Lefty Mass Town To Teacher's Union-'Get Real'

There was an open revolt this summer against a local a teacher’s union and its school board accomplices in left-wing Berkshire County, Massachusetts. This is news that does not bode well for public employee unions and their beneficiaries nationwide. The Berkshires are a liberal fantasy camp in the “Rachel Maddow Belt,” Michael Barone’s name for the Massachusetts’ 1^st Congressional District. Made up of wannabe and former hippies, ornery Bush-hating Yankees, artistes and transplanted New Yorkers the District gave Obama 64% of its votes. It’s a made to order liberal electoral stew that usually loves higher taxes and government largesse. Not this time though. While the people who went all “Tea Party” on the union might not want to be identified as such, they achieved Tea Party goals, spurred by a small band of fiscally conservative citizens who sounded the alarm and stayed engaged.

Without confusing and boring the reader I will say the process for approving budgets for our Southern Berkshire Regional School District is migraine inducing. Five towns make up the district, and towns must separately approve the budget in an anachronistic town meeting format, then, if a Proposition 2 1/2 override is required (Prop 2 is a Mass law that prohibits raising property taxes more than 2.5% without a override vote) to pay for a town’s share, a ballot initiative is also required. Four towns out of five must approve to pass a school budget.

That scenario happened three separate times this summer in a school budget tussle. The first school budget was larded with, among other items, retroactive raises for teachers – who hadn’t had the raises they were accustomed to in the previous two years and were trying to get them in addition to ones for the coming year. People at the town meeting were wondering aloud on what planet you get a retroactive raise in the worst recession in 60 years, when the people who you work for are unemployed, underemployed or suffering through a downturn in business. This is a school district with falling enrollments and above state average costs per student.

In my home town, New Marlborough, the budget was defeated in the town meeting and in the Proposition 2 override ballot question a few days later was also voted down. The budget failed district-wide because one other town also voted against it. In a contemptuous move, rather than cut the budget, the school board came back with a second budget identical to the first – in effect saying “screw you.” New Marlborough voted the budget down again in a second town meeting , and also on the override ballot, this time by a 2 to 1 margin. The budget failed again district-wide with the help of one other stalwart town. The third time the school board decided to cut the budget by dipping into “rainy day funds.” Four of the five towns approved this irresponsible approach to funding a budget (which included teacher raises), thus passing it. New Marlborough, had to live with the budget because four other towns approved it. However, New Marlborough voted down the Proposition 2 override which would have raised our taxes to pay for that budget and the raises.

This NO vote kept our taxes from going up and forced the town to pay for the increase by taking funds from its existing operating budget – not a great outcome, but one that will have New Marlborough’s select board (our three person governing body) playing hard ball when future school budgets are being negotiated to make sure their town operating budget is not being eaten up paying for teacher’s goodies.

As a side note, let’s just say each of these town meeting/special election scenarios are not well publicized. They happened in the summer in our rural area with no dominant media announcing meetings and elections. There is a vocal/active faction of town teachers, parents, and liberal NYC transplants who vote for the spending increases without question and always seem to have the inside information on the dates and times of these meeting/initiatives that happen randomly; those who oppose the increases not so much, we work and have other things to worry about. But this time people had their radar up and made sure word got out to right-thinking voters.

Don’t kid yourself, this is a big deal – saying “No” to a teacher’s union around here is like pulling on Superman’s cape. This is a victory over the business as usual rubber stamps of bloated school budgets, all because a few conservatives in a very liberal town paid attention and rallied independent minded citizens and even a few liberals who have had it with steadily rising property taxes. Wisconsin is not the only liberal enclave saying “Enough!”