A new grassroots movement is developing that would allow public money to follow what we’ll call the “recreator,” or a person who participates in recreational activity.
It makes sense. Why should a person be forced to provide his or her hard-earned money to support local and state park systems if they are not using them?
Would you like to take your kids to Disneyland, but you’re worried about how much it will cost your family? That’s OK, the government can give you back some of the tax money you paid to keep your town’s public parks open and subsidize your trip. You don’t use those local parks much anyways, and you could argue you’d personally get more out of the Disney trip.
Or, instead of paying for the parks with your tax money, take it to help purchase a gym membership or in-home exercise equipment — maybe even a backyard swing set. Instead of paying for public libraries, your tax funds could be used to purchase the books you want to read.
These ideas, of course, should read as extremely unserious. As much as we may like to pay lower taxes or have the public subsidize our vacations and lifestyle habits, most would agree a family trip to Disneyland or these other expenses would be an egregious use of money intended to improve our communities.
But these exact ideas are being increasingly touted by state leaders as part of the argument used by those supporting vouchers or even tax credits to provide public funds to allow students to attend private schools.
They argue that the tax dollars intended to boost public school should instead be spent by the parents of the students and not the government. After all, it’s their money. The parents of students should be able to use those funds to educate their children anyway they see fit.
To go a step further, the “school choice supporters,” as they call themselves, also contend that there should be no accountability for the schools or other entities receiving those education dollars. Trust in the parents is apparently the only accountability that the government needs.
Never mind the wild possible scenarios that could play out. Let’s say parents get mad because their child’s grades are slipping. The parents with a voucher to a private school tell the administrators they are transferring little Johnnie unless little Johnnie makes certain grades. The easy solution for the school administrators could be to give little Johnnie that grade demanded by the parents so that the school can continue to collect the public education dollars.
This “parents know best” argument neglects the important fact that there are many taxpayers who are paying to support the public schools who have no children. Taking this argument to the extreme: perhaps people who do not have school-age children should be able to keep their funds rather than funding schools where they have no personal connection.
That counter argument, of course, is also ridiculous and ignores the premise that was established at our nation’s founding. Americans don’t pay taxes for individual purposes. They pay taxes for the common or societal good.
The primary goal of taxes is to ensure a better school system not just for one student, but for the general public.
The goal of taxes is not to provide a good park in your neighborhood or a smoothly paved road in front of your own house — though that does seem to be the goal of some Mississippi lawmakers recently — but to provide good, safe public spaces and an adequate transportation system for all of us.
Granted, those goals are not always achieved, especially in many communities across Mississippi. But if there is no tax money to pay for public schools, public parks, public libraries, public law enforcement, we all suffer. Better public schools in particular can only build a better community, a better economy and a better state.
People want to live in areas where there are good schools, good parks, good libraries, good transportation systems and other public services.
If we pull tax revenue out of the coffers they were intended to support, what are we left with? It’s worth considering what our public school system — and our communities in the present and future — would look like with even fewer public resources.
