Showing his veto pen remains the most powerful in the nation, Gov. Jim Doyle Friday carved up a bill to cover a $527 million shortfall in the state's two-year budget, taking $103 million from the state's road fund and blocking legislators' attempt to delay payments to schools.

The vetoes came just weeks after an April 1 referendum in which voters approved a constitutional amendment to limit the governor's veto authority, and less than 48 hours after the budget repair bill cleared the Legislature.

"The governor is demonstrating how extensive his remaining powers are. His wings have only been clipped by a feather," said Mordecai Lee, a professor of governmental affairs at UW-Milwaukee and a former Democratic state senator.

The recently passed constitutional amendment prohibits Wisconsin governors from crossing out words and numbers over two or more sentences and stitching the remnants together into one new sentence, which critics have likened to Frankenstein's monster.

But within the confines of a single sentence, Doyle showed he could still work magic.

For example, the bill sent to Doyle called for spending cuts and transfers from state funds equal to "$69,000,000 during the 2007-09 fiscal biennium and $69,000,000 during the 2009-11 fiscal biennium." By deleting words and individual characters within that phrase, Doyle changed it to a single figure — "$270,000,000" — the amount by which he ordered state spending be reduced.

The governor said Friday he would take $103 million of that money from the state's road fund, thwarting lawmakers who had sought to rule out further raids on that fund to balance a budget threatened by a failing economy.

In another veto, Doyle struck a single digit in a provision diverting money set aside to comply with a federal mandate requiring stricter state guidelines on issuing driver's licenses. The veto reduced the raid from $22 million to $2 million.

Ravages of winter

Doyle defended his actions, saying that spending on highway programs increased about $350 million under the original budget passed in October. Even after his vetoes, he said, the budget repair bill raises spending on road programs beyond that amount.

Those increases included $24.8 million to compensate counties for high road maintenance costs brought on by this year's severe winter.

"A responsible budget repair must rely on meaningful reductions in spending and certainly not (on) big spending increases," Doyle said at a news conference unveiling the vetoes.

Madison attorney Fred Wade, who has long crusaded against the strong veto power of the state's governors, said that Doyle's actions show there is a need for a "further constitutional amendment" to restrain the authority.

"In a nutshell, these vetoes demonstrate that the Frankenstein veto is alive," Wade said. "There is still a potential for tremendous abuse here in a manner that is undemocratic."

Doyle spokesman Lee Sensenbrenner stressed that Doyle's vetoes were legal and served to reduce state spending.

"We feel very comfortable that these are good vetoes," he said.

Reaction from the lawmakers whose bill had been reworked was muted Friday. Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, said he was still studying the effects of the vetoes. In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, said the state should have used an additional $77 million in recently awarded federal money to increase spending on "our crumbling roads and bridges."

Doyle's other partial vetoes and budget actions included:

• Cutting a provision that would have delayed $125 million in payments to schools until the next budget.

• Scaling back a plan to borrow against promised future payments by tobacco companies to the state. Doyle and aides said he would seek to borrow $150 million instead of the $209 million outlined in the bill. The change was accomplished through how his administration will refinance the bonds involved, not through a veto.

• Scaling back a plan to dip into the state's budget reserves. Doyle would leave the reserves at $106 million, up from the $25 million that would have been left under the bill.

• Negotiating lower salary increases in contracts with state worker unions. Those have come in about $25 million less than what had been budgeted, Doyle said.

• Cutting a controversial last-minute budget provision that would not have affected state finances but would have provided local property tax exemptions for low-income housing projects.

In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, criticized Doyle's transfer from the road fund and called for a vote to override that veto in his house.

It would not be easy for the Legislature to override Doyle's vetoes. It would require a two-thirds majority in both houses. An override vote would have to start in the GOP-controlled Assembly, where it would require the votes of 66 of the 98 members currently able to vote in that body.

But on Wednesday the Assembly passed the budget 51-46. The vote was even closer in the Senate, where lawmakers voted to pass it 17-16.