The Frankenstein Veto is as bad as is sounds

Local laws have sometimes original quirks that make the study of institutions interesting, at times even funny. But not all are cute, and I recently came across a particularly vicious one, the aptly called Frankenstein Veto in Wisconsin.

This allows the State Governor to veto "in whole or in part" appropriation bills passed by the local legislature. It turns out that "in whole or in part" is not interpreted like elsewhere as a line-item veto (which has its own disadvantages), rather it allows the governor to strike out words and numbers selectively, effectively enabling him to completely change the meaning of a bill. For example, the last budget was modified from:

[...] the secretary of administration shall lapse or transfer from the general fund to the unencumbered balances of appropriations of executive branch state agencies, other than sum sufficient appropriations and appropriations of federal revenues, an amount equal to $69,000,000 during the 2007-09 fiscal biennium and $69,000,000 during the 2009-11 fiscal biennium [...]

through selective deletions to:

[...] the secretary of administration shall lapse or transfer from the general fund to the unencumbered balances of appropriations of executive branch state agencies, other than sum sufficient appropriations and appropriations of federal revenues, an amount equal to $270,000,000 [...]

So, essentially, the Governor converted a $69,000,000 cut in the State budget, which was negotiated in the legislature, into a $270,000,000 cut by cutting words and using selected digits from 2007-09 to carve a new number. Had we lived in a different millenum, or where we following a different calendar, the cut would have been different. This is complete nonsense, as clearly the governor's decision do not follow an economic arguments.

Apparently, it was even worse before a recent amendment to the constitution, as the governor could form new words out of parts of old ones, and even perform modifications across sentences. My introductory sentence could therefore be modified into:

Local laws have sometimes original quirs that make the study of institutions interesting, at times even funny. But not all are cute, and I recently came across a particularly vicious one, the aptly called Frankenstein Veto in Wisconsin.

Visibly, I am not as well trained as Wisconsin governors.