Posted by Ed at AFT 

I posted awhile back about TABOR, the spending limitation that may be on the ballot in several states this year. When this idea was floated earlier in Pennsylvania, the state’s budget office estimated that if TABOR had passed in 2002, that by 2005-06 the state budget would be 9 percent lower.  To get some perspective on this, the school district of Philadelphia was budgeted in 2005-06 to receive $1.139 billion in state aid.  A 9 percent reduction is a loss of $104 million.  

Using data from Philadelphia's FY 2006 budget, you can piece together what this might have meant to the progress being made there. Let's make the assumption that Paul Vallas would have been able to wave a magic wand and find savings equal to $11 million without cutting any programs or making decisions about instructional personnel.  That means $93 million would have to come from the district’s strategic plan.  It might add up this way:

1. Not reforming big high schools into smaller learning communities ($24 million)
2. Not installing security cameras or hiring the 60 school police officers needed for one to be assigned to every school ($6.5 million).
3. Not improving athletic fields ($4.5 million), science labs ($4 million) and buying new equipment ($5 million).
4. Not updating curriculum and materials in science, social studies, language arts and math ($27.5 million).
5. Not extending pre-kindergarten to 6,000 additional low-income four-year-olds ($10 million)
6. Providing larger classes to 9,000 students because failure to hire new teachers meant higher class size ($11.5 million).

And it's important to remember that in each additional year there would likely to be more tough decisions as a result of this initiative.

Now, TABOR wasn't put before the people in PA. And it's possible that if it had passed, Philly schools wouldn't have taken as big a cut. But then some other service -- say healthcare or public safety -- would take a bigger hit.  And schools might have been hit with bigger than average cuts. If it had passed, Philadelphia might have been able to fill in the cuts with a local tax hike, but that cost would be borne by the city's taxpayers, who are already carrying some disproportionately heavy burdens. When people think about spending limits, there is an assumption that belt tightening can happen without consequences. It isn't so. 

Next up, a look at who is pushing this puppy in Oklahoma, Oregon, Maine, Michigana, Montana, Nevada and Nebraska.