So last week, a single Superior Court Judge decided he was the State’s Education-Czar and implicitly ordered -while, of course, claiming he was doing no such thing- the State to -at a minimum- triple spending on public education … which would require a massive expansion in spending by State government (at least an additional $1.6 billion annually according to the school districts that brought the lawsuit) that only could be funded by one or more “broad-based” taxes.
Here is a link to the Czar’s -oh, sorry I mean the Judge’s- 100 page decision. Don’t waste your time reading it. One does not need to be a lawyer to understand that it is total Bull-Manure based on total Bull-Manure … the Claremont line of education funding decisions that predated it.
Under our system of government, the judiciary does NOT get to prioritize some government spending -education spending- over other government spending -infrastructure, public health, public safety- never mind setting a floor on how much the government has to spend on the first category of spending. No, under our system of government, the voters have the ultimate say -or are at least supposed to have the ultimate say- over what government spends money on and how much it spends. They do so when they go to the ballot box every two years to elect a Legislature and Governor.
Yet, when you strip away all the pompous and misleading verbiage, the bottom-line of the Claremont line of decisions is that the New Hampshire Supreme Court has usurped the sovereignty of the voters and made itself the State’s Supreme School Board by declaring FALSELY that education spending trumps all other governmental spending and that the judiciary has the ultimate say on how much gets spent on education.
Nor, under our system of government, does the judiciary get to set tax policy, which it does in the Claremont line of decisions based on the completely cockamamie notion that the source of the funding for a student’s education determines whether the student is receiving an “adequate education.”
What I would like you to take notice of is the New Hampshire Department of Justice’s “defense” of the lawsuit. Attorney General Wonderful’s DOJ did NOT argue that the Claremont line of decisions was wrongly decided and should be overruled.
Instead, Wonderful’s DOJ accepted the obviously unconstitutional and equally obviously idiotic Claremont “duties” -that the Legislature is required to jump though a series of judicial hoops to set education policy- and argued that the Legislature did indeed jump through each and every hoop the State Supreme Court has said it must jump through.
That is, Wonderful’s DOJ did what every DOJ before it defending an education funding lawsuit did – TANK it. If you do not challenge the FALSE premise that the Judge -not the Legislature and Governor- has the ultimate say on how much the State sends to municipalities to fund education … as Wonderful’s DOJ did not … and the Judge’s frame of reference is the $3,562.71 per pupil the State sends to municipalities versus average spending of nearly $19,000.00 per student … you have set yourself up to lose.
What’s worse is that DOJ’s tanking was INTENTIONAL. For two and one-half decades, the DOJ has steadfastly refused to ask the the Claremont decisions be overruled … even though the decisions are obviously not constitutionally based and violate the separation of powers … because they like the result. Attorney General Wonderful could have -and should have- directed his Department to argue that Claremont was wrongly decided and should be overruled. He did not. … perhaps with an eye toward a Supreme Court nomination?
So when you are writing the check for your Claremont income tax in a few years you can thank Attorney General Wonderful, who by that point will be Chief Justice Wonderful.
