Views on News • March 26th, 2008

Frankenstein unstitched?

by Chris Lato

This issue has received almost zero attention this election cycle, what with all the hot air surrounding the state Supreme Court race, but this is significant: Wisconsin voters have the chance to kill the governor’s so-called ‘Frankenstein veto’ power on April 1.

Voters will consider a proposed constitutional amendment limiting the governor’s power to do things like this.

Props to the Wisconsin State Journal, in particular, for being all over this issue and pressuring the powers that be, like Senate President Fred Risser, to get off the dime. The WSJ has a good summary of the history of the Frankenstein veto here. And you can read the legal-ese version of the proposed constitutional amendment here.

Right now, Wisconsin’s governor enjoys one of the most powerful veto pens in the country. Jim Doyle, much like Tommy Thompson before him, hasn’t been shy about using it to an extraordinary degree. And some say that even if this amendment is approved by voters Tuesday, the governor will still have a whole lot of ink in the ol’ veto pen.

While the Frankenstein veto has been upheld by the state high court, it clearly subverts the will of the Legislature, and that is a big part of the problem. It opens the door to a governor making changes to a budget that actually increase spending and borrowing, instead of using the veto pen to cut spending, and that is another problem.

Both parties were obviously offended by the steps taken by Governor Doyle in recent budgets. Credit must be given to the Legislature, Democrats and Republicans alike, who showed overwhelming support for sending this issue to voters. Democrats always used to complain that Republicans were MIA on the Frankenstein veto back when Thompson was in office. Well, everyone has stepped up now, and both sides should be acknowledged for that.

If people take a moment to understand what this issue is all about, I’d be shocked if the Frankenstein veto ban didn’t pass by a big margin on Tuesday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 9:31 am and is filed under Views on News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.