Gov. Tony Evers’s veto to extend school funding for 400 years in Wisconsin faces challenge from business lobby

The Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce’s Litigation Center, Wisconsin’s largest business lobby, asked the state Supreme Court to strike down a veto from Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) that funded public schools for the next 400 years.

Taxpayers Jeffery LeMieux and David DeValk filed an original action petition to bypass lower courts and head to the state’s high court, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. They are asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to strike down the partial veto, which increased school funding for the next four centuries. 

“The law is clear,” WMC Litigation Center Deputy Director Nathan Kane said in a statement. “Voters and their elected legislators are the ones empowered to increase taxes, no one else.”

Evers used his partial veto powers to strike through a hyphen and “20” from a reference to the 2024-25 school year. In doing so, he increased school funding by $325 per student per year for the next 402 years. Before his partial veto, the budget was set to increase school funding by $325 per student for only the next two years.

In Wisconsin, governors can single out words, numbers, or punctuation. While 44 other states have line-item vetos, Wisconsin is unique, the only state with a partial veto. 

“People are saying, ‘How can he do this?’” former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson said of the Evers veto. “Well, he did it.”

Other Wisconsin governors have used the partial veto as well. Former Gov. Scott Walker used his partial veto powers to make one state program last indefinitely, in what is known as the “thousand-year veto.” Between 1991 and before Evers’s school funding veto, 31 partial vetoes were reportedly used by Wisconsin governors of both parties to increase state spending above that set by lawmakers. 

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The WMC is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has a left-leaning majority, to strike down Evers’s veto as it relates to schools and make note that the state’s constitution “forbids the governor from striking individual digits in an enrolled bill to create a new year.”

“In no uncertain terms, 402 years is not less than or part of the two-year duration approved by the Legislature — it is far more,” WMC Litigation Center Executive Director Scott Rosenow said. “The governor overstepped his authority with this partial veto, at the expense of taxpayers, and we believe oversight by the Court is necessary.”