Principes and Distractions

Sounds strangely like a board game; not like the children’s board game “Chutes and Ladders (although similar in many regards) but the kind that gets played in corporate board rooms, in government cabinet chambers and, yes, in school board meeting rooms.  In fact it is a game played by virtually everyone and anyone who is trying to defend a political position.   It is currently being played at the national and state level by presidential candidates and senators and representatives who want voters to look in a direction other than at an area of their perceived weakness.  It is being played at our state level by persons who have political objectives for seeing that “The Property Tax Independence Act” (the “Act”) never sees the Governor’s Desk for signature.  And it will be played out by some parent groups and local school board members who will want you to believe that not throwing more money than needed for this or that program or activity into the upcoming school budget will “deprive our kids of a good education!”

A great place to start understanding why I’m using these two terms in this post is to go to their root dictionary definitions.

PRINCIPLE:

1. (a) a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine or assumption

    (b) (1) a rule or code of conduct

          (2) habitual devotion to right principles <a man of principle>

2.   a primary source: origin

3.   an underlying faculty or endowment (such as principles of human nature).

DISTRACTION:

1.   the act of distracting or the state of being distracted; especially : mental confusion (driven to distraction)
2.   something that distracts: especially: amusement (a harmless distraction)

Now “distraction” derives from its root, “distract” for which Webster gives the definition;

DISTRACT:

1.   archaic  : insane, mad;
(a) to draw apart; to turn aside

     (b) to draw to a different object or in divergent directions at once

2.   to stir up or confuse with conflicting emotions or motives: harass

After carefully examining the words themselves, you get an idea of how the game is played.  There are really no rules; kind of like many of the role-play games that have emerged in modern society (dungeon’s and dragons??) where rules and basic, underlying principles are shunned in favor of “make-it-up-as you go” tactics.  The overall strategic objective of the game is to win by creating enough confusion among a group of players that they mindlessly (madly?; Insanely?) follow down the road you want them to – regardless of how many underlying principles are bowled-over or ignored!  If the winning team can stir up enough confusion – or conflict enough emotions – among members of the group they are targeting with their distractions, winning the game is easy; the people trying to adhere to some basic principles of rightness, fairness and economic common sense lose because they are too distracted to understand that they’ve been bamboozled into wrong thinking and wrong decision making.

Let’s bring all this philosophical meandering home to the point I’m trying to make.  Let’s ignore the national game because it’s just too large to wrap our arms around here.  At the State level, there is a piece of legislation called “The Property Tax Independence Act” [the “Act”] trying to make its way through the Pennsylvania House (H.B. 1776) and Pennsylvania Senate (S.B.1400) to the Governor’s Desk for signature into law.  The “Act” is based on principles of sound reason, sound judgment, fairness, and sound economics.  The socio-economic objective of the Act is to shift payment for education from just one group of taxpayers – property/business owners – to the wider group of all taxpayers who enjoy the benefits of education for our children (the principle of fairness and sound reason and judgment).  To do that, it is proposed that we expand items that are subject to sales/use tax and slightly increase the tax rate on them; a move that will provide some choice about how consumer-taxpayers spend their money and pay their taxes as they spend on needs and wants (principles of fairness and sound economics).  It also increases the state income tax by from about 3% to 4% (principles of sound economics).  It is also a move that will provide a more stable, economically reliable base for collecting necessary revenues to fund public education (principles of sound reason, judgment and economics).   It provides many other benefits in terms of overall fairness and economic advantage that can be found here!

But we have special interest “distractors” who don’t want the power to decide how much tax gets paid – and when and where – to pass to the hands of individual consumer-taxpayers.  Such interests are the organized lobby groups such as teachers unions, school board associations, retail and other business associations and organization who want to make sure that they control how much gets spent on education and who pays for it!  Because then they can continue to carefully control how much more they can get for their salaries/benefits/pensions regardless of how many property owners lose their homes to tax foreclosure or how many homeowners are forced to sell their homes before foreclosure becomes a necessity!  They use distractions like “this has never worked before!”; “there won’t be enough money!”; “low income people will be unfairly paying more than their fair share!”; “we’ll lose business to states that don’t have a sales tax!”; “we’ll lose jobs in this or that industry because business will move away from the state (when in fact exactly the opposite is expected)!”  All of these distractions have either been unequivocally proven false or untenable in the face of sound judgment, reason and economic sense; but they all continue to surface as a litany of inane arguments designed to confuse and conflict the very people who would benefit most from the “Act’s”  implementation!

And lest you think I’ve forgotten about the distractions at the local school board level, please believe I have not.  For those of you who will attend school board meetings (and I hope it is everyone in the district!), be prepared to hear from special interest school board members and parent groups things like:

• We can’t do without that (program/activity) because …
• We’ve always had that (program/activity) in the Daniel Boone Schoools…
• Parents are going to send their kids to other schools if we don’t have (programs/activities)…
• No one is going to want to move into this district if we don’t have (programs/activities).

