ERICKSON: There's an election coming
There's an election that is coming up in November. No, I do not mean the presidential election. I mean next week. The Bibb County School System has an education special purpose local option sales tax on the ballot. As of this writing, less than 600 people have voted early.
I have no doubt the school system would prefer you not know that it wants to raise your taxes. It has run a stealth campaign doing the minimum necessary to advertise the tax increase hoping you would never even find out about it. Of course they would do that right as headlines heat up that the school system could be on the hook for millions of dollars in its case against former Superintendent Romain Dallemand.
Listen, I could not even tell you what the tax is going to pay for and I consider myself a rather informed individual. Until I read about it in the newspaper recently, I did not even know there was a tax increase on the ballot. It may be meritorious. But the fact that our school system has worked overtime to keep everyone's mouth shut about it suggests to me that this is not a meritorious tax increase.
Remember the Macon City Council? I was on that City Council. It was a routine clown car show of embarrassment. Every week the council caused more scandalous and silly headlines. It was an embarrassment to Middle Georgia. Consolidation and the abolition of the city was a net positive for Middle Georgia. The Warner Robins City Council got to become the dysfunctional city council for a while and now the Forsyth City Council and the Monroe County Commission are our regional embarrassment and indictment waiting to happen.
But rising above them all is the Bibb County school board. It keeps trying to change its ways, but I keep being reminded of the Persian fable often attributed to Aesop about the scorpion and the frog. The frog hesitates to carry the scorpion on its back across a river. The scorpion assures the frog that both would die if he stung the frog. Reassured, the frog agreed and carries the scorpion. Half way across the river, the scorpion stings the frog. Both would surely die. The frog asked the scorpion "why?" "It is my nature," said the doomed scorpion.
The Bibb County school board is our collective scorpion. It has repeatedly cut off its nose to spite the entire school system's face. This Dallemand situation bears serious watching and may cause serious trouble. As The Telegraph noted, the school system's insurance company has told the school board that it is on its own in this. That means that we are on our own for possibly millions of dollars depending on how the case goes.
Did I mention there is a tax increase on the ballot for the school board? Naturally, there will be rebuttals to this column. They will all say that rejecting this tax increase will hurt "the children," which is trotted around in Middle Georgia as a be all-end all excuse for everything. We must do X for "the children."
Well, we must continue reforming the Bibb County school board for our children. No superintendent, no matter how amazing, will ever be able to do much when having to answer to Bozo the Clown and his circus side show.
Truth be told, perhaps my words would not be so biting except for one thing. There is a tax increase on the ballot and our school system has done absolutely everything possible to make sure you know nothing about it.
Erick Erickson is a Fox News contributor and radio talk show host in Atlanta.
This story was originally published October 29, 2015 at 10:24 PM.