A chief auditor has found that a dozen school districts throughout Pennsylvania concealed their budget surpluses in reserve accounts so they could say they were short of funds and needed another tax increase (https://www.pennlive.com/politics/2023/01/school-districts-tuck-money-in-reserve-accounts-to-justify-need-for-tax-increases-audit-finds.html).
They’re hiding “hundreds of millions of dollars of budget surpluses,” said the state’s House Republican leader.
Over the past four years, the auditor reports, the 12 districts collectively have gulled the voters into approving 37 school tax increases. The auditor concluded that the practice must be quite common, because the 12 districts he audited are scattered throughout the state.
All sorts of hair-splitting excuses have been made for this. It seems to fall into a grey area, legally… so school officials won’t be charged with stealing public money.
They also get away with grooming children for every kind of aberrant sex you can think of, fomenting racial paranoia, and working tirelessly to estrange children from their families. That’s public education. What’s a few hundred million dollars that disappears along the way?
Extra: Lame Excuse They Haven’t Used Yet: “Oh, yeah? Well, what about what the town council does with the snow removal budget? They’ve always used it up by Labor Day!”