By CHRIS POWELL
How much more of a servant of the government employee unions does Governor Lamont want to be?
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Connecticut will find out when the governor decides what to do about the new federal legislation that offers people a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of as much as $1,700 for making contributions to organizations that provide scholarships at private elementary, middle, and high schools.
It’s very clever school-choice legislation. It doesn’t cost state or municipal government any money. It doesn’t take any money from what style themselves public schools. To the contrary, it could save public schools money by removing some of their students.
Of course it’s more federal deficit spending, but nobody associated with public education has ever cared about federal budget deficits or the terrible inflation they have caused. When it receives the money, the public education colossus loves federal deficit spending.
The only undeniable objection to the law is that it would engender more competition, especially for Connecticut’s many failing city public schools, and pressure state government to do something about them besides throw money at them without result.
Of course in the long run choice and competition in lower education would diminish enrollment, public support, and funding for government schools. But why shouldn’t those schools and the parents of their students start to be judged by educational results and face some accountability?
The big problem with public education in Connecticut is that it’s no longer public at all.
Wages and working conditions for school employees aren’t controlled by ordinary democracy — the election of school board members — but by binding arbitration of union contracts, under which unions have more authority than school boards do. Except for superintendents, nearly all school employees — even school principals — are unionized, so a school system has no actual management.
Connecticut’s minimum budget requirement law makes it nearly impossible for school boards to reduce spending even if enrollment declines.
Connecticut’s teacher tenure law makes it nearly impossible to dismiss poor teachers without prohibitive expense.
Connecticut freedom-of-information law exempts teacher evaluations from disclosure, alone among all government employee evaluations. People in Connecticut can see the evaluations of their trash collectors but not those of the teachers of their own children.
And now, as the Yankee Institute’s Meghan Portfolio disclosed the other day, a new state law requires municipal governments to report any year-end cash surpluses directly to their teacher unions but not to their own residents. The law’s objective is to ensure that the teacher unions get first grab at any extra money that might be lying around.
This isn’t public education. It’s special-interest education.
A system of private education drawing its revenue from federal tax credits would be more accountable simply by providing an alternative to the system operated by and for the benefit of the teacher unions.
But under the new federal law, the scholarship contributions on which such a system would be based can’t qualify for federal tax credits unless a state’s governor approves the system or it is approved by some other state agency with authority over tax breaks.
It’s not clear what such other state agency that would be in Connecticut, but whatever it was, it still would be controlled by the governor, a Democrat, or by the General Assembly, which has a big Democratic majority. Of course the government employee unions, especially the teacher unions, are the biggest components of the Democratic Party, and most of state government is a big kickback to the unions for their support of the Democrats at election time.
Government employee union support for the Democratic regime erases all concern for results in “public” education in the state. As a result most high school graduates never master high school math and English, the state’s schools have horrible racial performance gaps, and social promotion assures the graduation of illiterates, and school spending increases even as student performance and enrollment decline.
For student performance doesn’t count politically. The only thing that counts politically is the satisfaction of the teacher unions and their control of the majority party.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 
I don’t want to wear you out with compliments, like a groupie, but I just gotta say that your last two columns are as good as it gets. In fact, after the latest, about education and the unions, you’d better check your food before swallowing, and lock your doors.
Brian Burke
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