Stan Geiger

What If We Had HOPE?

If you haven’t heard much about the HOPE initiative, you will. If I have this right, the measure is now a state question and will be on a ballot a year from now.

HOPE is the latest educator attempt to rape the state coffers for their own benefit. If passed, HOPE will create a constitutional mandate that would force the State Legislature to meet or beat the per-pupil spending average for our region on an annual basis. Our region includes Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas.

Early estimates said HOPE would require a boost in state funding to common schools of $850 million in the first year alone. Since state funding to common schools has recently been cut due to economic conditions, the number might be a lot higher now. I guess it depends on what is going on around us.

Imagine, if you will, that HOPE was on the ballot now and passed.

State revenues have been in decline all year. There is no reason to believe there will be a significant rebound next year. Income and sales tax revenues are the primary feeders of the General Fund. High unemployment and lack of business activity puts a dent in income tax collections. High unemployment coupled with economic uncertainty dampens consumer spending which, in turn, dampens sales tax collections.

So, if HOPE were a constitutional mandate today, lawmakers in the coming legislative session would be faced with finding perhaps as much a billion new dollars for common schools, declining or flat revenues notwithstanding.

What would you do?

The prison system is already vastly underfunded. It has been for years. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation just recently saw an increase in its budget---for the first time since the early ‘80s. DHS is said to be underfunded, and one gigantic cluster-eff. The only place to go in the budget to get a billion dollars would be higher education. The only option would be to take state funding for higher ed down to about zero. And you know what that would do to tuition.

If you can’t find a billion dollars in the budget and the constitution mandates that you give another billion dollars to common schools, all that’s left is a massive tax increase.

If you have but one living brain cell inside your cranium, you will vote no on HOPE when the opportunity comes.

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