Last week, Kansas state Sen. Dick Kelsey bravely took a stand against funding schools, introducing a nonbinding resolution saying the Kansas Supreme Court should not get to tell lawmakers how much to spend on education and the schools should not be allowed to use taxpayer dollars to sue for more tax dollars. After introducing this meaningless resolution, how does Kelsey walk the Capitol with those grapefruits swinging between his legs?
Kelsey's Senate Concurrent Resolution 1621 (read it after the jump) says he's tired of courts telling him and his buddies that they need to adequately pay for education. Like the state of Kansas needs smarter kids. And who's the Kansas Supreme Court to tell lawmakers what's constitutional?
"It is wrong to use
taxpayer money to sue the Legislature to get more taxpayer money," Kelsey told The Topeka Capital-Journal.
This scored Kelsey, a Goddard Republican running for the 4th district's
congressional seat, points with the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and
Americans for Prosperity, who don't like paying for things like education.
"I think it just shows a profound misunderstanding of the roles of the
three branches of government," awesomely mustached Schools for Fair Funding attorney John Robb told The Pitch in a recent
interview.
Robb ticked off lawsuit after lawsuit in which taxpayers sued taxpayers,
including the state suing itself to determine whether the lottery was
legal.
"Taxpayers suing taxpayers happens every day," Robb said. "It's how
disputes are settled. And Sen. Kelsey apparently doesn't like this one
because of the topic of the lawsuit: school finance."
Robb said
media coverage of the taxpayer-versus-taxpayer angle erroneously
suggests "that this is somehow some unusual deal and school districts
are to be
vilified because they're enforcing their constitutional rights. Well, it
happens all the time. It's what the court system does.
They solve disputes."
The school finance case rested five years
ago, when the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in favor of the school
districts, agreeing that lawmakers weren't fulfilling their
constitutional obligation to fund education. The decisions directed
hundreds of millions of dollars towards public schools and left
lawmakers hrrumphing.
After the school-funding system was deemed
unconstitutional, Robb said, the legislature "took several swings" at
trying to fix it. "Their last attempt was Senate bill 549, which was a
three-year plan to
fix the system. And now what they've done is pulled back from the
three-year plan."
Last year, Gov. Mark Parkinson and
lawmakers hacked about $241 million from
the schools' budgets, blaming the recession for the cuts.
Robb
said lawmakers aren't trying to figure out what education really costs
and then
trying to pay for it accordingly. Instead, he said, "They're simply
looking at what the balance is in the checkbook
and deciding, 'Gosh, the checkbook's empty. We must have the authority
to cut back school funding.' Well, they weren't voluntary increases to
begin with. The Constitution required the increases. So it's not
something we feel that they had carte blanche authority to cut back when
they ran the checkbook into the ground."
When lawmakers passed
the three-year plan, they knew they were going
to be $426 million in the hole in 2009, Robb added.
"Their own
projection showed that they were going to spend the state's surplus and
drive the checkbook into the ground within three years," Robb said.
"Yet, instead of trying to raise the revenue to fund the system they
came up with, they ran the thing into the ground and are now claiming
poverty. That doesn't make sense to me."
The slashing led the
districts to again threaten legislation under
the Schools for Fair Funding banner and request the state's high court
to reopen the school funding case.
Schools for Fair Funding is
waiting on the Kansas Supreme Court to decide whether the finance case
will be reopened. If not, then the coalition of school districts will
file a new lawsuit.
Showing 1-3 of 3
Excellent info I was searching Bing for something and discovered this blog site of yours. Btw, where can I subscribe to new content?
There were so many people talking about the Supreme Court on Twitter that it was one of the top trending topics for a while - check out the video at http://www.joshrimer.com/john-... to see some of the more entertaining ones in a funny video. :-)
like
dislike
