GREEN BAY, Wis. — In a WTMJ exclusive interview, Governor Tony Evers made his first public comment on a controversial education veto since the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld it last week.
Wisconsin’s Afternoon News host John Mercure caught up with Gov. Evers at the NFL Draft in Green Bay on Thursday:
“When you look at what a small difference it makes in the whole budget, I have no regrets,” he told WTMJ.
The partial veto extends an annual $325 per-pupil funding increase in the last state budget — that Republican lawmakers intended to end this year — to more than four centuries from now.
Gov. Evers took language in the original bill that applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and vetoed the second “20” and hyphen to change the end date to 2425. Wisconsin is the only state in which governors can cross out words or numbers to create new meaning or spending amounts.
Two Wisconsin taxpayers filed a lawsuit in March 2024, arguing the state constitution forbids governors from striking individual digits in spending bills. Previous legal battles have put limits on the governor’s partial veto powers in the case of striking individual letters to create new words, but not individual digits to create new numbers.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court decided in a 4-3 opinion that Gov. Evers did use the partial veto constitutionally.
“…our constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable,” Justice Jill Karofsky wrote for the majority.
“One might scoff at the silliness of it all, but this is no laughing matter,” Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote for the dissent. “Yet when presented with a clear opportunity in this case to reboot our mangled jurisprudence, the majority responds by blessing this constitutional monstrosity, all the while pretending its hands are tied.”
