MADISON — The “Frankenstein” veto has risen from its grave.

Showing his veto pen remains the most powerful in the nation, Gov. Jim Doyle today carved up a bill to cover a $527 million shortfall in the state’s two-year budget, taking $103 million from the state’s road fund and blocking legislators’ attempt to delay payments to schools.
The vetoes came just weeks after an April 1 referendum in which voters approved a constitutional amendment to limit the governor’s veto authority, and less than 48 hours after the budget repair bill cleared the Legislature.

“The governor is demonstrating how extensive his remaining powers are. His wings have only been clipped by a feather,” said Mordecai Lee, a professor of governmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a former Democratic state senator.

The recently passed constitutional amendment prohibits Wisconsin governors from crossing out words and numbers over two or more sentences and stitching the remnants together into one new sentence, which critics have likened to Frankenstein’s monster.

But within the confines of a single sentence, Doyle showed he still could work magic.

For example, the bill sent to Doyle called for spending cuts and transfers from state funds equal to “$69,000,000 during the 2007-09 fiscal biennium and $69,000,000 during the 2009-11 fiscal biennium.” By deleting words and individual characters within that phrase, Doyle reduced it to a single figure — “$270,000,000” — the amount by which he ordered state spending be reduced.

The governor said today he would take $103 million of that money from the state’s road fund, thwarting lawmakers who had sought to rule out further raids on that fund to balance a budget threatened by a failing economy.

In another veto, Doyle struck a single digit in a provision diverting money set aside to comply with a federal mandate requiring stricter state guidelines on issuing driver’s licenses. The veto reduced the raid from $22 million to $2 million.

Doyle defended his actions, saying spending on highway programs increased about $350 million under the original budget passed in October. Even after his vetoes, he said, the budget repair bill raises spending on road programs beyond that amount.

Those increases included $24.8 million to compensate counties for high road maintenance costs brought on by this year’s severe winter.

“A responsible budget repair must rely on meaningful reductions in spending and certainly not (on) big spending increases,” Doyle said at a news conference unveiling the vetoes.

Reaction from the lawmakers whose bill had been reworked was muted Friday. Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, said he still was studying the effects of the vetoes. In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, said the state should have used an additional $77 million in recently awarded federal money to increase spending on “our crumbling roads and bridges.”

Doyle’s other partial vetoes and budget actions included:

Cutting a provision that would have delayed $125 million in payments to schools until the next budget.

Scaling back a plan to borrow against promised future payments by tobacco companies to the state. Doyle and aides said he would seek to borrow $150 million instead of the $209 million outlined in the bill. The change was accomplished through how his administration will refinance the bonds involved, not through a veto.

Scaling back a plan to dip into the state’s budget reserves. Doyle would leave the reserves at $106 million, up from the $25 million that would have been left under the bill.

Negotiating lower salary increases in contracts with state worker unions. Those have come in about $25 million less than what had been budgeted, Doyle said.

Cutting a controversial last-minute budget provision that would not have affected state finances but would have provided local property tax exemptions for low-income housing projects.

In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, criticized Doyle’s transfer from the road fund and called for a Senate vote to override that veto.

Any potential override of Doyle’s vetoes by lawmakers would face big challenges, requiring a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature. An override vote would have to start in the GOP-controlled Assembly, where it would require support by 66 of the 98 members currently able to vote.

Jason Stein is a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison. For more on this story, see Saturday's Tribune or check back at www.lacrossetribune.com.

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