Conservatively Speaking
State Senator Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) represents parts of four counties: Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine, and Walworth. Her Senate District 28 includes New Berlin, Franklin, Greendale, Hales Corners, Muskego, Waterford, Big Bend and parts of Greenfield, East Troy, and Mukwonago. Senator Lazich has been in the Legislature for more than a decade. She considers herself a tireless crusader for lower taxes, reduced spending and smaller government.
Vote Yes on April 1 to kill the Frankenstein veto
By Mary Lazich
Thursday, Mar 20 2008, 08:11 AM
“Few votes are as obvious and easy as this one.”
That’s what a Wisconsin State Journal editorial says about the statewide referendum that will be on the April 1 ballot asking voters whether they want to get rid of or keep the governor’s Frankenstein veto power.
I co-sponsored the constitutional amendment that will prohibit Wisconsin governors, Republican or Democrat, from using their expansive veto power to form new words, phrases or sentences to authorize spending the Legislature never approved.
The constitutional amendment will read:
"QUESTION 1: Partial veto. Shall section 10 (1) (c) of article V of the constitution be amended to prohibit the governor, in exercising his or her partial veto authority, from creating a new sentence by combining parts of two or more sentences of the enrolled bill? "
The appropriate answer is “yes.”
Here’s a reminder of what prompted the constitutional amendment and why the Frankenstein veto must go. Governor Doyle used his partial veto 139 times on the 2005-07 state budget. One of his Frankenstein vetoes increased a transfer from the transportation fund to the general fund from $268 million to $427 million. He accomplished the veto by crossing out 752 words, putting together individual words from unrelated sentences to form a new sentence. To achieve the $427 million figure, he took individual digits from five sets of numbers.
Governor Doyle also utilized the Frankenstein veto in the 2007-09 state budget. He used his veto authority to eliminate the levy limit placed on technical colleges. The budget approved by the Legislature had imposed a cap on growth for technical colleges at four percent.
The governor also used his veto pen to relax the limit placed on local governments by allowing municipalities to increase their levies by 3.86 percent or the rate of new construction for 2007.The governor’s actions almost certainly signal increases in local property taxes, especially for technical colleges that have seen the largest increases of any portion of local property tax bills in recent years.
Should Wisconsin voters strike down the Frankenstein veto, Wisconsin’s governor will still possess the most powerful veto of any governor in the country. The governor would still be able to:
- Reduce spending amounts by eliminating numbers (striking a zero, for example, to cut an appropriation from $100,000 to $10,000)
- Reduce spending amounts by writing in lower figures
- Effectively change policy in new laws by striking words within a sentence, or cutting whole sentences within a given budget item.
The abuse of the governor’s veto authority must end. You have an opportunity to end the budget shenanigans. The vote on April 1 is to get rid of the Frankenstein veto.
