Education crisis due to legislative cowardice

I'm appalled at what the Idaho legislature did -- or rather, failed to do -- this session.

Specifically, I'm concerned about what happened with educational funding.

The largest of the various state budgets, education took a 7.5 percent cut, leaving many school districts high and dry. Some districts, which had plenty of pork in their budget, are going to survive that hit.

But others, like the Mountain Home School District, which has always been pretty responsible in its fiscal affairs, simply don't have the pad to handle this kind of cut, which comes on the heels of several years of budget holdbacks (including one already this year) and cuts.

Four years ago, during the administration of Gov. Jim Risch, the legislature took away the main property tax funding source for local school districts, a "big-government" type of move that implied the state legislature knew how to fund schools better than allowing some local control of the funding. At the time, the legislature promised that it would make up the difference to the local school districts. The ink had barely dried on that promise before it was broken -- and in doing so, began a process leading to broken schools and a broken educational system.

We all know the economy is in horrible shape. Economic recovery has a heartbeat, but it is still fairly faint. So funding is tight. The Idaho Constitution does not allow the state to operate in the red (which is a very good thing).

So during the last four years, the legislature has met that criteria for a balanced budget by cutting government programs. Which sounds good, until you realize that the Department of Health and Welfare no longer has enough inspectors to do a truly adequate job making health inspections of restaurants. The Idaho Department of Water Resources can't monitor the state's water supply quality at anywhere near the levels it did before. Law enforcement staffing hasn't kept up with growth. The list goes on.

Many of the funds formerly returned to cities and counties to help pay for state mandates have begun to disappear, stripped away to pay for state needs and the funding burden surreptitiously shifted from the state level to the local level. That's taken some of the onus off the legislators, and thrown it on the backs of local elected officials to raise taxes or slash services and programs to make up the shortfalls.

The burden of responsibility is being shifted from the state level to the local level without giving the local governments the tools to really do anything about it.

And that's what is happening in education.

A lot of kids this year won't be able to realize their dreams of going to college after graduation because of the massive hikes in tuition caused by the legislature's inability to fund higher education properly.

In addition, local school districts are being forced to declare financial emergencies and seek special supplemental property tax levies to make up the shortfalls in their funding. In some cases, adding insult to injury, they're also being forced to ask teachers to take cuts in pay and benefits to make up for the legislature's inadequacies.

Even that isn't enough. Districts around the state are slashing programs. Elective "enrichment" classes are disappearing, leaving only the mandated core curriculums -- and even then it's not unusual for there not to be enough textbooks to go around. Even if the economy were to rebound next year, it will be at least a decade before you start seeing some of the programs returned to the curriculum, and in the meantime, it's the students that ultimately suffer.

Maybe the legislature wants stupid kids. It certainly would be an advantage in their re-election campaigns.

All of this brings me to the solution for educational funding that hasn't -- and won't -- happen, no matter how much it is needed.

The legislature should have bit the bullet and raised income taxes to pay for education.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like paying taxes and I don't like tax increases. No good, red-blooded American does. It's hardwired into both our genes and our American heritage.

On the other hand, I do like having paved roads, adequate police protection and good schools for my grandchildren. So I consider taxes a necessary evil.

I also consider a good education for the children of this state an absolute necessity.

Not a single legislator got elected on an anti-education platform. All of them gave lip service in their election campaigns to their belief in the importance of education. But while they've talked the talk, they haven't walked the walk.

If the legislature had been willing to raise taxes by the equivalent of taking an extra one or two dollars out of every worker's paycheck, it would have gone a long way toward easing the current crisis in education.

But every time I broached that subject, literally 100 percent of the people I talked to laughed and said exactly the same thing: "In an election year? Are you crazy? It won't happen."

I began to realize that being a cynic about politics is no longer restricted primarily to journalists who have to cover it. It has become pervasive among all the voters as well.

Somehow, we have come to expect that politicians will no longer do what is right and necessary if it remotely threatens their power and prestige. Getting re-elected is more important than actually solving the problems we elected them to fix. Political rhetoric has come to count more than reason, logic and reality.

Frankly, I'd have a lot more respect for our legislators if they'd bitten the bullet, ignored any backlash that might have cost them their political careers (few are actually facing serious challenges), and had the courage to say, "we have no choice. If we want our children to get a good education, we have to be willing to make a small, personal financial sacrifice and pay for it." That would have been statesman-like.

But it won't happen. There are no statesmen left, just politicians -- in the worst sense of the word.

These cowardly clowns will continue to get elected, and our children's education will suffer as a result. In the long run, we are all going to pay for their nearsighted votes.