Ohio Roundtable: The Public Square - School Funding and Tax Bills
School Funding and Tax Bills
For the past few years the Ohio Roundtable has been
battling a lonely struggle on the school funding front. We have been challenging the
constitutional authority of the Ohio Supreme Court regarding their attempted takeover of
public school funding.
At first we got some pretty strange looks. At one point we
even got laughed off the floor of the Ohio Senate.
We’ve been trying to explain that the Ohio
Constitution clearly places the responsibility for education laws in the hands of the
elected members of the General Assembly. Providing for those schools is a matter for the
voters and their elected representatives.
The court has disagreed and continues to try to dictate how
much money should be spent on schools; a task that is truly impossible to accomplish from
the bench.
Now, after endless rounds of lawsuits, people are beginning
to get the point. In a recent editorial, the Plain Dealer calls recent court rulings
"wrong-headed," and warns that a constitutional amendment may now be necessary
to "get the judge’s hands out of the taxpayers pockets."
In fact, the newspaper goes so far as pledging support to
any plan to strip the Courts of their current ability to interfere with the rights and
responsibilities of the Legislature, including an amendment passed by the people. Click here to read the full editorial.
So time is changing the perspectives of many. The same
thing happened in New Jersey where nearly thirty years of endless lawsuits finally drove
the courts out of public school funding. Hopefully, we can save thirty years of taxpayer
dollars and grief here in Ohio.
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