6 ms·

WI Governor Drops Characters in Budget Bill to Change “2024-2025” to “2425”

28 points by mutant_glofish 3y ago

awb 3y ago
I’m assuming the state legislature would have to then vote on this edit, right?
- mutant_glofish 3y ago
  No, I think that's it. Unless a court strikes it down. Or maybe the state legislature will also get creative and come up with a new, more mutation-resilient bill or something :-) Wisconsin's Governor has a weird "partial veto" power. This AP article has more details: https://apnews.com/article/evers-veto-400-years-wisconsin-school-funding-67a7847e4a24ea86f7d16123356f770d https://apnews.com/article/evers-veto-400-years-wisconsin-sc...
  - awb 3y ago
    Wow, this has to be one of the most bizarre executive powers I’ve heard of. The earlier Vanna White and Frankenstein vetos are insane. What legitimate reason would a constituency want their governor to be able to single handedly change the meaning of a law?
    - apengwin 3y ago
      It's not about winning, it's about fun!
  - Kon-Peki 3y ago
    Thank you for posting this! The appendices are incredible - thousands of partial vetos over the last 100 years. Wisconsin is insane. > In Risser v. Thompson, the only federal appellate decision on the partial veto ... the court observed that this “is because the legislature chooses ... to attach substantive provisions as riders to the omnibus appropriation bill.” The court continued: “If the legislature stops doing this, the governor’s ‘creative’ veto power will be limited to appropriations matters.” LOL
- rkagerer 3y ago
  They could override the veto but it requires a two thirds majority which is unlikely. A bit disappointed lawmakers haven't taken a principled stand to state "protection of the integrity of our democratic power is more important than the particular issue <x> at hand".
FactKnower69 3y ago
[flagged]
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  It's a dup of course. We even had the Wikipedia link to "Frankenstein Veto".
casey2 3y ago
How would you write a bill to make it hard against this kind of attack?
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  Make it short and too the point. Single-sentence short.
  - oneTbrain23 3y ago
    Wrong. Making it long and verbose with definition like changing any or vetoing any of the written bills render entire bill void and mandatory incarceration and execution by any Americans in state or out state with automatic full pardon and compensation of 28 million usd in 1994 currency worth. When you write something very verbose and long and with scary consequences, this kind of veto changing will not happen or if happen render useless as it creates immediate death threat to the lawmakers approving it. This is very similar to #2 which do implicit allow execution of anyone by miltia under consideration as enemy from within. This is why no one lawmakers dare to directly touch it.
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      >automatic full pardon and compensation of 28 million usd >t >o > lawmakers > directly
- mkj 3y ago
  I suppose it could be self referential with a CRC at the end! Or after sever iterations it might need a secure hash function instead.
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  Spell the numbers out maybe?
LatteLazy 3y ago
Looking at the US system (gerrymandering, party politics, corruption etc), I actually think the governor "passing" legislation like this is an improvement for many places. It seems more democratic and more accountable to me...
helpfulclippy 3y ago
A fascinating read from the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau about the history of this remarkably potent veto: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/reading_the_constitution/reading_the_constitution_4_1.pdf https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/reading_the_consti... Long ago, Wisconsin added a clause to their state constitution to allow the governor to approve appropriation bills "in whole or in part." No language specified what that actually meant, and so the state supreme court has basically said that as long as the result is a valid law, then the use of the veto is valid. This is true even when the result directly reverses legislative intent, such as vetoing the word "not." The court has also found that the governor is not restricted to the actual digits in quantities -- for instance, if the legislature appropriates $50M for something, then the governor can reduce that to $18M because the missing $32M difference is "a part" of what the bill contained. The partial veto received a partial nerf in 1990 and again in 2008, with amendments that combine to read: "In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill." This leaves plenty of room for shenanigans. The legislature has frequently litigated the use of partial veto in the past, hoping to limit its power. This might be another time they do that.
- lockhouse 3y ago
  That is one of the most terrible ideas ever. Much like when Bill Clinton was pushing so hard for a line item veto. I’m so thankful he never got it. Checks and balances are important and sadly most voters don’t understand this.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    That's weird, because I remember the Republican party making the line-item veto a very prominent part of their agenda. https://www.britannica.com/event/Contract-with-America https://www.britannica.com/event/Contract-with-America
    - lockhouse 3y ago
rasz 3y ago
Polish Parliament 2002 "or magazines" https://pl-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/(%E2%80%A6)_lub_czasopisma?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://pl-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/(%E2%80%A6)_l... "or magazines – a fragment of a sentence removed from the governmental draft amendment to the Broadcasting Act adopted in 2002 , changing the sense and scope of some of the key provisions of this act. In the original wording of the bill adopted by the government, Article 36 referred to the prohibition of issuing licenses for nationwide television to "the publisher of a nationwide daily or magazine" . In March 2002, as established by the parliamentary investigative committee on the Rywin scandal , Janina Sokołowska and Iwona Galińska (officials of the National Broadcasting Council ) and Tomasz Łopacki (a lawyer from the Ministry of Culture) deleted two words from the project: or magazines , which prohibited the granting of licenses would still apply to publishers of dailies , but would no longer apply to publishers of weeklies or other periodicalsnot journals. The intention of the authors of this manipulation was to enable Agora 's competitors (the publisher of the Gazeta Wyborcza daily) to apply for a concession . When the words were crossed out, Lew Rywin came to Agora , proposing in exchange for a bribe of 17.5 million dollars , to change the text of the bill so as to allow the company to apply for a television license. This visit marked the beginning of the Rywin affair ; after it was made public, the government reinstated the two words in its own bill, explaining their disappearance by an alleged "technical glitch"."
ChainOfFools 3y ago
I'd be curious to know if the existence of this unique veto power has led to a local stylistic specialization in writing the language of proposed bills to be as decontextualization-proof as possible. Such a skill would be very useful for academics who expect to be interviewed about their work by members of the media. It would also be interesting to see if an llm could be tweaked to produce content with semantic and narrational qualities that made cherry picking extremely difficult to do without being obvious, while also not making the original text fatiguing to follow.

