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Legislation
Filed to Save Our Community
Three Bills Everyone Should Support
Dr. Chuck Ormsby
(03/06/07)
 Just
over one year ago, I addressed the four key policy
failures that underlie the perpetual funding crisis that
afflicts our municipal governments. These are the same
policy errors that are responsible for the abysmal
failure of our public “education” system.
Unless these errors in policy are addres-sed, there will
be no relief from the annual financial crunch and our
children’s future will suffer. Those who support
these failed policies either personally benefit from them
or believe naively that increased taxes offer the only
solution.
Nothing will convince those who are driven by personal
gain and don’t care about the harm they cause. Those
who stick to these policies and prescribe more taxation
as the cure need to assess the havoc caused by ever
increasing tax burdens – in the home, in lower
economic growth, in a reduced standard of living.
When it is proclaimed that, “it is worth it, because
it is for the children,” three facts are
gratuitously ignored:
* First, our children are not im-mune from these
negative effects. They are not just recipients of the
benefits – if any — of greater spending on the
schools, they pay the same price their family pays as
economic growth is stymied and standards of living
reduced
* Second, our children face these consequences for a
lifetime because they will inherit greater tax burdens
and face fewer job opportunities as adults
* Third, this entire debacle is unnecessary since a
much better educational result is possible at a lower
cost and with no drain on the economy or anyone’s
personal freedom.
The four underlying problems outlined in the previous
article (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Valley
Patriot, February 2006) are as follows:
1. Lack of school choice or, alternatively, the lack of
widespread competition in the provisioning of educational
services
2. Compulsory collective bargaining, which gives unions a
monopoly stranglehold on the labor needed to police our
communities, to protect us from risks such as fire, and
to provide our children educational opportunities
3. Special Education regulations that assign a strict
funding priority to the needs of one segment of our
student population while consigning the remaining regular
education students to the back of the bus
4. Our socialist healthcare system. After this article
was published last year, some of the diehard big spenders
that infect our North Andover School Committee meetings
approached the microphone and said, “That is all
very nice, Dr. Ormsby, but we can’t fix those
problems so you need to get on the bandwagon and support
raising taxes. It’s for the children.”
Well, as noted above, it is not for the children: it is
for the special interests. Increased spending won’t
improve academ-ic outcomes anyway, and increased taxes
hurt the children both today and for the rest of their
lives. It is a lose-lose proposition any way you look at
it – unless of course you look at it through the
lens of the public employee unions.
But the critics do have a point. We need actionable
legislation to rally around that will correct these
policy errors. I have drafted the needed legislative
initiatives for the first three problems cited above and
they have been filed by State Senator Steven Baddour.
The impact of our nation’s healthcare catastrophe is
a tar baby of galactic proportions. It consumes 1/6th of
our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) now and is  projected to devour 1/5th of our
GDP by 2016. This catastrophe is felt in every aspect of
our lives, including when it adversely impacts the cost
of government services because of rich health benefits
demanded by public unions. Dismantling the union
monopolies will reduce the impact of healthcare costs on
our municipalities, but a full solution to the wider
impact of the healthcare monster must be mounted at the
national level.
Here are the three bills that need your immediate
support:
The first bill (see Box #1) is step one in a two-part
process. It modifies what is known as the Blaine
Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution. The Blaine
Amendment makes it unconstitutional for public money to
go to private schools and therefore makes “education
stamps” or “vouchers” unconstitutional in
Massachusetts.
The Blaine Amendment, originally passed as an
anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic measure in the mid-1800s
to keep Catholic/Irish schools from getting the same
funding as the Protestant “public schools,”
makes widespread competition of educational services
illegal and robs our children of the opportunity to
benefit from competing providers. Once the proposed
modification of the Blaine Amendment is enacted,
subsequent legislation can be introduced to initiate a
voucher system and the much needed competition can begin.
The second bill (Box #2) eliminates state-mandated
compulsory collective bargaining for municipalities in
Massachusetts. If enacted, communities will be able to
hire employees and negotiate the terms of employment in
the same manner as private businesses. Communities will
have no more ability to dictate the terms of employment
than their private counterparts.
They will need to attract workers and compete for their
services on the open market. Job requirements, hours,
wages, and benefits must be mutually agreed upon.
Employee unions can still exist and they can still
bargain for their members, if they can convince
municipalities to deal with them. But they will not be
able to prevent other prospective employees from offering
their services or negotiating individual employment
contracts.
 Finally, a bill (Box #3) has
been introduced that gives communities an option in how
they can fulfill their obligations under our Special
Education laws. Today, special needs children (approx. 15
% of students) are given an Individualized Education Plan
(IEP) and communities must fund these plans first before
any dollars are spent on the remaining, regular education
children. Approximately 85 percent of our children are
legally second-class citizens. They get whatever is left
over regardless of how little or how inadequate. The
option provided in the proposed legislation allows
communities to put ALL our children on an equal footing.
Every child would get an IEP and school committees would
have “to set policies and develop educational
programs in a manner that in good faith attempts to
reasonably and proportionately meet the needs of all of
its students as reflected in their IEPs.”
The remainder of the bill outlines procedures for dispute
resolution – the details of which are not critical
to the overall intent, which is to ensure all our
children are provided equal treatment under the law.
There are only three things blocking enactment of these
reforms: Apathy, a presumption of hopelessness, and
special interests. If you really want to improve
education, reduce the burden of taxes, improve municipal
services, and stop being ripped off by special interests,
this is your chance. Call your legislators today and
demand their support for these reforms.
I have done my part. Now it is up to you.
Contact Information:
Senator Baddour:
Tel. 617 722-1604
Senator Bruce Tarr:
Tel. 617 722 1600
Senator Susan Tucker
Tel. 617 722 1612
Rep. Linda Dean Campbell
Tel. 617 722-2060
Rep. Barbara L’Italien:
Tel. 617 722 2080
Rep. David
Torrisi:
Tel. 617 722 2014
Rep. L’Antigua:
Tel. 617 722 2810
Rep. Harriett
Stanley
Tel. 617 722 2676
Rep. Barry
Finegold
Tel. 617 722 2676
Rep. Bradley
Jones
Tel. 978 664 5936
Rep. Bradford
Hill
Tel. 978 356 9008
Rep. Brian
Dempsey
Tel. 978 372 2750
For e-mail addresses go to:
http://www.mass.gov/legis/memmenuh.htm
Dr. Ormsby is a member of the North Andover School
Committee. He is a graduate of Cornell and has a
doctorate from MIT. If you have any questions or
comments, you can contact Dr. Ormsby via email: ccormsby@comcast.net
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The March 2007 Edition
of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2007, Valley Patriot, Inc.
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