Businesses in the private sector must make a profit – or at least not lose money – to survive. To do so requires taking steps to operate efficiently and to produce a product at a price consumers are willing to pay. Failure to do so results in the business ceasing to exist.
It is different with government agencies. There is no such thing as failure to the point of extinction. As Ronald Reagan famously observed “the closest thing to eternal life on earth is a government program.” Government agencies can fail to implement efficiencies – even deliver a bad product – and still continue to exist.
That happens since all government programs are created because there is a constituency for them and that constituency cares not about cost, efficiency, or customer satisfaction, they just care that the bureaucracy continues to exist. If the program becomes financially insolvent then the deep pockets of taxpayers are raided to bail them out.
With the state budget deadline of June 30th looming we are seeing that scenario play out in many areas, but especially with public transportation and K-12 government education which each are annually given an endless pit of taxpayer dollars while failing to reform or improve the services they are tasked with delivering.
Both the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Transit Authority (SEPTA) and Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) have turned up the heat on legislative budget-makers demanding more taxpayer dollars to cover massive budget deficits. They threaten draconian service cuts and/or fare hikes if lawmakers fail to heed their demands.
Both are quick to get out the tin cups, but neither have undertaken the reforms needed to improve efficiency and adjust to the changing dynamics of rider needs. If they don’t get the funding they demand, then they will do what bureaucracies always do: make the most painful cuts possible to turn up the heat on lawmakers.
Governor Josh Shapiro and state House Democrats largely hail from urban areas serviced by public transportation. They are more than willing to divert funds from rural areas, as Governor Shapiro did last year, to keep inefficient transit agencies afloat.
K-12 public education is an even bigger drain on the public treasury. Each year billions more are directed into the public education cartel with no corresponding demands for efficiencies. Test scores reveal that the massive amounts of increased funding have yielded no corresponding increase in student performance.
A prime example of protecting a failed government program is the “hold harmless” provision of public education funding. Under this provision school districts can (and do) experience a significant drop in student population – but they receive no reduction in state education funding. As a result taxpayers are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars each year into school districts that educate fewer and fewer students.
Commonwealth Court two years ago ruled the state’s education funding formula unconstitutional. What the court did not do was rule there is not enough funding, just that the distribution of the funding is unfair. The public education cabal has distorted that ruling to justify billions more in state spending on public education. What they have not done is advance any plans to improve efficiency or produce better student performance.
Government school advocates are also excessively greedy. For years efforts at giving students in the most underperforming school districts non-government school choice options have been blocked. Known as the Lifeline Scholarship Program it would give students – almost all minority students – the opportunity to attend a non-government school and hence get a quality education their local school district is unable to provide.
Governor Josh Shapiro line item vetoed Lifeline Scholarships – after promising state Senate Republicans he would support them – and House Democrats have opposed creation of the program at every step in the process. Given most, if not all, of those underperforming schools are in districts represented by Democrats they are trapping their own constituents in failed schools placing a higher priority on demands from state teacher unions.
And so, once again as the annual state budget process hits high gear both transportation and government school advocates are seeking billions more from taxpayers to prop up their failed enterprises. Lawmakers should require significant reforms to public transit agencies, and more education freedom, before acceding to any of those demands.
(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail is [email protected].)
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