MacIver News Minute: How Gov. Evers Might Drain the Swamp in Madison

The MacIver Report: Wisconsin This Week

Tony Evers did not become governor to drain the swamp in Madison, but he might accidentally do just that. He’s suing the legislature because he doesn’t think it should have any say in what rules and regulations his bureaucrats write. The supreme court heard the case last week, and Evers might get more than he bargained for. It seems there’s nothing in the state constitution that gives bureaucrats the authority to write rules and regulations at all. Justice Rebecca Bradley said the legislature never had the authority to transfer that power to the bureaucracy. Justice Hagedorn described it as a gentlemen’s agreement between the governor and the legislature to do it anyway for the past the hundred years. If the supreme court sides with Evers and rules that lawmakers can’t provide oversight to the rulemaking process, or if they go further and rule that bureaucrats don’t have the authority to write rules in the first place, well as the defendant’s attorney explained, the natural consequence is, “the administrative state’s got to go.”