October 3, 2001

ONE-MAN RULE?
McCallum Flunks Fiscal Test

By Neil H. Shively

The Wisconsin state budget recently became law when the governor affixed his signature to the legislation that set in stone a $47 billion spending plan.

But he did more than that. The new governor, Scott McCallum, tested his new-found power by exercising the "partial veto" 315 times to shape the budget to his liking.

Wisconsin's executive veto, widely regarded as the broadest in the nation, has become scandalous. Over the past 30 years, governors, with the incredible help of a state Supreme Court ruling, have stretched the original meaning of the power to veto appropriation bills "in part" to the point where the governor can be virtually a one-man show on appropriation bills.

But rather than use the powerful "partial veto" to rescue the state's good fiscal name, McCallum tried to play the middle ground, using the veto to shave spending here and there, but avoiding a dramatic "partial veto" that might have put Wisconsin in better fiscal shape.

The governor looked like he was trying to appeal to the tight-fisted, tax-cutting right of the Republican Party to be in their good graces short-term -- through the 2002 election and for the fund-raising that is all-important to a potential victory.

But he blew a chance to be a populist hero when he deferred to the lawmakers on what to do about the mini-scandal of the legislative season -- the outrageous political activity of the four legislative caucus staffs who are on the state payroll.

McCallum could have slashed the $4 million a year they spend and looked like a champ. He wasn?t even true to his own values, having railed against the tax-paid political caucus work back when he was a senator in the early 1980s.

Moreover, he blew a chance to really go to bat for fiscal integrity when he let pass the accounting tricks the Legislature used to secure a balanced budget in 2001-03. Never mind that we face a budget deficit of at least $783 million within four years.

Meanwhile, the state's bond rating flopped, increasing the price of state borrowing, which the state plans to do more of in the next two years to --get this -- cover cash flow on operations. That hasn't been the norm since the early 1980s, when the government was $1.5 billion short because of a prolonged recession that sapped revenue.

But to look good, McCallum was a peanut crusher. He took a slap at the hated teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), and did what the business crowd at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) wanted.

He used the "McScythe" veto to slash a modest change in the harsh limits on school financing affecting teacher pay. It was designed to enable the union to protect its members' benefits in the face of pressure from local school boards pressed for resources.

McCallum managed to ignore cries for help, too. In a veto of a personal nature, he used his power to shore up Department of Transportation planners and consultants and ignore local sentiment by killing a restriction on widening U.S. Highway 12 through Cambridge when the road is reconstructed in 2003.

This bit of local skullduggery to preserve the entrance to the village was sponsored by a Republican, Rep. David Ward, R-Fort Atkinson, who put it in the budget bill. Ward suffered other vetoes, too. "It was like he did a word search and vetoed everything with my name on it," quipped Ward.

Furthermore, politics comes into play on the next step -- overriding the governor's veto. "None of that," Republicans are inclined to say no matter the bad taste in their mouths. Overriding a Republican governor is not good form the year before an election, even if the necessary two-thirds vote might be achieved.

So McCallum used his veto mostly for political posturing, not for power and policy that might have beefed up his image. For a guy who for 14 years was in the shadow of the all-time champ in that department, Tommy Thompson, it was a callow performance.

WisPolitics Budget Coverage

Legislative Fiscal Bureau memos

--Neil Shively is the retired Madison bureau chief of the former Milwaukee Sentinel. He is on the village board in Cambridge and was involved in the highway restriction legislation which was vetoed. His email is: nshively@smallbytes.net

This column also appeared in: Mature Lifestyles, 50Plus and Mature Times