By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
The famous American inventor Charles F. Kettering is credited for once observing how “[i]f you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.”
Killing real reform is transparently the intent of Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and his party’s neophyte legislators, first-term 11th Legislative District Assembly Democrats Joann Downey and Eric Houghtaling, who joined Sweeney on Thursday to announce a commission to address New Jersey’s notoriously inequitable school funding formula.
Click here if you need some background on the crazy mathematics behind funding schools in New Jersey, a system that remains the #1 driver of your property taxes.
Roughly half of New Jersey educational funding aid goes to 5% (not 50% of 15%) of our school districts. Which districts? The poorest receive, on average, approximately 30% more money than the rest. In Asbury Park, we’re spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000, per child, per year, for a K-12 public school education. In the wealthy nearby bedroom community of Rumson? Closer to $16,000 per child.
The bottom line: Trenton Democrats – including Downey and Houghtaling – get their funding from the New Jersey (Mis)Education Association (popularly known as the “NJEA”) to get re-elected. Super PAC expenditures made in support of candidates like Downey and Houghaling, for all intents and purposes, have put special interests groups in charge of the legislature. Democracy in Trenton is little more than an illusion. The Super PACs vote and the politicians jump.
In LD11 last fall, former GOP Assemblywomen Mary Pat Angelini and Caroline Casagrande were upset by Downey and Houghaling when an NJEA-backed Super PAC dumped $750,000 into their race on the eve of the election.
Are we REALLY supposed to believe that Downey and Houghaling, who owe their political existence to the NJEA, will now back “reform” that accomplishes anything other than serving the NJEA?
I’ve got a bridge to sell you, folks, if you’re still that gullible after all you’ve seen in this corrupt state of ours! Dogs rarely bite the hands that feed them.
Look at the Democrat proposal for all the proof you need if the money trail unbelievably doesn’t persuade you.
The proposed commission critically includes just two appointees from the Republican governor, but one from Sweeney and one from Assembly Speaker Vince Prieto (D-32). That’s a 3-2 Democrat advantage. The NJEA will control the commission for all intents and purposes. And reform will take five years to implement, long after Chris Christie is gone and, if we’re being honest, a Democrat with less fiscal restraint takes over. The NJEA will get to author whatever comes out of the commission.
“The time for more discussions, commissions and task forces has long past,” GOP Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli of LD16 shot back on Friday; Ciattarelli lost his 2015 running mate, former Assemblywoman Donna Simon, to a similar NJEA-backed Super PAC money attack. “It is time to start reducing state aid to the 200 school districts that are over-funded by more than half a billion dollars; it is time for every district to have a skin in the game; it is time to stop providing free Pre-K to owners of million dollar homes; it is time for the most heavily subsidized communities to stop exploiting under-assessments, tax abatements and PILOTS.”
You don’t have to be a genius like Charles F. Kettering to understand why bought-and-sold scam artists like Joann Downey and Eric Houghtaling won’t jump at any of Ciattarelli’s recommendations.
Again, follow the money. This commission is solely designed to give the pair something to put on a mailer come re-election time in 2017. Nothing more, nothing less. Their owners won’t sign off on anything else.
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