Kenneth Quinnell over at Florida Progressive Coalition has an eye for spotting a desperate bill aimed directly at local school systems..
His take on HB 5005A - Education Funding, offered by Florida legislators during the special session as a solution to raise revenue for education:
"...I don’t like this bill and I would certainly vote against it. First off, it allows local school boards to reduce salaries for all school employees in able to make up for “emergency” financial shortfalls."
Florida Today's Talk to Me is all over it as well.
I've been laughing all day over HB 5005A.
The controversial educational funding (or unfunding) bill is all the talk this special session. Guess who is targeted?
School districts.
Here's the gist of the bill. Districts reflecting budgets of what the state considers an emergency level fund balance shall be mandated to cut the salaries of School Board members, administrators and employees (including teachers) until said balance is restored.
The House defines "emergency" as less than 2%.
The funny part?
This bill is up for a third read.
This old Frog has a bit of inside scoop herself, offered up on the down low. Apparently, the first couple of days this week, legislators went through the cursory motions, allowing the public to beg our lawmakers to spare public school funding, to search for additional funding elsewhere, i.e. cigarette tax.
Wednesday, our Florida legislators did what they do best. Didn't listen to one word that was said and flat cut the budget and drained the trust funds.
"It was evident before the special session started that decisions had been already made. New revenue sources were not on the table as options. It was simply, "cut budgets and drain trust funds time."
One Senator was reported to have suggested that "...this session was nothing compared to what was coming in March."
On the upside, if the trust funds are now zippo, the revenue has to come from somewhere. Which should prove interesting.
Legislators getting good spin for standing up for Florida's schools:
Representatives Martin Kiar (who this blog supported when he first ran a few years back), Ron Saunders, Dwight Bullard, Gwyn Clarke-Reed, along with Senators Larcinia Bullard and Rudy Garcia. These lawmakers sit on the Pre-K-12 Appropriations Committee for the House and Senate and reportedly, are in the fight waging war against educational funding cuts.
My thoughts regarding HB 5005A - Education Funding?
Classic stab-in-the-back budgetary b.s. by a classless Republican majority state legislature.
