## Facts

- Wisconsin legislators Gerald D. Kleczka (state senator) and John C. Shabaz (assembly member) filed an original action in the Wisconsin Supreme Court challenging the acting governor’s partial vetoes of a 1977 appropriations bill (AB 664).
- AB 664 included provisions for the Wisconsin Election Campaign Fund, structured so taxpayers could voluntarily increase their income-tax liability by $1 to contribute to the fund.
- Acting Governor Martin J. Schreiber used the Wisconsin Constitution’s partial-veto authority for appropriation bills to strike selected words in AB 664.
- The first partial veto altered the campaign-fund mechanism so taxpayers could designate $1 from existing tax liability to the fund, rather than increasing total tax liability, thereby shifting money from general revenues.
- The second partial veto deleted language affecting the bill’s effective date, moving implementation forward by one year.
- Petitioners claimed the vetoes exceeded constitutional authority because they changed the bill’s substance and fiscal policy rather than merely negating separable parts, and they sought an order requiring publication of the bill as originally passed.
- The court treated the dispute as a ripe, justiciable controversy appropriate for declaratory relief in an original action.

## Issues

1. Whether Wis. Const. art. V, § 10 permits the governor, in an appropriations bill, to delete words in a way that changes the operative effect of a tax check-off provision from an added payment to a redirection of existing revenue.
2. Whether the partial-veto power permits deletion of effective-date language that results in earlier implementation.
3. Whether such word-deletion vetoes impermissibly create a different law than the legislature enacted.

## Decision

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld both partial vetoes as within the governor’s constitutional authority under Wis. Const. art. V, § 10.
- The court concluded the challenged provisions were part of an appropriations bill and therefore subject to partial veto.
- The court denied petitioners’ requests to invalidate the vetoes and to compel publication of the bill in its pre-veto form.

## Legal Principles

- The governor’s partial-veto power over appropriations bills extends to vetoing any separable provision, including by deleting words, phrases, or clauses.
- A partial veto may change the meaning or policy effect of remaining text, so long as the governor does not add or insert new language.
- When the legislature places substantive provisions in an appropriations bill, those provisions fall within the scope of the partial-veto authority.
- Effective-date provisions included in an appropriations bill may be altered through deletion under the partial-veto power, subject to the same no-addition limitation.
- Declaratory relief is available in an original action when there is a ripe constitutional controversy between officials with adverse legal interests regarding implementation of an enactment.

## Conclusion

The court sustained a broad reading of Wisconsin’s gubernatorial partial-veto authority, holding that selective deletion of words in an appropriations bill is constitutional even when it materially changes fiscal operation and effective timing, provided no new text is added.


State ex rel. Kleczka v. Conta, 264 N.W.2d 539 (Wis. 1978)