Marcia Hayward: For fiscal responsibility and support for public schools, vote Democrat

To The Daily Sun,

Rep. Gregg Hough and fellow Republicans enjoy touting that they have stopped the reckless spending at the state level by Democrats. Heads up voters, if there ever was an example of reckless spending it is with the Republican passage of the educational freedom accounts, also known as vouchers.

EFAs were hyped as a cost savings option to assist students struggling in public schools. The program would be open to students in private and religious schools as well as homeschoolers. The legislative bill for EFAs was met with unprecedented opposition because of its lack of fiscal and academic accountability thereby making it impossible to pass as an independent piece of legislation. To ensure that EFAs would become law, the Republicans tacked it onto the budget’s trailer bill, HB 2. Many Republicans, including the governor, will argue that the state needed a budget and so they voted in favor although it contained policies which they found objectionable. The facts don’t support this argument... after the budget passed, our state representatives had an opportunity to repeal the EFA with HB 1683. The motion on HB 1683 was to kill the bill. Four out of five Laconia representatives voted to kill the bill (Mike Bordes, Hough, Dawn Johnson, Travis O’Hara, and Richard Littlefield did not vote).

EFAs were given an appropriation of $129,000 in the budget. In the first year, the cost of this program is $8+ million over budget, or another way to put it, EFAs are 6,000% over budget. To make matters worse, the EFA is the only program in the state budget without a cap to prevent budget overruns. Who benefits from this irresponsible piece of legislation? Ninety percent of the EFAs went to students already enrolled in private schools.

For fiscal responsibility and support for public schools, vote Democrat.

Marcia Hayward

Laconia