Iowa legislature Ko's governor in court.

• Position: Trends And Transitions

The Iowa General Assembly won a key victory in June when the state Supreme Court struck down the governor's attempt to expand his use of the item veto.

Calling the governor's attempt a grave threat to the separation of powers, the court said, "If we were to accept and apply the governor's approach, we would be condoning a vast expansion of the scope and reach of the governor's item veto power."

The governor argued that his vetoes were legitimate in a bill creating the administrative structure for an economic development program because the bill was linked to another bill that contained an appropriation for the program. The governor can veto only appropriations bills in Iowa.

But the court said that the governor "failed to cite any true authority in support of an approach that looks to another pending bill to determine whether the bill sought to be item vetoed is an appropriations bill.... Feasibly, every bill that is somehow linked to another bill that contains an appropriation could be reached by the governor's item veto power. However, the item veto power is a limited, negative power and cannot be expanded in this way."

"The court ruled with the legislature on every point in our interpretation of the constitution on how an item veto can be used," says Speaker Christopher Rants. "It adopted our test for what constitutes an appropriations bill. The court made several strong statements...