The Legislature's self-granted veto power over the Evers administration's ability to implement state law violates the Wisconsin Constitution, the Department of Justice said in a memorandum filed Tuesday.
"Through these vetoes, the legislative branch has empowered itself — through small, unrepresentative, legislative committees — not only to write the laws, but also to control how the executive branch implements them," Attorney General Josh Kaul and Assistant Attorneys General Charlotte Gibson and Colin Roth wrote.
Team Evers is asking the state Supreme Court to take original jurisdiction in the matter. That means that the case would be heard first by the state's high court, rather than starting out in a circuit court, as is the usual procedure.
The petition specifically challenges three legislative vetoes.
The Joint Finance Committee's votes blocking DNR conservation projects under the Knowles Nelson Stewardship Program. The committee has blocked almost a third of the projects proposed since 2019, the memorandum said. A list of the 26 blocked projects is here.
The Joint Committee on Employment Relations' (JCOER) decision to "hold hostage statutory pay raises for about 35,500 University of Wisconsin System Employees, demanding that UW first make policy concessions not found in any law."
The Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules' rejection of rules developed by the Department of Safety and Professional Services and an attached board, the Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board, that would update the state’s commercial building standards and ethics standards for social workers, marriage and family therapists, and professional counselors."
The Legislature's action when it blocks the Administration's decisions "violates the Wisconsin Constitution, for two basic reasons," the 54-page memorandum said.
The first, the Evers' team argued, the vetoes make legislative committees to "exercise the quintessential executive power of deciding how to administer the law."
That, they said, improperly interferes with the executive branch's authority.
The second problem, "especially in the rulemaking context," is that the Republican-led committees change the law "outside the constitutional lawmaking process," the memorandum said.
"For these same reasons, both the U.S. Supreme Court and state high courts nationwide have overwhelmingly rejected legislative veto schemes just like these," it said.
Named as defendants in the filing are Joint Finance Committee co-chairs Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam); Senate President Chris Kapenga, (R-Delafield) and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Racine), co-chairs of the Employment Relations Committee; and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) and Rep.
(R-Pewaukee), co-chairs of the Administrative Rules Committee.
"This is no mere academic issue," the memorandum said. "These vetoes are in regular use, and some present highly acute issues."
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