The mother of unfunded mandates

The Montana Constitution in Article X says, "The Legislature shall provide a basic system of free quality public elementary and secondary schools" and also that "It shall fund and distribute in an equitable manner to the school districts the state's share of the cost of the basic elementary and secondary school system."

Seems fairly straightforward - unless you are a lawyer. Then its vague language becomes a playground of innuendo and opportunity, and the basis for a nonstop stream of lawsuits. Just what is a "basic system"? What are "quality schools"? What is an "equitable manner" of funding? And what is the "state's share" of the cost of education?

By putting this well-intentioned language into the Constitution in the first place, our fellow citizens created the mother of all unfunded mandates. Now, thanks to a couple of recent court rulings, Montana taxpayers are on the hook to pay for whatever gimcrack or gewgaw the education lobbyists say is "educationally relevant."

The ultimate solution, of course, is to change the language in the Constitution so that it merely guarantees Montana's students that a basic education will be available to them from kindergarten to 12th grade. Guaranteeing quality is like guaranteeing people that they will have a good life, but even the great egalitarian Jefferson only cited an unalienable right to life in the Declaration of Independence, without reference to the quality of that life. A life is what you make of it, and so is an education.

But in the meantime, we are forced to follow the whims of the court, which has divined that the state is not paying its share of education, even though the Constitution does not define what that share is meant to be. Therefore, the Legislature is now doing the business of the state board of education and local school districts and defining a quality education.

But instead of defining a quality education in the most simple terms possible - as for instance, "the opportunity to pursue a course of study in English, history, mathematics, and such other classes as are deemed necessary to enter an institution of higher learning" - the Democrat-led Legislature is taking the opportunity to add even more impossible, unfunded guarantees into the mix. Thus the state, in Sen. Ryan's SB-152, could easily find itself being saddled with additional responsibilities (beyond those already required by federal law) for special-needs students, students with disabilities, gifted and talented students, increased teacher salaries and benefits, library books, distance learning, staff training, capital outlays for school buildings, transportation and much more.

SB-152 certainly is a "bill," for it is nothing more than a huge bill that is being handed to the taxpayers of Montana for generations to come. Republicans have estimated that the proposals currently incorporated in SB-152 will cost as much as $836 million in the next biennium. Maybe that number is just speculation, but we suspect that in the long run, the cost will be even higher - much higher - as the grab-bag approach of SB-152 will ultimately lead to endless demands for more and more services and more and more funding.

If this is the direction the Legislature plans to go, then Gov. Schweitzer had better get his veto pen ready, because he will either have to renege on his promise not to increase taxes or he will have to shoot this porker of a bill before it gets any fatter.

Tell your legislators to start over and to come up with a plan the state can afford. Then tell them to make sure the money comes with a guarantee, too - a guarantee of improvement based on increased spending. If the money doesn't increase quality, then we ought to all be able to agree that a "quality education" is guaranteed less by the state's money than by a student's hard work.