Gov. Evers gives Legislature a 'second chance' to fund schools

Gov. Tony Evers signed the state budget on Thursday at an elementary school in the Milwaukee suburb of Whitewater, emphasizing the importance of funding for schools and handing out pens to a group of schoolchildren who stood behind him.

“I am proud to be the ‘Education Governor,’ and I believe, as I have often said, that what’s best for our kids is what’s best for our state,” Ever said. “So, this budget begins and ends where it always does for me – with education.”

Evers signed the budget only after using his line-item veto to remove 50 provisions, and acknowledged that the Legislature had tied his hands, since a full veto would make Wisconsin ineligible for billions of dollars in federal COVID relief funds. Just before the signing ceremony, news broke that some of those funds could be in jeopardy anyway since the budget passed by the Legislature might not fund low-income school districts at a high enough level to qualify for federal COVID relief.

Evers used one of his partial vetoes to retrieve $550 million the Republicans had put in the state’s rainy day fund, and asked the Legislature to work with him to allocate more of that money to schools, small businesses, and pandemic recovery.

Read more: https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/07/09/gov-evers-gives-legislature-a-second-chance-to-fund-schools/