NH Dems Kill Education Funding Amendment

We had a chance to finally settle the education funding problem, wresting control of state education aid away from the courts and returning it to the legislature, where it belongs. While the state constitutional amendment wasn't absolutely perfect, it would have done the job. It was a truly bipartisan effort to get state aid to the school systems that really needed it. But then one partisan hack decided she couldn't make a compromise that would have assured passage of the amendment. She stuck by her guns, thumbed her nose at the governor, who wanted the amendment to pass and had worked hard to make it happen, and at the members of the other party that had worked so hard to come to an accord.

Some may think that the holdout was a Republican from the way she ignored the pleas of the governor. But they'd be wrong. She's a Democrat. In a fit of pique she had undone months of work by Democrats, Republicans, and Independents to take back control of our schools from the state Supreme Court. What's worse is that her fellow Democrats tried to make sure that once the amendment failed that it would stay dead.

It makes me wonder if the Democratic leadership in the state really wants to fix the problem. I can see the fallout of the amendment's being the imposition of some kind of broadbased tax, like a sales or income tax. That would flood the state coffers with even more money they could spend on all other kinds of social engineering projects they have in mind...for a short period of time. But the flood would then turn to a trickle and businesses might consider that the state is no longer quite a friendly place, tax wise, to do business.

Oh, and would any of that tax money actually go to education or local property tax relief? If history is any indicator, the answer is a resounding 'No'.