I write to disagree with Lake County Superintendent of School”s Dave Geck about what to do about the current cuts in education funding. Geck urges us to write the governor and demand that education funding not be cut, because we only have one opportunity to educate the kids, and, “You can”t light a match twice.”
Of course, you can”t spend a dollar twice, either. The state is bankrupt, which means that any dollar shifted to or preserved for education spending will have to be cut elsewhere. The state is already pushing thousands of felons out of the overcrowded prisons ? would Geck release still more of them? The state is already cutting home health services to homebound indigents ? would Geck deny health services to even more poor people? Should we fire still more police and social workers?
There are no easy answers here, except for cutting at least some of the wild overpayment and systemic bloat in government, particularly in the administrative branches. For example, over the last 10 years public pension costs have soared by a staggering 2,000 percent in California, even though the overall budget only went up 24 percent in the same period. Another fact: There are over 15,000 retired state and local government employees in California who receive pensions of over $100,000 per year. Can we afford this? Of course not. We”re not affording it now. We”re broke.
Consider: If school enrollment is falling, isn”t it obvious that school budgets ought to be cut? And if school budgets are cut, isn”t it obvious that some administrators should be cut along with teachers? Can Lake County, with an unemployment rate of nearly 20 percent and dozens of government jobs on the chopping block, afford even one government employee receiving a salary of over $100,000 per year? Would Geck be in favor of doing something real about our fiscal crisis, for example cutting every single county employee”s pay by the exact same percentage as the budget is falling? Or how about a county government pay ceiling of $100,000 a year? Or are we only to waste time and trees writing the Governor demanding that he spend money that doesn”t even exist?
We are all in this together. That includes ? ahem! ? even the people at the top.
Mark Cabaniss
Kelseyville
