Teacher Furloughs and Budget Crisis

It's been so fun to be published in the local paper, I've tried again:

Dear Editor:
Your opinion piece on Teacher Furloughs in Sunday’s paper makes a number of excellent points. As you discussed solutions, however, I became troubled.

The solution to our budget shortfall is not a lottery or new taxes. Your call, and others in recent weeks, for new sources of government revenue to restore cuts in the DOE budget reminds me of a lesson I learned forty years ago when I was on active duty in the Navy. A new officer transferred aboard the ship who had served most of his career in joint commands. When we were informed that budget cuts were in the works, he said: “Let me tell you how this works. When the Navy is told its budget will be cut, its response is: ‘It will be hard, but we will accomplish our mission.’ When the Air Force receives the same notice, its response is: ‘Gee, we won’t be able to fly bombers and fighters.’ Of course, the Air Force budget is restored, while the Navy’s is cut.”

A few years ago, I heard this concept referred to as the “Washington Monument" principle, when, after the National Park Service was threatened with a budget cut, it announced it would be closing the Washington Monument. When the Agriculture Department is threatened with a budget cut, it announces cutbacks in the school lunch program. A headline in the WHT last week reported that county budget cuts may require a cutback in the police force.

There’s a pattern here. Governments and government agencies often cut where the cuts are most noticeable and the services will be most missed, in order to provoke the public to support, or even demand, more taxation to maintain these important functions. The problem in Hawaii is not that we don’t pay enough taxes; by any standard, we do. It is that these tax dollars are not focused on the public’s top priorities.

The solution lies in reviewing government priorities and cutting back on functions that are not critical. When you and I are faced with declining income in our business or at home, we do not cut our expenses “across the board.” We maintain the more important and eliminate or cut back on the less important expenditures. We still pay the rent or mortgage and buy groceries, but we cut back on new clothes, travel or the movies.

To be effective, schools need teachers, books, classrooms, a few good administrators and a small support staff. Yet I suspect less than half of those on the DOE payroll are teachers. A number of years ago, a report compared the New York City public school system with the New York Catholic school system (large by our standards). In the public system, only half of the employees were teachers; in the Catholic system, about three-quarters were. The leadership of the state and the DOE need to be reminded that government and schools are not jobs programs. When cuts need to be made, they need to come from the fat, the luxuries, the bureaucracy, the offices and programs that are not vital. (And I don’t mean eliminating music and art from the curriculum!)

As you stated, education should be one of the top priorities for state funding. Cuts could be made, and would not missed, in many other areas. A review of state regulations could result in eliminating those that are not critical. For example, we would probably be none the worse off if the requirement for manicurists to be licensed were dropped, and business licenses could be good for two or three years instead of one. With a reduction in regulations, regulators’ positions could be eliminated. I am sure many "management" positions could be eliminated or consolidated without an adverse impact on government services. In fact, I would wager that if government had grown only as the population grew over the past ten years, we would not now be in the present crisis.

Let us not be seduced into accepting more taxes or a lottery as a solution to our current fiscal problems.