Its frequently said that a good, experienced trial attorney will never ask a question of a witness to which he does not already know the answer.
Republicans in the Kansas Legislature may wish they had followed similar advice after hiring their own consultant to determine how much is really needed to adequately fund public education.
Lawmakers are tired of the courts repeatedly reminding them that our schools are underfunded. They sure didnt like being told it may take about $600 million to satisfy the Supreme Courts definition of adequate funding.
They wanted their own hand-picked consultant to do a study that would undoubtedly come up with a financial solution costing considerably less than a presumed figure the Supreme Court will accept as both adequate and equitable.
After all, the legislature was paying the consultants fees. Surely the consultant would realize the importance of providing a report favorable to those who did the hiring?
Apparently, the consultant didnt get the memo.
Republican lawmakers were stunned to be presented with a report saying the $600 million price tag they had been whining about for the past year is really a bargain if the goal is to provide the educational results that everyone expects. The state may actually have to increase funding by $1.7 billion to $2 billion.
Even Democrats were shocked at the report given their preemptive complaints about Republicans hiring a consultant who was expected to side with conservative lawmakers.
Its a classic example of why Republicans shouldnt have asked for the report without having an idea what it would contain.
They were a victim of their own arrogance or their own frustration resulting from years of resistance to the courts and repeated denials that pumping millions of additional dollars into public education will produce results which measure up to the money being spent.
As expected, ultraconservative Republicans were hyperventilating as soon as they saw the consultants numbers.
The bottom line is that Kansans cannot afford what the court is demanding and we cannot afford what the new study is recommending, said Senate President Susan Wagle (R-Wichita).
Kansans couldnt afford the Brownback tax cuts either, but that didnt stop Wagle from pushing that misguided policy through the legislature and being a cheerleader for five years until its failure became even too much for Wagle to deny.
Rep. John Whitmer (R-Wichita) said the studys recommendation would bankrupt the state.
What of tax cuts that robbed the state of billions of dollars, undermined our fiscal integrity, downgraded our credit rating and ignored the needs of our infrastructure, the needy and our elderly?
Its a matter of priorities.
Tax cuts for the wealthy, tax credits for private schools and tax breaks for corporations have no trouble finding support from ultraconservatives in the legislature. Those policies align with their religious conviction that private education always provides better results than public education, that tax cuts always spur the economy and without tax breaks corporations wont give Kansas a second look.