Again, we need to have a school board that starts its budgetary decision process with sound principles of what’s needed (or in some instances required!) for a sound program of educational opportunities needed for all students – not just some – to move on to increasing levels competence in academics and life skills.  That’s what we all have to pay for.  After that, we can discuss what we’d like to have!

I write this post as a plea.  If you are a property owner or someone who aspires to property ownership, do not fall under the spell of those who want to distract from the true purpose of providing a quality education or of those who want to derail the “Property Tax Independence Act”.  If you belong to any of the organizations trying confuse and conflict anyone and everyone they can, get in touch with your organization and tell them to stop!  If you are merely one of the citizens of Pennsylvania who pay to live here, get in touch with your elected representatives (including local school board members, legislative representatives and even the Governor!) and tell them to stay focused on the principles of education and education finance.  We spend too much time playing the game of principles and distractions; chasing after and responding to distractions that sap our energy away from supporting the core principles upon which our true purposes should be based!

Dave Pool, DBTA

Comment to Reading Eagle Article – 05-15-2012

Here’s the Article:

Boone board disagrees on fixing budget gap

This article was actually pretty right on the money for what the Daniel Boone School Board Meeting was like last night.  Read the article — it catches a bit of the desperation that’s beginning to emerge about how we’re going to continue funding education in our district.  Then realize that this same pall is beginning to set in over school boards and school districts across the commonwealth!  Finally, read the comment I made to this article below!

Comment to Reading Eagle Article “Boone Board Disagrees on fixing budget gap” 5-15-2012

To anyone reading this article, what’s happening here is exactly what I’ve been telling you about for the last year that I’ve been the Daniel Boone Taxpayers Association DBTA Coordinator –in the loudest voice I’ve been able to muster!  This year, the school board might get away with a .3168 mil increase (which still allows an increase on property taxes which never go down and never go away!).  They could propose and vote on a no-tax-increase-budget by simply using more of the sacred “fund balance” to meet the districts revenue needs.  The fund balance is used to get the district through from July 1 to September 1 – the hiatus when, due to the State’s convoluted budgeting process and local taxation guidelines, the district receives no revenues to meet its expenses.  Once the State decides how much their contribution to the district will be, and once revenues from property tax payments start to flow in, the “fund balance” is replenished and stays full, for the most part, until next year when the whole process of debating on how much of the “fund balance” to use recurs!  There admittedly would be enough money in the district’s fund balance this year to allow some of it to be taken to permit a zero tax increase and still get through the summer months.

Only this year, it’s different.  There are extreme financial “weather threats” on the radar, just over the horizon.  Daniel Boone and other school districts throughout the State are hearing the warning sirens and haven’t an idea how to get everyone to shelter!  Massive overspending in the district over the last decade – over-expensive school construction programs and high negotiated staff salary/benefits packages – have left the Daniel Boone School District with a $96.5 million debt service and a possible budget shortfall STARTING the 2013-14 budgeting process with a $4-5 million dollar deficit!  [NOTE: The figures may be different in other districts, but the situation is the same!]  So the theory is now circulating among board members that, “heaven forbid that we should deplete the holy fund balance this year; whatever will we do next year”?  To quote from the article, “[Walter] Sheehan estimated that even if the board decided to do away with all sports, bands, extra-curricular activities and transportation, there still wouldn’t be enough to make up that expected [$4-5 million] deficit.”  And there won’t be enough in “indexed” tax increase allowances nor exceptions to raise property taxes high enough!  And if there were, it would shoot taxes on district properties and businesses through the roof!  Few would want to move to the district and fewer would be able to sell their homes for what they paid for them in order to move out!

Listen everyone – contrary to Governor Corbett’s recent prescriptive for bellyaching property tax payers that they should take their gripes to their local school boards, THE PROBLEM HAS EXCEEDED THE ABILITY OF LOCAL BOARDS TO RESOLVE!  The word “bankruptcy” flew freely around the board meeting last night along with the talk of more tax increases and severe program curtailments!  This year is just the start of the tough times ahead ; that is unless we revamp the way that schools are funded; that local spending is controlled and; that contracts are negotiated!  All of this must come from a leadership role that a large group of our elected State officials are now wrestling with (H.B. 1776 and S.B. 1400 – the Property Tax Independence Act) and which our Governor seems to want to duck!  Bringing negotiated contracts and school construction projects under more reasonable guidelines must also occur!  The time has come for citizen’s in the Daniel Boone District (and other places around the State where the same things are happening) to get involved and demand that our Governor and elected officials make public education funding reform and cost control a top priority.  Visit the DBTA website (www.dbta101.wordpress.com), or the PTCA website (www.ptcc.us)  to start understanding how we got into this mess – and maybe how we can work together to get out of it!

More posts to follow!

Dave Pool, DBTA Coordinator