Hey guys and gals in the Legislature, play a little defense. You just lobbed the governor a softball, and he cunningly vetoed it out of the park.

The key to preventing similar veto abuse in future budgets is for lawmakers to draft budget bills with shorter sentences and fewer numbers per sentence.

Last week's vetoes were the first since voters wisely banned the "Frankenstein" veto in an April 1 statewide referendum.

Thanks to voters, governors can no longer combine words, phrases and numbers across two or more sentences. Back in 2005, Doyle used this "Frankenstein" veto power to stitch together a couple dozen unrelated words and figures across pages of the state budget.

Doyle can no longer pull off anything even close to that. The "Frankenstein" veto is dead.

But the governor can still try to play games with words and numbers within single sentences of budgets. And the governor showed last week he's more than willing to abuse this remaining power if lawmakers draft run-on sentences.

Virtually all of Doyle's partial vetoes across the Legislature's 18-page budget repair bill last week were straightforward and justified. Doyle mostly lined out chunks of text that he and others didn't agree with.

Where Doyle abused his authority was when he carved up a single 54-word sentence filled with five sets of numbers.

The Legislature's bill 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 numbers within that phrase, Doyle changed it to a single figure -- "$270,000,000" -- the amount by which he ordered state spending be reduced.

There is as yet no evidence that the wording was deliberate, to cooperate with the governor's abuse. In fact, some lawmakers expressed outrage.

Yet they could have prevented this by simply breaking the long sentence into two sentences to separate the dollar amounts. Lawmakers also should have written "the current biennium" instead of "the 2007-09 fiscal biennium." That would have prevented the governor from finding a "2, " "7 " and "0 " to create his "270,000,000" figure.

The constitutional amendment approved this spring narrowed the governor's veto powers considerably and banned the crazy "Frankenstein" veto.

But if lawmakers aren't more careful, the governor can still pull veto stunts that violate the spirit of the law and the will of voters.