Commentary; Posted: 8/3/05
Evaluating Rep. Vandeveerís education vote
Rob Rapheal
Guest Columnist
In a recent editorial, District 52A Rep. Ray Vandeveer (R-Forest Lake) asked himself the question ìwhat was the big fight aboutî at the legislature.
Unfortunately, his partisan and misleading column obscures the real answer.
This session was about realistic funding for our schools and about making sure that money collected solely to assist the working poor in buying health insurance did not get shifted to the general fund leaving 30,000 people uninsured.
Just about everyone knew that if we were not going to see another year of stagnant school funding, state revenues needed to be increased.
The 2001 state takeover of local school funding put Minnesota in a permanent position of less money coming in than going out.
Although the Senate was calling for a larger increase, the House, Senate and the Governor were all calling for an increase in school funding.
The DFL-led Senate believed the money should come from an income tax increase to Minnesotaís highest tax bracket.
The Governor stated he wanted revenues from a state run casino, from funds raided from MN Care, the program that assists the working poor with health insurance costs, and later from a tax on cigarettes.
The Republican-led House wanted to shift money from MN Care, from a privately owned casino, and by shorting the increase to our schools.
This was the real disagreement: How much do we spend on education, and how do we pay for it.
The real winners in this battle are of course the students in our nation-leading Minnesota schools.
They can expect about a 4 percent increase in each of the next two years.
This yearís funding increase is a real breath of fresh air after a number of years with no funding increases despite inflation eating more and more out of our school budgets.
Rep. Vandeveer was one of eight who voted against the final education bill negotiated between the House, Senate and the Governor.
He also voted for a spending cap that would have kept funding at about half of what was in the final bill.
I would like to thank those legislators that worked hard to ensure that our school got a reasonable increase this year.
Unfortunately none of them were from the Forest Lake or Centennial school districts.
(EDITORíS NOTE: Writer Rob Rapheal of Scandia is a member of the ISD 831 Board of Education in Forest Lake. He ran as the DFL candidate for Rep. Vandeveerís House seat during the 2004 general election.)
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