Democratic Governor Tony Evers has issued more than two dozen vetoes of Republican bills that made it out of the Legislature before recess.
Evers issued 28 vetoes on Friday. Among those bills were measures that would have made it easier to kick people off of unemployment and medical assistance, a bill that would have dissolved the Milwaukee Public Schools District, as well as massive expansion of the school voucher program.
“It is remarkable to me that many supporters of this bill, who commonly express concerns about property taxes when it comes to supporting more than 800,000 public school children in our state, are apparently unfazed by the fiscal impact this bill could have on families due to the way these programs are funded,” Evers said in veto message of the voucher expansion.
“If the Governor had bothered to read the bills we sent to him, he would see that we were giving him the power to be part of the solution for smaller, more accountable, community school districts for Milwaukee. He’s vetoing this bill because he wants to hide from the problem he helped create,” said state Senator Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), author of the bill to break up MPS.
The governor also vetoed a “Parental Bill of Rights” that would have required schools to tell parents their children wanted to change their gender identities and given parents broader leeway on pulling their children from lessons that they viewed as objectionable.