BuckeyeBlog

Marc Kilmer keeps his eye on the pea with this Buckeye Institute Viewpoint , disparaging the earned-income-only income tax for school districts. The very thing that was sought to be achieved, exempting retired people from paying for school districts, is the thing that Kilmer attacks:

Politicians need to be honest and levy taxes so that voters can truly appreciate the cost of the taxes against the benefits received by new spending. If a new school is truly needed, taxpayers should be willing to bear the cost. If it is not, however, then politicians should not be trying to trick voters into approving it by shifting the cost to only a small segment of school district taxpayers.

The difference between taxes and user fees is one of the key components of transparency, the character of knowing what your government is doing. When government officials are able to shift dollars from one character of government activity to another without structure, rhyme or reason, voters cannot follow what their government is doing.

Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an insightful op-ed by John Merrow, the president of Learning Matters, regarding the recent decision by New York lawmakers to ban the use of student performance data in granting tenure to teachers.

State and city teacher unions lobbied the state legislature, and last month Albany gave in to the pressure. Today, the law reads, “The teacher shall not be granted or denied tenure based on student performance data.”

Celebrating the victory, United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said, “There is no independent or conclusive research that shows you can accurately measure the impact of an individual teacher on a student’s academic achievement.”

Independent analysts disagree. Eric Hanushek, who specializes in the economics of education at Stanford University, told me recently that “It is very clear from the research into variations in teacher quality that such information would be useful.” Calling this “very bad public policy,” Prof. Hanushek added dryly, “I guess only friendships and politics count - just what the unions have always railed against.”

(more…)

In following the debate about payday lending before the Senate Finance Committee this week, particularly the effort of Sen. Jeff Jacobson (R., Dayton) to impugn the motives of our scholar witness through innuendo and insinuation, I am reminded of what our friend Larry Reed of the Mackinac Center wrote in Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy:

Too often today, policymakers give no thought whatsoever to the general state of liberty when they craft new policies. If it feels good or sounds good or gets them elected, they just do it. Anyone along the way who might raise liberty-based objections is ridiculed or ignored.

I couldn’t let this quote from Wellesley economist Chip Case slip by:

“The government has got to do something.”

I remember as a student at Michigan that some group or another had a sit-in at the president’s office. They left when he promised, quote, to do something, end quote, about their issue.

This is poor journalism on NPR’s part. It’s one thing to assemble quotes, but they ought to be fair, in context and meaningful.

On to the Ohio Senate for HB 420, modeled after federal earmark legislation, which would require by 2009 that the Office of Budget and management come up with performance measures for state government, and also require the development of online databases of state real property and “state awards,” including contracts and other “financial assistance and expenditures.” As to best practice standards,

The standards, at a minimum, must address all the following areas: (1) budget and performance integration, (2) competitive sourcing, (3) E-government, (4) human capital, and (5) financial performance improvement. (R.C. 126.55(A). The Director of OBM must also establish performance measures to increase transparency and to ensure citizens and agencies have a better understanding of what is being accomplished.

This is more than sunshine; it’s nuclear fusion.