April 30, 2006

TEA Avoids Facts, Refuses Debate on Vital Issue

Kay Brooks alerted me via email that the Tennessee Education Association didn't much like this post of mine over at the Bryson for Governor blog. In that post I pointed out several factual errors and misrepresentations in a previous TEA article urging teachers to oppose state Sen. Jim Bryson's proposed amendment to reform the state constitution's existing cap on the annual growth of the state budget.

In the April 28 edition of the TEA's weekly Legislative Report, which you can access here until next week's is posted, the TEA says it "begs to disagree" with my article, but then fails to show a single instance of how I was wrong.

Instead of debating the issue, the TEA Legislative Report editor launches a personal attack on me, and attempts to cloud the issue by stating that my website "contains links to a number of arch conservative political groups including the anti-public education Home School Defense Association."

The organization the TEA referred to is actually the Home School Legal Defense Association. The HSLDA exists to defend the legal and constitutional rights of parents who chose to educate their children at home rather than in the government-run schools - it's mission does not involve opposition to public education per se. The HSLDA is dedicated to preserving the parental right to choose home-schooling. Perhaps the TEA is opposed to anyone defending those rights, I don't know. But that's a side issue.

The main issue involves Senate Joint Resolution 629, which is still pending on the agenda of the state Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee.

On that subject, the TEA said this:

In referring to TEA, Hobbs states in his "blog" that "they are not telling anything resembling the truth." We beg to disagree! The proposed resolution contains the following language, "In no fiscal year shall expenditures of state tax revenues exceed the Constitutional Spending Limitation unless the General Assembly shall enact, by a two-thirds majority of the total membership of each house, a law setting forth the dollar amount and the rate by which the limit will be exceeded during such fiscal year and containing no other subject matter."

I thought the TEA - which describes itself on its website as "an organization that advocates learning without limits," would not seek to limit what its members might learn about Senate Joint Resolution 629, and might actually favor the free and open exchange of ideas and points of view on the issue. But I was mistaken - apparently the TEA prefers merely to lecture its members with a one-sided and inaccurate message and then shut down debate.

If you are a Tennessee public school teacher and TEA member - and I suspect many will find their way here thanks to the publicity in the TEA Legislative Report - well, you deserve better than what the TEA is offering you on this issue.

So, I am republishing below the article that took issue with and identified the key factual errors and misrepresentations in the TEA's original article.

Also, if you are a TEA member who doesn't support the TEA's big-taxes/big-government/pro-state-income tax political agenda and thinks that reforming the state constitution's broken spending growth cap makes sense - and you have access to the TEA's membership email address list - please email that entire list the link to this post.

Here is the original post published April 24 that the TEA didn't like:

TEA Misrepresents Bryson's Spending Control Amendment
The Tennessee Education Association - the statewide teachers union - is attacking state Sen. Jim Bryson's proposed constitutional amendment to fix the constitution's existing cap on the annual growth of the state budget. Unfortunately, the attack, titled TABOR Resolution Could Put "Straitjacket" on Education Funds, is laced with misrepresentations and lies. First, the text of the attack, and then the facts:

A resolution is before the Senate Finance Committee which calls for a constitutional limitation on state expenditures. SJR 629 calls for amending Article II, Section 24 of the Constitution of Tennessee. A portion of the language to be added reads: "In no fiscal year shall expenditures of state tax revenues exceed the Constitutional Spending Limitation unless the General Assembly shall enact, by a two-thirds majority of the total membership of each house, a law setting forth the dollar amount and the rate by which the limit will be exceeded during such fiscal year and containing no other subject matter." It continues to state that "Constitutional Spending Limitation" and "spending limit" means total state tax revenue expenditures for the base year, as adjusted to cumulatively reflect the estimated rate of growth in per capita personal income of Tennesseans for each fiscal year following the base year.

Since Tennessee is already near the bottom of most rankings in investing in education, such a constitutional cap on spending would be severely limiting and irresponsible. SJR 629 is largely modeled after the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) which was enacted in Colorado in 1991. The 1991 provision had such a negative impact that Colorado voters last year suspended several key provisions of the amendment. SJR 629 is sponsored by Sen. Jim Bryson (R-Franklin) who recently announced that he would seek the Republican nomination to oppose Governor Phil Bredesen in this year's election. The resolution is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Finance, Ways & Means Committee on Tuesday, April 25. TEA members are urged to contact senators on the Finance Committee and ask that they vote "NO" on SJR 629. The message should be that SJR 629 would place a "straitjacket" on the funding of essential state services, including public education. It would tie the hands of future legislatures in attempting to address the changing needs of state government.

