Transparancy is the new objectivaty.

If you're anything like me, you woke up yesterday with a plastic bag of rocks on your front lawn.

Inside the bag was a colorful sheet of paper with some equally colorful, highly decontextualized factoids: Statistics. Percentages. Numbers. Nowhere on the page did the authors identify themselves, although one could infer, from the Portsmouth Concerned Citizens (PCC) membership form on the back, that they were involved.

In addition to the charming "gift bag," the PCC also appears to have been responsible for inserts in the Sakonnet Times and the Newport Daily News, as well as, according to a quote attributed to president Larry Fitzmorris in Portsmouth Patch on Friday, putting up signs around town.

By my back-of-envelope reckoning, that's well over a thousand dollars worth of advertising expenditures. Not counting the rocks. Why on earth would they spend that kind of money?

You can believe, if you wish, that they deeply care about transparancy [sic], and that all the innuendo, air quotes, and ellipses are just their way of setting the record straight. You can believe that the school committee and Save Our Schools willfully withheld information. You can even believe that evil, greedy unions are orchestrating all of this.

Or you can believe the truth.

Four years ago, with the S3050 tax cap, the anti-tax forces saw a rare opportunity. During 2006, the year that set the benchmark tax levy, the PCC orchestrated a Tent Meeting. And they cut $1.1M from the schools (and half a million from the Town.) Only about half was restored to the schools, despite accounting testimony that more was needed, because Caruolo actions do not have any lookahead: the court only aims to provide funding sufficient for the current year. And so, the district began its journey down the path of ever-tightening tax caps with a structural deficit.

You know how those anti-tax folks like to talk about how COLAs compound? Well, cuts compound too. Every year, instead of getting a percentage of that extra funding, the schools have had less. Less money for late buses. Less money to keep Prudence open. Less money for school nurses. Less money for Elmhurst. All fruit of the same poisoned tree.

And now, they have the chance to do it again.

Next year, the new RI Dept. of Education funding formula will cut $207K from Portsmouth's school budget. And every year, for the next ten years, we will lose an additional $207K, until we are in a two million dollar hole. Imagine how sweet it would be to repeat that moment of triumph, and build a structural deficit into the school budget again. If you are a fan of small government, you are rubbing your hands and cackling with glee like some stereotyped cartoon villain.

Let's not repeat our mistake. Tomorrow, please vote for Option 2, and erase the deficit. This time, let's at least start out at zero.

Full disclosure: I am a candidate for Portsmouth School Committee.