Big Brother and local education
Column by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Big government has no place in local education. Does us no good to be sending dictates down from Washingon and Richmond with all manner of strings attached.
No Child Left Behind – bad idea. Standards of Learning – bad idea.
Freshman State Del. Dickie Bell’s proposed state mandate that local school boards allocate 65 percent of its operating budget to instructional spending – bad idea.
The initiative isn’t Bell’s alone. Bob McDonnell had the 65 percent threshold as part of his ’09 guberntorial-campaign platform. I can understand a pol like McDonnell getting something like this wrong, but not Bell, a public-school teacher when the General Assembly is not in session. Read more
Legislation to give local governments legal-ad alternatives dies in House subcommittee
Landes, Bell bills would have given localities wide range of options to disseminate public notices
Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Legislation from a pair of local lawmakers that would have allowed city and county governments to bypass having to publish legal notices in newspapers of record has failed in a House of Delegates subcommittee.
The House Counties, Cities and Towns Subcommittee voted 8-3 to kill Weyers Cave Republican State Del. Steve Landes’ bill, HB 586, that would have given localities alternatives to publication in a newspaper of general circulation in the locality for legal ads and other notices of proposed action.
A similarly-worded bill from Staunton Republican Del. Dickie Bell had been rolled into the Landes bill. Read more
