There’s the right way to fix a problem, and then there’s the governments way; Proposition 30 would be the latter.
Prop. 30, also known as The Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act of 2012, calls for a seven year tax hike on the state’s highest earners; couples who make upwards of $500,000 per year.
Supporters of the proposition claim that the money derived from the tax increase would go towards the improvement of public schools and community colleges. What they don’t tell you however, is the true purpose and intent of raising the funds.
People behind the proposition will have you believe that the money is safe from mishandling because “(all) revenues from this measure are subject to local audit every year, and audit by the independent Controller to ensure that they will be used only for schools and local public safety.”
However, this doesn’t prevent them from using funds already earned from before the proposition was put in place for other reasons and then replacing it with proposition money.
And this isn’t just a paranoid belief expressed by anti-government right wingers.
The California School Boards Association has expressed its distrust in the proposition as well, a proposition that in theory would help them, stating that “…the Governor’s initiative does not provide new funding for schools.”
On April 22 of this year, the “Wall Street Journal” published an editorial claiming that “revenues are needed to backfill the insolvent teacher’s pension fund.”
All the behind the scenes shadiness aside, let’s focus for a second on the proposed solution itself. Why is it that every time politicians want to solve a problem they put it on the shoulders of the citizens? Are there no other solutions to this? Where are the political minds?
They approve $5 billion in CA bonds for a bullet train and yet we’ve heard nothing about it so far. Where is that money? Are classrooms and teachers not a more important issue than getting from Point A to Point B in record time?
We complain about our public schools being a mess, our educational system in shambles, and lack of interest from our students, and yet we want to put the responsibility of fixing this problem on the shoulders of the State’s wealthiest citizens. These people most likely don’t even send their children to these schools to begin with so why should they fix our problems? It’s time the politicians find alternative solutions other than taking more of its citizens money .
