Day: <span>June 24, 2014</span>

Abbott: Still making the wrong kind of news on education

 

Attorney General Greg Abbott loses so many lawsuits – while wasting your tax dollars – that still another loss barely rates as news anymore. Just yesterday, while a visiting state judge was strongly denying Abbott’s attempt to remove state District Judge John Dietz from the school finance lawsuit, the U.S. Supreme Court was rebuffing Abbott’s latest challenge of federal regulations of greenhouse gas emissions.

Abbott not only wants Texas kids to have to put up with an underfunded, unfair school finance system, he apparently also expects them to wear gas masks to school.

Abbott’s attempt to get Dietz removed from the long-running school finance case was newsy because it was so blatantly political. Dietz already has ruled against the current school finance system once and, more likely than not, he is about to hand Abbott his head (figuratively, of course) with a similar, follow-up decision that the funding law remains inadequate and unconstitutional.

Abbott was trying to delay the inevitable – and more negative publicity during his campaign for governor – by pulling an eleventh-hour political stunt to delay a final ruling from Dietz.

In his decision against Abbott, visiting Judge David Peeples of San Antonio said he “emphatically rejects any suggestion” that Dietz had intentionally communicated improperly with attorneys representing plaintiffs, including more than 600 school districts, trying to get the current funding system overturned.

As attorney general, Abbott continues to defend an indefensible school finance system, including $5.4 billion in school budget cuts. Imagine the political havoc he could wreak on public schools as governor.