GOP-controlled Legislature must be called to account

The mere expansion of Ohio's school voucher program in Cleveland would have been enough to get us in an editorial uproar. We remain firmly opposed to any public money going to nonpublic schools in the state. But the manner in which the expansion occurred -- Republican legislators had the temerity to suggest that the Akron Beacon-Journal ask the Catholic Conference of Ohio for the finer details of the legislation that increased funding for vouchers -- has us spitting nails.
When the majority party has no qualms about letting a special interest group actually write legislation, then we would suggest that the leadership of the House and Senate has some public explaining to do. But don't hold your breath. The GOP is riding so high in Ohio, that public accountability by its elected officials has become a matter of choice, not duty.
Here's how the Beacon-Journal led its front-page story in the June 29 edition: "Literally in the dead of night, the Ohio legislature this month slipped language into a state budget bill to increase funding for Cleveland's private schools by more than 44 percent in the next two years."
And the kicker: "At the same time, public schools watched as lawmakers whittled their funding expectations by hundreds of millions of dollars."
Operating losses
The $10.5 million in new state aid going to the Cleveland voucher program will cut operating losses at the Cleveland Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, the newspaper said. In addition, the money will enable high school students to receive taxpayer-funded vouchers to attend a private school.
As for legislators' giving reporters the brush off when asked for the details of the legislation, we see it as political arrogance at its worst. Elected officials who, in effect, tell the press to pound salt are either very dumb, or very secure in their positions. In Ohio, it's the latter. The GOP has such a stranglehold on state government, Democrats in the opposition have been literally ignored, especially on the issue of funding for public education in Ohio.
Last September, when the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Cleveland voucher program on the grounds that it is neutral between religious and nonreligious schools, we issued the following warning: "It is going to be up to the citizens of the states -- including Ohio, which produced the case that resulted in this landmark weakening of the First Amendment -- to hold the line.
"In Columbus, a cadre of politicians who have nothing but contempt for public education are going to be clamoring for an expansion of the voucher experiment. Let us hope that cooler heads prevail."
We were only wrong in suggesting that legislators would clamor. Instead, they snuck around the state Capitol, and when no one was looking inserted the language written by the Catholic Conference of Ohio that has expanded the Cleveland voucher program.
Ideologues
These ideologues believe the time has come to tear down the wall that is supposed to separate church and state. For them, public dollars should know no bounds when it comes to education. They see nothing wrong with between 95 percent and 98 percent of the children whose parents receive vouchers going to religious schools. These parents care about the education of their children, an education that the public schools is failing to provide, the legislators contend.
But the fact of the matter is many of the voucher pupils do no abandon public schools that have failed them but are already in parochial schools.
We are not opposed to private schools, including church-run ones, but we don't think that using limited tax dollars to benefit a few is constitutional or good public policy.