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“This is not what is going on in Topeka any longer. Instead we have legislators who believe that fiscal prudence means only one thing: cutting taxes no matter what the effect on institutions of government and on the public. Our legislators no longer seem to care about facts. Important legislation, like the school finance bill, included radical changes to teacher job security without any serious attempt at fact-gathering or public hearings. Our court system’s funding structures were radically altered, again without fact-gathering or adequate hearings and, very possibly, in contravention of the Kansas Constitution. And, of course, a...

“What’s worst about these ALEC policies, Chinn reports, is that the relentless budget-cutting they require leave crucial state services, particularly education, gasping for breath. That’s a formula for long-term decline, not growth. Indeed, when Chinn mapped the ALEC rankings for all 50 states against their economic growth, he found that, if anything, a higher index score correlates with a worse economic performance. That won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the ALEC follies over time: The Iowa Policy Project found the same negative correlation in 2012. Say this for the ALEC-Laffer Index: It’s a consistently...

Here’s the latest on Florida’s corporate tax credit scholarship. Note to Kansans: in the future, even if the program is fraught with problems, ALEC legislators will press for expansion of the program beyond the original limitations. The procedure for passage sounds similar to what happened here in Kansas. “Joanne McCall, vice president of the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers’ union, said she was disappointed. ‘The members of FEA are chagrined by the continued march to expand voucher schools that are largely unregulated, don’t have to follow the state’s academic standards, don’t have to hire qualified teachers and...