Gays and taxes 2: Revenge of TABOR
Hi everyone, sorry about the lapse between posts, you know how the real world is. I was looking at the Un-Christian Civic League's online newsletter, The RECORD, (this was the May 5th issue, unfortunately they haven't updated their archives since April, I hope you'll take my word for this until they update their archives) and I found an article where Paul Madore spoke with State Sen. Ethan Strimling (D-District 8). As I remember from the article, at one point Strimling compared the current gay rights movement to the civil rights movement of the 60's, to which Paul Madore responded that the people in the civil rights movement don't agree with that. That's interesting, here is the website for the Portland branch of the NAACP. According to the "History" section, Gerald Talbot, who as a state legislator originally introduced this same gay rights bill back in the 70's, was the first president of the chapter. Also, Sen. Strimling is listed as the 2nd vice president. Wait a sec, which civil rights movement are we talking about here?
Also, there's a movement to put the aforementioned Taxpayer's Bill of Rights on the ballot. The amazing thing here is that, as Republican an area as western York County is, there is only one place to sign the petition (Berwick), and that's only at the polls! I made the following response to a comment by a Republican on this blog, and I think it's a good idea to reprint it here:
Educational costs can be divided into fixed costs, required to run the system at all, and per student costs which vary with enrollment. As Maine continues its relentless march toward old age, our school enrollment continues to decrease (source: http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs/pj/p97c08.asp). For rural areas with small numbers of students per square mile, this is already resulting in a shift toward a higher ratio of fixed costs to per student costs. In response to this we are seeing pressure to consolidate school districts into larger and larger areas. (source: here) Students already traveling an hour each way on the bus may soon be stretching that to an hour and a half. Think about it, right now some kids are spending 10 hours a week on buses. That's an entire 40 hr work week just getting to and from school every month. In the course of a school year these students spend about 360 hours or 15 full days on a school bus. What could you do with an extra 15 days each year? Then, of course, there is the issue of violence on school buses. I won't even get into that here, but please read your local papers. TABOR would exacerbate these problems. Our local funding limits would actually decrease proportionally to the number of students. No allowance is made for the fact that fixed costs do not decrease with enrollment.I will grant you one point; rural areas will not suffer alone. Basically, our entire public education system is in the crosshairs.
Also, there's a movement to put the aforementioned Taxpayer's Bill of Rights on the ballot. The amazing thing here is that, as Republican an area as western York County is, there is only one place to sign the petition (Berwick), and that's only at the polls! I made the following response to a comment by a Republican on this blog, and I think it's a good idea to reprint it here:
Educational costs can be divided into fixed costs, required to run the system at all, and per student costs which vary with enrollment. As Maine continues its relentless march toward old age, our school enrollment continues to decrease (source: http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs/pj/p97c08.asp). For rural areas with small numbers of students per square mile, this is already resulting in a shift toward a higher ratio of fixed costs to per student costs. In response to this we are seeing pressure to consolidate school districts into larger and larger areas. (source: here) Students already traveling an hour each way on the bus may soon be stretching that to an hour and a half. Think about it, right now some kids are spending 10 hours a week on buses. That's an entire 40 hr work week just getting to and from school every month. In the course of a school year these students spend about 360 hours or 15 full days on a school bus. What could you do with an extra 15 days each year? Then, of course, there is the issue of violence on school buses. I won't even get into that here, but please read your local papers. TABOR would exacerbate these problems. Our local funding limits would actually decrease proportionally to the number of students. No allowance is made for the fact that fixed costs do not decrease with enrollment.I will grant you one point; rural areas will not suffer alone. Basically, our entire public education system is in the crosshairs.
posted by Nathan at 2:12 PM
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