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Politics

2012-11-09 08:49:19

Know your local candidates - part 2

This series with local candidates began last month and as we stated,on November 6th our country will once again be allowed to exercise our freedom, and right to vote in the 2012 elections. As always, we are striving to differentiate ourselves from other media outlets, educating and informing readers and providing information that touches them personally, in their daily lives. All rhetoric aside, we want to dive deep into the issues that matter to you, the voter. In that effort, we've laid out five questions with the following candidates to gather a little insight into who they are, what they're running for, and what issues they can resolve that are important to you, the voter.

Q & A Times: Julie, can you please bring to light your stance and record on education? Thanks in advance. Menghini: Governor Brownback and Kansas House Conservative Republicans have spent a lot of time over the last few weeks decrying assertions from the Kansas Democratic Party regarding the far right Republican record on public education. There are numerous technicalities in the numbers that Governor Brownback presented that make his claims misleading, but I believe that the people of Kansas know the truth. Across the state, our class sizes are getting larger, our property taxes are getting higher, and our fees are getting more expensive. No matter how you bend and twist the school funding formula, my record and the records of democrats and moderate republicans across the state are clear. We are long time supporters of education and the funding necessary to provide a suitable education. After not one, but TWO, separate, non-partisan studies on funding and our education system, it became evident that the legislature was not providing adequate funding for a suitable education. Conservative Republicans did not like this, so they ignored the studies. With no other recourse, a school funding lawsuit followed. The Kansas Supreme Court eventually ruled that the Kansas Legislature needed to increase funding, based upon the two studies commissioned by the same Kansas Legislature. In 2005, my first year serving the people of SEK as their state representative, we were able to design a 3 year plan to put the necessary funding into education. It took a special session, but we were able to get the first year passed. Then, we managed to pass the second year of funding. Unfortunately, the recession hit, and the entire state budget had to be revisited—multiple times. Over the past two years, Kansas revenues have grown steadily, and education cuts could and should have begun to be restored. They were not, even though a group of Democrats and moderate Republicans presented plans to do just that. The conservative led legislature would not restore the cuts. And to ensure that the cuts would not be restored, they passed huge tax cuts for big corporations, depleting the revenues for years to come. Governor Brownback said recently that the state will increase public education funding “as the economy grows.” But the state cannot increase education funding when Governor Brownback's tax cuts for the wealthy will push us into the hole by $2.5 billion in the next 5 years. This is not a partisan scare tactic – it's arithmetic. If we aren’t restoring funding “until the economy grows”, Governor Brownback is essentially telling Kansans that there won’t be any money for schools until he finds a way to pay for his tax plan. Governor Brownback also implied last week that Governors Sebelius and Parkinson are responsible for the majority of the cuts that public schools have endured over the last few years. However, there is a stark difference between making budget cuts out of necessity during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and cutting education in order to sock money away for a massive income tax cut. No matter how Governor Brownback wants to shift blame, he had a choice to make at the beginning of 2012. Democrats and Moderate Republicans presented two different plans to fully restore public education funding over the next few years. Governor Brownback rejected them both. Instead, he chose to implement a tax plan whereby the workers pay taxes and the bosses don’t. He could have proven that education is a top priority for his administration - something he has said multiple times - but he chose to give tax breaks to the wealthy and big corporations. The rebuttals in the last few weeks before the 2012 election are clearly an attempt to confuse the issue of public education before a critical election. It seems that they are just now realizing that it will take more than misleading “Obamacare” ads to win some of these legislative races. But no matter how Governor Brownback attempts to spin this issue, his record - and the record of any who support his agenda - speaks for itself. The choice Governor Brownback made when he signed that tax bill into law will define his entire legacy - and it will not be a legacy that is kind to public schools.