Sam Brownback declares war on Kansas: This is how extremists gut a state — and democracy

Sam Brownback declares war on Kansas: This is how extremists gut a state — and democracy

"Gov. Sam Brownback’s march to zero income taxes, combined with legislation designed to weaken public services and wrest control away from local government, are hollowing out the very aspects of government these committees focus on. Public education certainly seems targeted to be greatly supplemented by, if not outright replaced by, private education. We see this in other states as well. For some time now, model legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Americans For Prosperity (AFP) and other libertarian / ultraconservative organizations has been used as the template for bills in states with varying levels of ultraconservative control. Such templates have been developed on everything from taxation and fiscal policy, to energy and the environment, to health and human services. Looking just at education, in 2015 there were 172 measures introduced in 42 states based on ALEC model legislation, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. The general goal being to “… transform public education from a public and accountable institution that serves the public into one that serves private, for-profit interests.” With public education commonly comprising a significant portion of state budgets, this dovetails nicely with ultraconservative legislation focused on drastically shrinking government and reducing taxes. In Kansas, one of the latest bills taking inspiration from such model legislation is HB 2741, intended to provide the state with a new public school funding formula. The Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB) provides a good summary of the bill here. The need for a new formula began during the 2014-2015 legislative session with the repeal of the previous school funding formula and implementation of the temporary two-year block grant funding mechanism, intended to fill the gap while the legislature works on a new formula. I should note that the block grant has also effectively reduced the dollars available to school districts for day to day operations."