By Tessa Roy, WPRO News
Advocates say a line item veto would improve government accountability and protect taxpayers from wasteful spending, but others are concerned that a governor would misuse it. Both sides made their case before a special commission to study the line item veto and runoff elections for governor.
Governor Gina Raimondo was among those in favor of a line item veto. She expressed her support in a letter to the commission.
“The line item veto is an important tool to reduce state spending. Allowing the Governor to reduce line item expenditures in the budget and to strike language directing or conditioning the use of appropriations will help remove wasteful spending from the state budget,” she said in her letter.
Also in favor was former gubernatorial candidate Ken Block, saying a line item veto would prevent last minute budget “shenanigans” and make for a better overall budget process.
“The current veto that’s in place where the governor can only accept the entire budget or reject the entire budget isn’t usable. No properly thinking governor would veto an entire budget because of a single item. That’s just reckless,” Block said.
Representative Gregg Amore, a member of the commission, raised concern about a governor abusing a line item veto even if the legislature could do the same.
“We’ve seen a governor shut down a roadway on the George Washington Bridge out of vindictiveness. There is the ability to push your agenda through the tools of government, we see it all the time,” he said.
Nicholas Hemond, representing the Hospital Association of Rhode Island, also urged caution, saying the legislature might not return to override a governor’s veto.
“From the hospital perspective, we often are every governor’s favorite place to cut,” he said. “We’re often up before your finance committees asking you to restore tens of millions of dollars on an annual basis and thankfully for our health care system, the General Assembly most often has responded to our efforts and our advocacy and put back money where governors have cut. What we’re afraid of is we go through that process where we do our advocacy… and then at the end of all that with the stroke of a pen, our months of hard work are undone.”
