Milwaukee County Exec Scott Walker's budget vetoes belong in Bizarro World. Cory Liebmann points out that Walker had a lot of terrible things to say about Gov. Jim Doyle's use (Walker would say abuse) of the veto power. But Walker went beyond anything Doyle ever did.
Technically, he didn't use the so-called Frankenstein veto, which combines words from different sentences to make a new one. What he used was the Vanna White veto, crossing out letters -- lots of them -- to make new words.
The most extreme example, from the Journal Sentinel:
... [H]is veto restoring privatization of 30 skilled worker jobs pruned two full pages of text to extract letters and spaces that created this phrase: "restore contract funds." Walker said that was sufficient to do what he originally intended.
I think it's safe to say that no one has ever vetoed anything quite as creatively, or probably quite as illegally, regardless of the county corporation counsel's defense of what Walker did.
When Doyle was at his most creative, he was still constructing words, phrases and sentences that fit into the bill he was vetoing, and his veto could be read in the context of the legislation that contained it.
The idea that you can simply put letters together to say, "What I said before," or "Undo this," or "My way," and thus restore the language the County Board took out goes way beyond anything Vanna or Doctor F could have imagined.
What may have saved Walker from judicial embarrassment is the fact that the County Board wisely overrode almost all of his vetoes, so there may not be a court challenge to what he did.
But State Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) says he'll introduce legislation to end those powers for Walker. Considering what he had to say about them when Doyle used them, Walker will probably support that change. Right!
There's another angle in Walker's approach to vetoes, one of my email correspondents points out. Here's the rationale Walker gave for one of his vetoes:
-- $157,000 for the Summer Youth Employment program. Walker said while he would like the county to help, using tax money from all county residents to support a program that serves only city residents was unfair.
Says my correspondent:
I found this an interesting concept to take to a statewide campaign for governor. His rationale here raises questions about his position on financing just about everything. Most notably, would this rationale apply to the school voucher program? And wouldn't it be an argument against shared revenue?
Can't wait for him to take this rationale to Wausau and make the argument that they shouldn't fund anything in Milwaukee. And to the people of LaCrosse: "We need stop taking your tax dollors and investmenting it in Milwaukee businesses since that's unfair and they don't serve you."
"Green Bay, we're going to put an end to using your tax money to fund children's health care in Milwaukee, it doesnt serve you and it's unfair."
The Milwaukee County Exec running against Milwaukee should be fun to watch. He must have picked up on the "wither on the vine" strategy at those GOPAC meetings he was attending in DC recently.