Wisconsin governor boosts public school funding for next 402 years 

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) used his partial veto authority Wednesday to increase funding for public schools in the state for the next four centuries.

Evers used vetoes to boost state spending above levels set in a two-year spending plan passed by the state-Republican controlled Legislature. Using his veto power, the governor increased the amount of money K-12 schools can raise per student by $325 per year until 2425.

In the vetoes, Evers took the $325 per year increase applied to the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, deleted the “20” and a hyphen to make the end date “2425.” In total, Evers made more than 50 line-item vetoes to the budget, labeling the Legislature’s version “imperfect and incomplete.”

“In many ways, Republicans in the Legislature have failed to meet this historic moment, sending my budget back to my desk absent critical investments in key areas that they know — and publicly acknowledge — are essential to the success of our state, all while providing no real justification, substantive debate, or any meaningful alternative,” Evers said in a veto message. “That decision is, to put it simply, an abdication of duty.”

He said in the veto message that the version of the budget returned to him fell “well short” of what he wanted to spend on K-12 education.

Evers said he did not fully veto the budget because it would abandon initiatives he has pushed for. The line-item veto gives the governor power for nullify parts of a bill while allowing the rest of it to pass into law, a power that 44 states allow the governor to use.

“I understand that, in light of these short-sighted decisions, there are those who would have me veto this budget in its entirety — to send the Legislature back to the drawing board to start from scratch,” he said.

“Vetoing this budget in full would mean abandoning priorities and ideas that I have spent four years advocating for; it would mean leaving schools and communities in the lurch after rightfully securing historic increases for the first time in years.”

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this is the second time Evers has used the veto authority to increase funding for public schools. Evers, a former state superintendent and public school educator, also used it in the 2019-2021 budget, which prompted Republicans to put limits on his veto power.

Other Wisconsin governors, both Republicans and Democrats, have also used the power, including former Democratic Gov. Patrick Lucey. In 1973, he removed a digit in order to allow the state to borrow up to $5 million for highway projects instead of $25 million, the newspaper reported.