Kansas budget, expensive college, Kansas education funding, alternatives to ObamaCare.
Budgeting outside the box
Reporting by the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy covers last week’s meeting of the Kansas House Appropriations Committee. (Although the Kansas Legislature is in session from January to May, there are many “interim” committee meetings during the summer and fall.)
School funding is always a topic, and as usual, spending advocates focus on the small portion of spending that makes their case: “Committee members challenged school districts on focusing only on reductions in state base aid per pupil and ignoring all other funding sources which, taken collectively, have schools budgeted to receive just 0.2% less this school year.”
There was also discussion of the Flint Hill Center’s work in exposing huge balances in funds.
Maybe this is why college is expensive
The University Daily Kansan reports on the generous deals given to three former Kansas public university chancellors in the news story Hemenway stays with University.
‘Montoy’ threat again hangs over education-funding discussions
Kansas Liberty reports on the hammer used whenever Kansas K-12 school funding is the topic of discussion. At the same time Kansas school districts complain of lack of funds, they resist accounting system reforms that would increase transparency and provide better information about how efficiently districts use funds:
A 2007 audit conducted by the Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit determined that out of the 20 states sampled, Kansas was one of six states that did not have requirements for how accounting transactions are recorded. The audit concluded that “Kansas’s reporting requirements are at a very summary level of detail.”
An audit released in July determined that some Kansas districts appeared to be using state dollars inefficiently for non-instructional purposes. The investigation was supposed to include fieldwork so auditors could actually see how funds were spent; however, the scope of the audit was limited after superintendents complained to the 2010 Commission.
The commission then stopped the audit, saying it would be too stressful for schools to accommodate auditors at a time when budgets were being cut.
The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare
John Mackey of Whole Foods Market Inc. reports on ways to reform health care without bigger government. Some of these would be very easy to accomplish, such as “Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.” That law might take, maybe, one page of legislation to implement.
Mackey’s reform proposals, because they are market-based rather than government-based (his article starts with Margaret Thatcher’s quote “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people’s money.”), has earned him much hatred from liberals. Currently the “Boycott Whole Foods” Facebook group has 31,000 members. Too bad we don’t have Whole Foods Market in Wichita. (The locally-owned Whole Foods in Wichita is not the same company.)
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