Letter to the Editor

Your view: Lies or broken promises

Monday, February 9, 2004

In the present day in which we live, we hear how our public schools are faced with budget problems. Just recently, the Cape Girardeau School Board had to crunch their budget $1.5 million. Many other schools have faced and some still face the same fate as Cape schools. With this reoccurring problem in mind, I want to ask one simple question: Why is there a money problem?

Look back with me for a moment a few years ago. Remember when the lottery was being promoted for the voters to make it legal? Remember the commercials on TV? "If you will vote for the lottery, it will generate more revenue for the public schools and your school taxes will not have to be raised." Remember that? Was that a lie or a broken promise?

The voters passed the lottery and it became law.

But before long, the voter was assaulted again by the gaming industry (a sanitized name for gambling). They wanted us to legalize riverboat gambling. So they went back, to the commercial ads on TV. "Vote yes on riverboat gambling. It will benefit the public schools and you'll never see your school taxes raised again." Remember that? Was that a lie or a broken promise?

Again, after much persistence of bringing this up to the voters and after several times being voted down, it finally passed and became law. Riverboat gambling was permitted only on the river.

As I recall, some time passed before the ever-vigilant gaming industry finally found another way to help solve our school budget problems. The industry sought to dock the gambling boats so it would prevent a wait for the players to come on board to give their donations to the floating "school tax fund." So, once again, the multimillion-dollar campaign was up and running. "Vote yes to dock the boat so schools can reap the benefit." Remember that? Duh! Was that a lie or a broken promise?

You know the rest of the story. We, the voters, said yes to docking the boat. But not long after this became law, the gambling industry was not satisfied to stay in the Mississippi River and it wanted to slither upon to the land. So, "boat in a moat" was conceived by these upstanding school-promoting men of integrity. My! Our public schools have never had better financial supporters. In keeping with their past record of looking out for the public school system, we see what this industry did. They again appealed to the voters with a promise. I bet you can't guess what it was. You say, "It will benefit the schools?" Whooee! Give that man a prize! Once again I ask you, was that a lie or just a broken promise?

Mr. Editor, let me make a suggestion to all the public school boards that have to face a financial crunch in their school budgets. Make an appeal to the gaming industry to provide the money needed to meet your budget. Remind them of their promise, "The public schools would be the recipients of all this extra revenue" - or did they lie?

Tom McCanless, pastor

Kewanee Missionary Baptist Church