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Another $400 Million Every Single Year
One Wisconsin lawmaker is warning that the state is now on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax increase, every two years because of Gov. Tony Evers’ school funding veto.
Rep. Dan Knodl, R-Germantown, penned an op-ed on Monday that explained the math behind Evers’ 400-year veto.
“Based on today’s enrollments, the state is going to need to find an additional $800 million in every single budget cycle for the next 400 years, meaning this responsibility will fall squarely on property taxpayers,” Knodl wrote.
Knodl said by signing-off on the veto, the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the governor overstepped their powers, and acted like the legislature.
The liberal majority court last month upheld the governor’s veto, ruling that there’s nothing in the state constitution that stops the governor from erasing numbers and punctuation marks.
Wisconsin lawmakers approved a $325 per-year, per-pupil education funding increase in the current two-year state budget. But Evers’ veto extends that out to 402 years.
Beyond the fiscal math, Knodl said there are serious repercussions from the governor’s veto.
“Rather than setting guardrails on an authority that has been criticized for decades, the court upheld its broad application — effectively giving Wisconsin governors the ability to enact major policy changes through clever edits to budget bills,” Knodl added. “This isn’t just an issue of executive authority — it’s a systematic breakdown in the balance of power.”
Knodl said Gov. Evers continues to walk on the wrong side of that balance of power.
“This isn’t merely a debate over education funding. It’s a debate over how power is exercised in our state,” Knodl wrote. “Today it’s a revenue cap increase that stretches into the next four centuries. Tomorrow, it could be any number of policy shifts — executed not through legislative consensus, but through strategic vetoes and judicial approval.”
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