precedents going back to 1935.
Those challenging vetoes in the past have repeatedly lost in the courts, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
In 1988, for instance, the high court ruled the governor held a “quasi-legislative” role and was allowed to strike out words, digits and even individual letters from budgets to string together new sentences.
To prevent Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson from engaging in that practice, voters later amended the state constitution to prevent governors from eliminating letters from words. The practice was dubbed the “Vanna White veto” in a nod to the hostess who turns letters on the game show “Wheel of Fortune.”
Years later, voters again amended the constitution to prevent vetoes like ones issued by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle that strung together words from two or more sentences to create a new sentence. Critics called those vetoes “Frankenstein vetoes” because they stitched together parts from unrelated sections of the budget.
As the case advances, GOP lawmakers are trying to limit Evers’ veto powers by other means.
They have drafted an amendment to the constitution that would ban vetoes that increase spending. The proposal would need to be approved by lawmakers this year or next and again in the legislative session that begins in 2021. If that happens, the amendment would go to voters for final approval in a referendum.