The TEA says, "SJR 629 is largely modeled after the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) which was enacted in Colorado in 1991. The 1991 provision had such a negative impact that Colorado voters last year suspended several key provisions of the amendment. "

Not true.

A side-by-side comparison of SJR 629 and Colorado's Taxpayers Bill of Rights shows that the two share almost no similarities.

Colorado's TABOR is an extensive and complex constitutional provision that affects not just the growth of the state budget but also tax increases, creation of new taxes, and increases in bond debt - at both the state and the county and city level. And Colorado's TABOR requires voter approval in referenda for any spending over the year-over-year growth cap, for any tax increase, for any new tax, and for any increase in bond debt.

By contrast, SJR 629 really only does three things:

- It changes the Tennessee constitution's existing cap on the annual growth of the state budget to allow it to be broken only if two-thirds of the legislature approves, rather than the current simple-majority vote.
- It puts unspent surplus funds in the state's rainy day fund.
- Once the rainy day fund reaches a set target, additional surpluses go to reducing the state sales tax.

In short, when the TEA says SJR 629 is "largely modeled after" Colorado's provision, they are not telling anything even resembling the truth.

The TEA compounds the deception by claiming that Colorado's TABOR had "a negative impact" on Colorado's state budget, leading voters there to "suspend" TABOR in a recent election. In a related comment,, TEA asserts SJR 629 would place a "straitjacket" on the funding of public education and "would tie the hands of future legislatures in attempting to address the changing needs of state government."

None of that is true.

A decade ago, a few years after adopting TABOR, Colorado voters approved "Amendment 23, which exempted public education from the TABOR cap, and in fact required funding for public education to grow faster than the rest of the state budget. It was that decision which made Colorado's budgetary position increasingly untenable. A few months ago, Colorado voters approved a plan to break the TABOR limits for five years, in order to "catch up" on the spending cuts caused by that state's education lobby's insatiable lust for tax dollars.

SJR 629 would not put a "straitjacket" on education funding, nor would it accelerate funding one priority over another. Nor would it "tie the hands" of future legislatures, as they could override the spending cap with a two-thirds vote.

And, unlike Colorado's TABOR, SJR 629 would not permit voters to throw a monkey wrench into the orderly budget growth formula by singling out any one program for special - and fiscally reckless - extra growth. However, under SJR 629, the legislature could choose to make public education a priority - or health care or fill-in-the-blank - and could choose to override the spending cap by a two-thirds majority vote.

With SJR 629 in place, in fact, the TEA would have a powerful new tool to encourage legislators to cut out wasteful and unnecessary spending, in order to shift more resources to education. In recent years, various state budgets have spent money building golf courses in the middle of nowhere, and funding fraternity houses at East Tennessee State University and Middle Tennessee State University, for example.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research's recently released Tennessee Pork Report identified more than $274 million in wasteful spending by state government, including

- $7 million in arts funding, including $34,500 for the Nashville Film Festival, which screened films such as "Lipstick and Dynamite: The First
Ladies of Wrestling"
- $784,205 to provide TennCare benefits to dead people
- $700,000 to throw a party for visiting state legislators during an upcoming meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures
- $436,590 in taxpayer subsidies to state-owned golf courses
- $5,400 to rename the Tipton County armory the "Speaker Jimmy Naifeh National Guard Armory"

The TEA has helpfully listed all of the members of the Senate Finance Committee on this web page. [Editor's note - the page is not archived. For a list of Finance Committee members, click here.] Five of the committee's 11 members are co-sponsors of SJR 629. The committee chairman, state Sen. Doug Henry, isn't a co-sponsor. The Committee is scheduled to vote on SJR 629 on Wednesday April 25. You are urged to call the members of the committee, especially Sen. Henry, and urge they approve SJR 629.

16 senators are co-sponsoring SJR 629, which would need 17 votes to pass the full Senate if it survives the committee process. The co-sponsors are senators Bryson, Person, Black, Finney, Woodson, Southerland, Ketron, Tracy, McLeary, McNally, Norris, Beavers, Ramsey, Burchett, Williams and Miller. The members names in bold are members of the Finance Committee. You can find contact information for all senators here.

There's more on SJR 629 here. You can read the legislation here. And I wrote a research paper on the history of the state constitution's spending control provision, and its ineffectiveness, which you can read here.

UPDATE: SJR 629, the subject of this post, was discussed in the April 25 meeting of the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee, but no vote was taken and it was rolled to next week's committee meeting.

P.S. If you are looking for a good resource for information about home-education in Tennessee - including the laws which, if you favor them being upheld, the TEA Legislative Report editor says you're "anti-public education" - you should check out TNHomeEd.com.

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