Monday, September 20, 2010

Confirmed: Congress wasted $26 billion more of your money

I know this is going to come as a complete and total surprise to you, but Congress and Ted Strickland are mismanaging your tax dollars.

Shocker, right?
The urgent push for millions in federal aid to save Ohio teaching jobs this year appears to have been for naught.

It turns out that there weren't thousands of educator jobs here that needed saving. Not yet, anyway.

A Dispatch survey of 17 of Ohio's largest school districts found that fewer than 500 teachers, secretaries and other school workers lost their jobs this year. More than half of those districts, which account for about 20 percent of the state's students, laid no one off. Districts that did let school employees go brought many - if not most - back right away. Some simply needed to downsize staff as enrollment had shrunk over time.

So as the state prepares to distribute Ohio's $361 million share of the federal Education Jobs Fund to districts and charter schools, many school officials say they will sock the money away for next year rather than use it to rehire teachers and other staff members now. Even if districts chose to bring back the recently-displaced employees, they likely wouldn't make a dent in the $361 million account: To rehire those 500-or-so workers in the biggest districts, assuming an average salary of $50,000, would cost less than $3 million.
And in case you forgot, 3BP warned you about back in early August.

Make no mistake, this was yet another misuse of taxpayer dollars that Ted Strickland supported.

So did Mary Jo Kilroy, Steve Driehaus, John Boccieri, Zack Space, Charlie Wilson, Marcy Kaptur, and Betty Sutton.

In a political environment that has voters begging for fiscal responsibility, these Democrats chose to side with the teacher's unions over the will of their constituents.

They'll regret it.

4 comments:

  1. Question: Will you be wagging your finger at Kasich/Taylor to return all the campaign money White Hat managements has donated considering the State Audit (done by none other than Ms. Taylor) has shown repeated abuses of fiscal management?

    Kasich wants to get rid of the US Dept of Ed, a major campaign donor is a charter school COMPANY (private business out to make money) and suddenly Kasich is pro-education?

    Voters are going to get vertigo with all this spinning!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Question on the US Dept of Ed. What sense does it make for Ohioans to send tax dollars to Washington and to the US Dept of Ed in hopes of getting those dollars redistributed back to Ohio. Why not just keep them here in the first place. What is the value add of the US Dept of Ed?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dissolving the Dept. of Ed. would be a good first step.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Neither addressed the real question posed:

    Keeling has such issues with campaigns accepting money from people who appear to have helped others skirt the law. White Hat management is being sued, has been accused of fraud and money mismanagement. Yet they are a MAJOR campaign donor to the Kasich/Taylor campaign.

    What's good for one isn't good for another? Where are your scruples?

    ReplyDelete

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