Brian Sandoval is out of his mind.
Or he is just what passes for Republican leadership these days.
Gov. Brian Sandoval said emphatically today he will veto a bill passed by Democrats in the Legislature that would allow school districts to use up to $300 million in bond reserve funds to rehabilitate older schools.
He also expressed confidence that $60 million in general fund Medicaid rate reductions included in his budget are legally defensible and can be implemented despite a legal opinion to the contrary.
Both issues have the potential to throw Sandoval’s proposed two-year, $5.8 billion general fund budget out of balance.
Sandoval, commenting on the issues after a bill signing ceremony, said he understands the desire of lawmakers and school officials to repair older schools. But Assembly Bill 183, which passed the Senate Wednesday on a party-line 11-10 vote, includes no funding plan, he said.
Sandoval has already included the use of the $300 million in bond reserve funds in his budget to fund school operating costs for the next two years.
First of all, bond money is issued to fund capital projects, NOT operating expenses. Secondly, bond money is not taxpayer money.
n.
An often tax-exempt bond issued by a city, county, state, or other government for the financing of public projects.
In Nevada, the voters choose to allow the state to issue bonds that private citizens can then purchase (or not) to provide funds for capital improvments.
Yup, my piddly little 401k boasts investments in municipal bonds. Bonds are private investments into public projects. Bonds, be they war bonds, highway bonds, school bonds, and the like, are “extra” funding over and above “operating expenses.” Kind of like the high school drama club holding a bake sale to go a theater workshop out of town. From the article:
Following the Senate vote, Assemblywoman Debbie Smith, D-Sparks, said: “I know the governor wants to create jobs in Nevada. I know he wants to improve education in Nevada, and I know he has seen first-hand the horrible condition of many of our older schools, so I urge him to sign ‘School Works’ and help us save these crumbling schools, create jobs and uphold the will of the voters.”
I love Debbie Smith, and I know how committed she is to public education, but she is making the same mistake most Democrats do: believing that Republicans believe in (or even accept) the ideal of The Commons.
As Americans, the most important part of our social identity is our role as citizens. To be a citizen means to be part of, and a defender of, the commons of our nation. The water we drink, the air we breathe, the streets we drive on, the schools that we use, the departments that protect us – these are all the physical commons. And there are also the cultural commons – the stories we tell ourselves, our histories, our religions, and our notions of ourselves. And there are the commons of our power systems (in the majority of American communities), our health-care system (stolen from us and privatized over the past twenty-five years, our hospitals in particular used to be mostly nonprofit or run by mostly city or county governments), and the electronic commons of our radio and TV spectrum and the Internet.
Brian Sandoval is not in the least interested in The Commons.
Not only does Brian Sandoval not give a flying fig about public education (after all, his kids are safely nestled away in private schools), he is actively working to dismantle it. From using tax dollars to provide vouchers for use in unaccountable, private schools, to cutting teachers pay, to sucking the bond money fund dry, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that Brian Sandoval has any feeling at all for public education. He does not.
Desert Beacon wrote a spectacular post a couple of weeks ago regarding the privatization of The Commons and how Republicans (and the Tea Party / Libertarian faction, especially) insist that We The People, can provide better for ourselves if government would just give us back our money: Spending My Money In The Age Of So Be It
Here’s just a taste:
The continual refrain from the GOP would have me believe that I know how best to spend my money, so the “gummint” should take less of it from me and allow me to spend it myself. Lovely. I just have a few questions concerning what I’m supposed to do with my dollars:
How do I hire a person to give me up to date tsunami and earthquake warnings? If I hire by very own weather forecasters and seismologists, does this mean that my neighbors would have to subscribe to a service as well, and if the people down the block can’t afford their very own private Early Warning Subscription Service, then, as the current Speaker of the House says, “So be it?”
How do I hire a financial auditor to review the fiscal condition of stocks and bonds I might be interested in purchasing for my investment portfolio? Do I have to hire someone to inspect the books and records of a corporation to see if there is any insider trading or other illegal actions that would be relevant to my purchase? If I can’t hire a financial auditor, then if I unwarily buy fraudulent stocks, then “So be it?”
How do I hire a person to conduct inspections to see if my drinking water is sanitary enough to ingest? If my home is served by a private water company, whom should I hire to test whether or not the company’s water purity results are accurate, and don’t simply tell me what the corporation wants me to believe? Do I, and perhaps my neighbors have to become ill, before we know that there was something a little extra in the tap water? If there isn’t another water service in the area — do I simply have to “swallow it” and say “So be it?”
How do I hire a personal food inspector? Should I hire a personal taster to know that the meat and food products I’m ingesting are safe for consumption? If my taster should fall afoul of the fowl then do I merely go out and hire another taster, saying to the taster’s bereaved spouse — “So be it?”
Go read the entire post, and then ask yourself, Do I have enough money of my own to do provide all of that for myself and my family, in addition to putting a roof over my head and putting food on the table?
If you don’t, welcome to The Commons.
And then remember this:
