MADISON - Democratic Gov. Tony Evers gave lawmakers and citizens a reminder Wednesday that he has the strongest veto powers in the country.

This stems from a 1930 state constitutional amendment granting Wisconsin governors partial veto authority that allows the governor to strike individual words and numbers from legislation that appropriates money.

That lets governors surgically remove words here and there to get results that are at odds with what legislators wanted.

For example, consider how the Democratic governor was able to use money to pay for electric vehicle charging stations that GOP lawmakers wanted to help schools buy more fuel-efficient buses.

Legislators wrote in the budget that the Evers administration must create a grant program "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 removed all those words except for "for" and "alternative fuels." Thus, the grant program the administration is setting up will be "for alternative fuels" — that is, for electric vehicle charging stations.

In another section, lawmakers established that the state would spend $100,000 on "research into genetic resistance to chronic wasting disease in farm-raised deer." Evers gave his Department of Natural Resources far more flexibility on how to spend the money by eliminating many of the words in that section and directing the money toward "research into chronic wasting disease in deer."

Powerful 'write-down' vetoes

The state constitution also gives the governor power to issue "write-down vetoes," where they reduce any appropriation by any amount. They can turn a $1 million program into one that spends $900,000, $500,000 or any other amount below $1 million.

Legislation that remains after a partial veto must pertain to the topic of the vetoed provisions and be "complete, entire and workable law," according to a report by the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.

Wisconsin is the only state where the governor has such vast partial veto authority, the report found. Most states maintain a form of line-item veto power in which governors must fully accept or reject appropriations or corresponding provisions within the bill as passed by the Legislature.

Some say the vetoes go too far

Madison attorney Fred Wade, who has been involved in litigation attempting to limit the partial veto, said the state has "totally lost sight" in the last 50 years that the budget process is "supposed to be an agreement."

He said the partial veto process was designed to ensure the governor could have a say in the process, but it has gotten out of hand.

"Our process has evolved so that governors can change what was intended and create something entirely different," Wade said. “There needs to be a constitutional amendment that takes us back to the idea that legislation ought to have the concurrent approval of both the Senate, the Assembly and the governor.”

How the GOP Legislature played defense

Republicans tried to write the budget in a way that limited what Evers could veto, such as by using the word "cannot" instead of "shall not." (Evers could veto "shall not" into "shall" but couldn't do the same with "cannot" because it is one word.)

But Evers said he didn't think the GOP efforts had curtailed what he was able to do with his vetoes.

"I think we used every possible creative way to veto this budget so that it reflects the people's budget," said Evers, using his term for the budget he originally submitted to the Legislature. "I don't believe their work to make it veto-proof made any differences in the decisions we made."

Veto overrides are rare

It takes the approval of two-thirds of the legislators present in both houses to override a partial veto. The Legislature last overrode a governor’s partial veto in 1985.

Republicans control both houses of the Legislature, but not by two-thirds margins.

Evers' powers aren't as flexible as those in the past because voters over the years have amended the state constitution to curtail vetoes.

Demise of the 'Vanna White veto'

A 1990 amendment to the constitution barred governors from striking out individual letters to create new words. Democratic Gov. Tony Earl used this so-called Vanna White veto — named for the "Wheel of Fortune" hostess who turns letters on the game show — in 1983 in an effort relating to municipal waste disposal.

Earl's change, which directed appeals away from the Public Service Commission and to the courts, involved partially vetoing a paragraph of five sentences containing 121 words into a new, one-sentence paragraph of 22 words. The parts of the bill vetoed were "reduced to a collection of individual letters on the bill’s pages," the reference bureau said in its report.

Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson again used that form of veto in the 1987 budget. In a lawsuit brought by the state Senate, the court ruled partial veto authority was "not correctable" by the court.

Within three weeks, a Democrat-controlled Legislature began amending the state constitution to limit the governor's veto authority. In April 1990, voters approved the amendment, eliminating the individual letter veto.

The next change to the partial veto powers came in 2008 when voters amended the constitution to bar governors from combining parts of sentences to create new sentences. This allowed governors to change not only the intent of bills passed by the Legislature but also create new policy ideas.

This change was largely in response to one of Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's vetoes in 2005. Doyle used 752 words to create a new 20-word sentence that allowed $427 million to be transferred from the transportation fund to the general fund, which was then used to fund the operation of public schools, according to the reference bureau.

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Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.