awb 3y ago

I’m assuming the state legislature would have to then vote on this edit, right?

mutant_glofish 3y ago
No, I think that's it. Unless a court strikes it down. Or maybe the state legislature will also get creative and come up with a new, more mutation-resilient bill or something :-) Wisconsin's Governor has a weird "partial veto" power. This AP article has more details: https://apnews.com/article/evers-veto-400-years-wisconsin-school-funding-67a7847e4a24ea86f7d16123356f770d https://apnews.com/article/evers-veto-400-years-wisconsin-sc...
- awb 3y ago
  Wow, this has to be one of the most bizarre executive powers I’ve heard of. The earlier Vanna White and Frankenstein vetos are insane. What legitimate reason would a constituency want their governor to be able to single handedly change the meaning of a law?
  - apengwin 3y ago
    It's not about winning, it's about fun!
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  Thank you for posting this! The appendices are incredible - thousands of partial vetos over the last 100 years. Wisconsin is insane. > In Risser v. Thompson, the only federal appellate decision on the partial veto ... the court observed that this “is because the legislature chooses ... to attach substantive provisions as riders to the omnibus appropriation bill.” The court continued: “If the legislature stops doing this, the governor’s ‘creative’ veto power will be limited to appropriations matters.” LOL
rkagerer 3y ago
They could override the veto but it requires a two thirds majority which is unlikely. A bit disappointed lawmakers haven't taken a principled stand to state "protection of the integrity of our democratic power is more important than the particular issue <x> at hand".

FactKnower69 3y ago

[flagged]

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
It's a dup of course. We even had the Wikipedia link to "Frankenstein Veto".

casey2 3y ago

How would you write a bill to make it hard against this kind of attack?

