Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Saturday, May 17, 2008

Governor says more cuts are needed to fix budget shortfall

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle

By JASON STEIN | Lee Newspapers

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

Showing his veto pen remains the most powerful in the nation, Gov. Jim Doyle on Friday 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 Friday 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.

Madison attorney Fred Wade, who long has crusaded against the strong veto power of the state’s governors, said Doyle’s actions show a need for a “further constitutional amendment” to restrain the authority.

“In a nutshell, these vetoes demonstrate that the Frankenstein veto is alive,” Wade said. “There is still a potential for tremendous abuse here in a manner that is undemocratic.”

Doyle spokesman Lee Sensenbrenner stressed Doyle’s vetoes were legal and served to reduce state spending.

“We feel very comfortable that these are good vetoes,” he said.

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: