Vetoing vetoes and unfunded programs - more WisGOP budget bunko

In recent weeks, Republicans in the Legislature have been trying out a new tactic to try to limit what Governor Evers can do to change bills.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said early in [a] Senate floor debate [last week] Republicans were not attaching funding to various bills on the agenda because the caucus has “no trust” in Gov. Tony Evers’ office.

“Quite frankly there’s a trust issue between our caucus and the East Wing,” the Oostburg Republican said, accusing the governor of “arbitrarily” changing the intention of Republican legislation with his veto pen.

LeMahieu said Republicans plan to fund these bills through the budget process once they become law….

One of these bills was SB 41, which passed 18-14 along party lines. The bill would require the Department of Justice to create a program for grants to improve the safety of school buildings and provide security training for school staff. The bill had set aside $30 million to the grant program and dictates the maximum grant a school can receive is $20,000.

LeMahieu said in his remarks that bill authors wanted to wait and see if legislation worked to attach funding. The original bill had allotted funding, but the Senate passed a Republican amendment cutting the funding appropriation from the bill.

In particular, the GOP wants to start a program by turning a bill into law, but the budget bill would include actual funding numbers that Evers can only make smaller. Here’s what a typical appropriation for an already-established program looks like in a budget bill.

Rep. Karen DeSanto (D-Baraboo) pointed out that this two-step procedure allows the full Legislature to pass the buck to the GOP-dominated Joint Finance Committee, who are charged with approving the money behind initiatives that they publicly support. Or are allowed to kill it.

“Today I was put in the difficult position of voting against technically good bills that are unsound because they lacked funding. Legislative Republicans removed Governor Evers’ budget proposals and reintroduced them as unfunded bills. Republicans keep promising that we need to trust that these proposals will be funded through their budget. However, it is the function of the Legislature, not just the Joint Committee on Finance, to establish funding for bills.

Meanwhile, Joint Finance Republicans have stalled budget action and continue to propose gimmicks and vote against basic, fiscally responsible supports for Wisconsin families. When there is no dialogue, no certainty of a budget being passed on time, and no meaningful investment in our state, I can’t reasonably believe these promises are anything but empty. Wisconsin simply cannot afford unfunded mandates to state agencies and Wisconsinites certainly cannot afford these political games.

Then we had a Supreme Court ruling this week which gave the GOP Legislature a boost for these sorts of tactics.

At issue in the Supreme Court case was Evers' partial veto of Act 100, the bill aimed at funding the Act 20 literacy law. Evers' veto consolidated two funding streams into one — essentially giving the DPI more power to use the money — and also eliminated some support for private and charter schools and a 2028 spending expiration date.

A lawsuit by co-chairs of the state legislature's Joint Committee on Finance, Sen. Howard Marklein and Rep. Mark Born, said Evers' veto was unconstitutional. They argued Act 100 is not an "appropriations bill," and therefore, not subject to the governor's veto powers.

Those lawmakers also argued that because Evers had improperly issued a veto, Act 100 had become invalid. That argument deadlocked the $50 million.

Evers and DPI argued back, saying the money should be released.

After the decision, Howard Marklein and Mark Born released a statement saying they would now release the money for literacy. And indeed, there is an item in tomorrow's Joint Finance extravaganza to release the remaining $49.7 million that is in the literacy program. So this means the delay of the $50 million was a petty move by Republicans to make sure they got to decide when and how the money was released….even though they had already voted to fund the program.

It makes me wonder if Republicans will try more of this unfunded mandate BS to get around any line item vetoes by Evers in the larger budget bill. Or, Dems are worried that GOPs could pass an initiative into law, and then pass no budget at all, leaving no money available to do anything with the new program. And given the type of cynical dweebs that WisGOPs are, they’d then claim that the Evers Admin is at fault for not getting things done with this unfunded mandate of a program.

Emily Tseffos is the chair of the Outagamie County Democrats and she wrote a column this week for the Recombobulation Area website saying that Governor Evers has to vocally step up and call out these type of WisGOP games, gimmicks and unfunded mandates.

This is worse than bad-faith legislating. It’s strategic manipulation of the public. And this is exactly why coordination now matters more than ever between the governor, legislative Democrats, and grassroots leaders. Because while Republicans are staging headlines and plotting their next campaign mailer, everyday Wisconsinites are being asked to accept crumbs and confusion.

We saw this play out last cycle: Republicans touted a “historic investment in public education” — and it worked. They ran on it, they campaigned on it, and I heard about it again and again while knocking doors as a candidate. But the reality didn’t match the headline.

Yes, Governor Evers used his veto pen to lock in a $325 per-pupil increase. But the legislature included no new state aid to cover it. The only way for districts to access those dollars is by raising local property taxes… again. And even then, the amount doesn’t keep up with inflation, let alone meet our schools’ real needs. Special education is still underfunded. Mental health services are strained. And voucher schools? They got another raise, with no strings attached.

Symbolic wins don’t keep the lights on. And when Democrats take credit for half-measures, we make it easier for Republicans to keep selling false promises.

Look, if the WisGOPs have such a problem with Evers using a line-item veto in creative ways, then why aren’t they trying to pass a constitutional amendment that says you can’t pull the “take the money and cut the strings attached” maneuver that they are clearly trying keep Evers from doing? Because they are fine with the use of a line item veto to rewrite laws, they just don't like that it's foiling them instead of being used to screw over Dems.

Remarkably, tomorrow's Joint Finance agenda lists all unfinished budget business as items that could be taken up. And we'll find out if that meeting includes legislative tricks intended to give the appearance of action, without having to actually pay for it, or give the staff to do it.