LatteLazy 3y ago
Make it short and too the point. Single-sentence short.
- oneTbrain23 3y ago
  Wrong. Making it long and verbose with definition like changing any or vetoing any of the written bills render entire bill void and mandatory incarceration and execution by any Americans in state or out state with automatic full pardon and compensation of 28 million usd in 1994 currency worth. When you write something very verbose and long and with scary consequences, this kind of veto changing will not happen or if happen render useless as it creates immediate death threat to the lawmakers approving it. This is very similar to #2 which do implicit allow execution of anyone by miltia under consideration as enemy from within. This is why no one lawmakers dare to directly touch it.
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    >automatic full pardon and compensation of 28 million usd >t >o > lawmakers > directly
mkj 3y ago
I suppose it could be self referential with a CRC at the end! Or after sever iterations it might need a secure hash function instead.
Rebelgecko 3y ago
Spell the numbers out maybe?

LatteLazy 3y ago

Looking at the US system (gerrymandering, party politics, corruption etc), I actually think the governor "passing" legislation like this is an improvement for many places. It seems more democratic and more accountable to me...

helpfulclippy 3y ago

A fascinating read from the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau about the history of this remarkably potent veto: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/reading_the_constitution/reading_the_constitution_4_1.pdf https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/reading_the_consti... Long ago, Wisconsin added a clause to their state constitution to allow the governor to approve appropriation bills "in whole or in part." No language specified what that actually meant, and so the state supreme court has basically said that as long as the result is a valid law, then the use of the veto is valid. This is true even when the result directly reverses legislative intent, such as vetoing the word "not." The court has also found that the governor is not restricted to the actual digits in quantities -- for instance, if the legislature appropriates $50M for something, then the governor can reduce that to $18M because the missing $32M difference is "a part" of what the bill contained. The partial veto received a partial nerf in 1990 and again in 2008, with amendments that combine to read: "In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill." This leaves plenty of room for shenanigans. The legislature has frequently litigated the use of partial veto in the past, hoping to limit its power. This might be another time they do that.

lockhouse 3y ago
That is one of the most terrible ideas ever. Much like when Bill Clinton was pushing so hard for a line item veto. I’m so thankful he never got it. Checks and balances are important and sadly most voters don’t understand this.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  That's weird, because I remember the Republican party making the line-item veto a very prominent part of their agenda. https://www.britannica.com/event/Contract-with-America https://www.britannica.com/event/Contract-with-America
  - lockhouse 3y ago

rasz 3y ago

Polish Parliament 2002 "or magazines" https://pl-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/(%E2%80%A6)_lub_czasopisma?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://pl-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/(%E2%80%A6)_l... "or magazines – a fragment of a sentence removed from the governmental draft amendment to the Broadcasting Act adopted in 2002 , changing the sense and scope of some of the key provisions of this act. In the original wording of the bill adopted by the government, Article 36 referred to the prohibition of issuing licenses for nationwide television to "the publisher of a nationwide daily or magazine" . In March 2002, as established by the parliamentary investigative committee on the Rywin scandal , Janina Sokołowska and Iwona Galińska (officials of the National Broadcasting Council ) and Tomasz Łopacki (a lawyer from the Ministry of Culture) deleted two words from the project: or magazines , which prohibited the granting of licenses would still apply to publishers of dailies , but would no longer apply to publishers of weeklies or other periodicalsnot journals. The intention of the authors of this manipulation was to enable Agora 's competitors (the publisher of the Gazeta Wyborcza daily) to apply for a concession . When the words were crossed out, Lew Rywin came to Agora , proposing in exchange for a bribe of 17.5 million dollars , to change the text of the bill so as to allow the company to apply for a television license. This visit marked the beginning of the Rywin affair ; after it was made public, the government reinstated the two words in its own bill, explaining their disappearance by an alleged "technical glitch"."

ChainOfFools 3y ago

I'd be curious to know if the existence of this unique veto power has led to a local stylistic specialization in writing the language of proposed bills to be as decontextualization-proof as possible. Such a skill would be very useful for academics who expect to be interviewed about their work by members of the media. It would also be interesting to see if an llm could be tweaked to produce content with semantic and narrational qualities that made cherry picking extremely difficult to do without being obvious, while also not making the original text fatiguing to follow.