Open Letter to the State Legislature and the Taxpayers of Kansas:

It is hard to know whether Kathleen Sebelius and Terry Bullock think we’re living in Wonderland or Oz, but they don’t seem to have the remotest purchase on educational or economic reality.

Apparently Kathleen Sebelius, self-styled elitist Judge Terry Bullock (who has never raised a child of his own), and even some brain-dead or sadly misguided Kansas Legislators are suffering from extremely dangerous twin delusions:

That the laws of economics are repealed at the Kansas border. (The false and dangerous assumption that you can or should raise tax rates during a recession-recovery, contrary to and the opposite of what has been proven under Kennedy tax cuts in the ‘60s leading to a sustained economic boom until 1972, the Reagan tax cuts preceding the unprecedented boom of the ‘80s & ‘90s, & the George W. Bush tax cuts of 2003 preceding our present emerging economic recovery.)

2) That there is some correlation between wanton spending per pupil and educational quality. IF this were the case, New York City Schools, Boston Public Schools and Washington, D.C. public schools would have the best schools in the nation instead of the worst, (which they do!) for they spend the most per pupil in the U.S. and also have the worst educational outcomes (dropout rates, college matriculation, test scores)!

First, as has been proved empirically nationally three times now, low taxes cause improved business climate leading to more job growth and economic growth & are correlated with increased state revenues (not decreased state revenues) due to economic stimulus from those tax cuts. On the other hand, raising taxes as Judge Bullock, Kathleen Sebelius and some in the Kansas Legislature would have us do will result in capital flight, business flight, and job flight and therefore in LOWER, not higher, net revenues to the State. (This point was driven home by a recent KCCI Survey of Kansas businesses, many of which said they were poised to leave Kansas or hire fewer persons because of Kansas’ already high (& rising!) tax rates and already poor-to-hostile business environment. Thousands of citizen-taxpayers and business owners have already done so and have voted with their feet, packed their bags and moved their families and businesses from Kansas.)

Moreover, lower tax states tend to have more educational innovation and improved educational outcomes. (Colorado, Florida, Arizona, and Texas are four lower tax states with greater educational innovation and therefore rates of educational improvement.)

As to economic growth through low taxes, it is not by accident that states like Colorado, South Dakota, Nevada, Florida, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Texas, and Alaska, all of which have some of the lowest tax rates in the U.S., also have the highest economic growth rates and jobs growth rates, while states with the highest taxes, like California, Vermont, Illinois, and Kansas, have negative economic growth rates, poor business climates and negative job growth.

The Tax Foundation rates Kansas in the lowest third of states in its "Business Climate Index," based upon several key factors. Kathleen Sebelius and the Kansas Legislature, if it follows her lead and Judge Terry Bullock’s stunningly arrogant and colossaly wrong-headed Legislate-from-the-Bench advice, are in danger of pushing Kansas’ business climate ranking from 35th among the States to the low-40s. If Sebelius’ policy of Taxing more during a recession prevails, Kansas can become the California or Vermont of the High Plains.

Second, Judge Terry’s false & foolish assumption that "more spending equates to better education" is patently empirically false. If more spending per pupil equates to higher outcomes, then New York City Public schools, Washington, D.C. Public Schools, and Boston Public Schools, would have the best outcomes in the nation instead of the WORST. Even Kansas City, Missouri schools, which were given superb physical facilities, like Olympic Swimming Pools and beautiful buildings, from Kaufmann Foundation private grants of over $750 million, showed NO IMPROVEMENT from such a huge infusion of private dollars into public education.

Public Education is improved ONLY by competition and accountability, and competition & accountability means vastly more Parental Choice & Educational Reform in the form of such progressive and innovative programs as education vouchers, as has been successfully pioneered in Arizona, Florida, Colorado, and elsewhere, together with other mechanisms of greater choice. competition & accountability, such as more charter schools, and private and parochial schools, and other innovative parental choice-based programs.

Fortunately, Judge Bullock’s decision leaves open an elegant solution involving Educational Reform and empowering parents, not bureaucrats, through Parental Choice: Giving parents more choice in the form of Education Vouchers, at a dramatically LOWER cost to taxpayers and at a demonstrably great benefit to Parents and Children in the form of more Parental Choice, competition, accountability, and School Choice for students.

Ignorance or naked power-grabs by the Governor and the Legislature and the colossal hubristic arrogance of a single Judge (who has never even had a child of his own) legislating from the bench will drive not only my family and business but thousands of others, representing millions of dollars per year and thousands of jobs from the State of Kansas. Few persons who are intellectually honest and adequately informed will not see the future of :

(1) Promoting educational accountability through educational and parental choice and; (2) Lower, not higher, taxes.

Such intellectually honest and open-minded persons do not include the power-hungry big union bosses at the KNEA, the horrendously wasteful Public School bureaucrats who add nothing to the classroom while diverting hundreds of millions of dollars from teachers, students and classrooms into the ever-hungry and profligate bureaucracy, and a few the "useful idiots" in the media, a few socialist demagogues and leftist academics, and well-intentioned, but sorely misguided, and intellectually lazy or tragically misinformed legislators and sadly brain-washed or co-opted businessmen.

Kansas is at a crossroads in terms of educational choice and taxes. We can take the lazy and cowardly course, a tragic and misguided course of action, and harm or destroy both Kansas’ economy and any educational quality which we now enjoy, or we can educate ourselves to looking courageously at the more intellectually tough but more informed course of action and emulate states which are innovative in both taxes and education, leading to improvements in jobs, parental choice and child education.

Kansas is at a crossroads and I am not optimistic that honesty and innovation in both tax policy and education will trump intellectual laziness, political cowardice, and political correctness, while the interests of power-hungry educational bureaucrats and big union bosses will prevail over the interests of children, the larger community and parents. If Sebelius-Bullock prevail, the Children of Kansas and the Citizen-Taxpayers of Kansas, along with truth, progress, freedom, Parental Choice and educational accountability and competition, and enlightened, innovative, creative policies, the People and Children of Kansas will lose, while a few hundred parasitic politicians and bureaucrats, using big lies, misinformation, ignorance, and political intimidation, will triumph.

And yet I am also somewhat hopeful about the opportunities for innovation and improvement of Kansas’ educational, business, and economic climate through: 1) Much greater parental choice in education; and, 2), lower, not higher, taxes at the state and local level, (and, hopefully, a smaller, less entrenched and self-interested public school and public sector bureaucracy), resulting in more private sector jobs, and a much-needed improved Kansas business competitive environment, and ultimately more revenues to the state through economic growth and job growth from a friendlier, less hostile, business environment.

This historic opportunity for progress and Educational Reform and more Parental Choice is ours, and the choice should reside with the citizen-taxpayers of Kansas and the Parents of Kansas Schoolchildren, --- not with the vested entrenched interests of educational stagnation, bureaucratic or judicial abrogation of parental & legislative prerogatives, and of the largely-failed status quo.

Respectfully, John K. Garvey