Letter of the week, 6/21/10: Unfunded mandates

[David]

Unfunded mandates
Editor:

Isn’t it most interesting that a recent letter to the editor (by Barbara Buonanni, R-J, 6-20) praises the education reform legislation, but fails to tell us what it will cost?

The writer also fails to mention that the law mandates programs such as a huge data base to measure teacher performance, and expanded remedial services, which are not contingent on the state getting the Race to the Top grant(RTTP). The Office of Fiscal Analysis (OFA) refused to develop specific cost estimates of the expanded mandate requiring remedial services for middle school students as potentially large for a city such as Meriden but noted the costs “could be significant.”

The accountability for professionals, which is mentioned in the letter, is actually a controversial requirement to mandate a teacher performance rating system and the distribution of that information to all school districts with the encouragement (and intent) to “high poverty” school districts to solicit the “highly effective” teachers from other Connecticut school districts. It is all in Senate Bill 438.

Should the state get the RTTP grant, which is for just four years, it will leave the cities and its taxpayers to once again pay for unfunded mandates. It isn’t a surprise, then, that the cost isn’t included when praising this law. Even worse, there is no proof that burdening taxpayers to meet the outrageous expense of this new law will do a single thing to improve education.

In his op-ed commentary in the R-J on June 9, Len Suzio tells us what the real costs could be. However, Senator Gaffey neglects to tell us about the unfunded mandates he is imposing on his district of Meriden, Middletown, Middlefield and Cheshire.
JAMES F. BELOTE, MERIDEN

[A E Neumann]

...Jim. The RTTT is nothing more than a national educational extortion plan. Unfortunately, the players who decide in such policies have no clue as to what makes effective education. Our local legislators want to be priased for pushing through this legislation which will do nothing more than waste money and increase taxes substantially a few years down the road.

[Bustopher Jones]

Does anyone remember Commissioner Gerry Tirozzi's innocuous-sounding Education Enhancement Act of 1986? Local property owners are still paying the price for that unfunded mandate, and will continue to do so into perpetuity, without the benefit of merit pay and career ladders that were part of the blue-ribbon commission's original recommendations. Tirozzi thought that money was all that was needed to improve education. This latest proposal sounds like another boondoggle for the property taxpayers of Connecticut...

"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on ME!"