Governor Scott Walker told several news outlets that he plans to veto a provision that would have removed the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism from UW-Madison and forbidden faculty from working with the organization. PROFS lobbied extremely hard over the past few weeks to remove the measure, which was inserted into the budget anonymously by the Joint Finance Committee. The governor will sign the budget into law at 1:30 pm today, June 30, in Pleasant Prairie.
The governor said he will ask the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents to review all such partnerships, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “(i)f there’s going to be a policy about those sorts of shared agreements or shared arrangements, that should be set by the regents and it shouldn’t be set specific to just this particular program.”
Walker also plans to veto a measure that would have introduced bail bonds to the state. The governor will also veto a provision added in the Assembly that would have allowed Milwaukee and Racine to expand beyond the agreed-upon statewide voucher expansion of 500 students in the 2013-14 school year and 1,000 students in the 2014-15 school year.
The governor will not veto a plan that would allow the sale of public property, opening up the possibility of a campus power plant or dormitory sell-off. The Joint Finance Committee changed the governor’s original proposal, forbidding the sale of property that was bought or built with at least 50 percent gift or federal funds.