Dude, Where's Our Surplus?

[IndianaGreen]

Friday, December 18, 2009

Dude, Where's Our Surplus?

Jon E. Easter

For the past couple of years, Mitch Daniels has moaned about the imperative of keeping a $1 billion surplus in the state coffers. He's made it a centerpiece of his budget requests, and, part of the reason the General Assembly went to a special session last time around was due to the preservation of this surplus. That $1 billion was untouchable, and he wouldn't sign a budget that didn't include it.

So, the General Assembly, anxious to deliver a budget to keep the state running, went back to the drawing board and hammered out a budget agreement that compromised on the school funding formula and made certain that $1 billion was left for a rainy day. The budget was passed. Oh, Happy Day! Well...not quite.

Now, Governor Daniels tells us that the $1 billion surplus is gone. poof Just like that. The state's been in such dire need lately that the surplus vanished, and he didn't even tell us that it disappeared.

Don't you think we deserve more? Don't you believe that someone needs to get an accounting of where this hard fought $1 billion went and why it no longer exists in the state budget. If it was set aside and was not to be touched so that we could have a rainy day fund...when did it start raining.

While we are given pithy yet somewhat snarky answers, K-12 education is being slashed to the bone. Folks, we can sit here and gripe about how schools spend the cash that's given to them, but when you can't even set a budget...that's scary. Maybe there are other answers out there as to how schools can save money and keep teachers in the classroom. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm one of those concerned teachers that is frightened for the state of education in Indiana right now. When the funding is cut so close to the quick, it's the students that are the ones paying the price as their education suffers. Schools will continue to do the best they can with what they are given, and, just maybe, someday soon will emerge leaner and meaner and ready to fight. Public schools will work this out and make it work for kids. I know that much for a fact.

http://indydemocrat.blogspot.com/2009/12/dude-wheres-our-surplus.html