Doyle to take claim: Of powerful office

		Eye on the  Capitol  John Huebscher

Governor-elect Jim Doyle is the first Democratic governor to take office in Wisconsin in 20 years.

The post he inherits after a decade and a half of Republican rule has a longer reach and more access to the levers of power than that enjoyed by the last Democrat, Governor Tony Earl, who held the post from 1983 to 1987.

Naming administrators

First, there is the matter of appointments. Thirty years ago, the governor appointed but a handful of department secretaries and their deputies. Most of the large agencies were run by citizen boards that in turn appointed the secretary.

That began to change in the 1970s. Slowly but steadily, the legislature extended the governor's reach into more agencies by reducing the citizen boards to advisory panels and by giving the governor the power to name the top administrators.

The departments of Health and Social Services; Industry, Labor, and Human Relations (now called Workforce Development); and Transportation were the first to be added to the governor's cabinet.

Not long after, the governor received the authority to appoint all division administrators in the cabinet agencies. Instead of one or two appointees, the governor now had as many as six or seven jobs at his disposal.

During Tommy Thompson's long tenure in the capitol's east wing, more agencies were added to the cabinet, including the departments of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Veterans Affairs.

Lack of experience

Thus, Doyle will have unprecedented opportunity to remake the leadership of state government. At the same time, 16 years of Republican rule have created a whole generation of Democratic office seekers who are eager to form and implement policy in the executive branch.

Few, however, have recent experience in leading an agency and little or no "institutional memory" as to how and why many of the current policies and organizational structures were formed. The Doyle team may learn by trial and error.

Partial veto power

Governor Doyle also inherits a partial veto power that was stretched to new lengths by Thompson. The former governor regularly used his veto in new ways that sparked court challenges from legislative leaders.

During his governorship, Thompson engaged in such practices as vetoing parts of sentences to change their meaning (thus making a law the legislature did not write) and reducing appropriations by replacing the dollar amount approved by the legislature with a lower figure. Each time, the State Supreme Court upheld Thompson's creativity.

Doyle can be expected to take advantage of that power, too. One also expects that the Democratic minority in the legislature will regularly sustain his vetoes, just as the Republican lawmakers sustained Thompson's.

How he uses power

In the end, of course, how the new governor chooses to use his power will be determined as much by his personality and political philosophy and the circumstances of the moment.

But thanks to the steady expansion of the inherent powers of the gubernatorial office, Governor Doyle will have the potential to exert his will in ways beyond the imagination of most of his predecessors.

John Huebscher is executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference.