Somehow, I don’t expect Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo’s “bold plan” increased school construction funding to emphasize a change in priorities that leads to spending reductions elsewhere.  The quote in Shiina LoSciuto and Sarah Doiron’s WPRI article is better seen as a cause for alarm:

Raimondo said she plans to unveil a proposal next week for funding the rebuilding of schools across the state.“I plan to present a bold plan to the legislature, to make a once in a generation investment in rebuilding our schools,” Raimondo said.

This is entirely the wrong mentality.  We don’t want to repair schools once a generation.  We don’t need “an investment” as much as we need reform.

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Maintenance and repair should be ongoing.  The problem is that the incentive in state and local government is to spend as much money as taxpayers will tolerate on ongoing operations and then hit us with a crisis in order to ratchet up the revenue.  One photograph of a flooded classroom suddenly makes disappear the consequences for three decades of letting maintenance slide while spending on other priorities.

And then moving forward, this “once in a generation investment” will be built into our state and local tax bills, which won’t go down when all the work is done and all debt is paid off.  Instead, as the cost of the emergency subsides, the government will find ways to spend the money elsewhere and let the schools deteriorate again.  Meanwhile, whatever mental space Rhode Islanders allocate toward thinking about education will be distracted by the excuse that children can’t learn in crumbling schools and then palliated by the fancy new buildings, even as the level of education continues to be substandard.

We have to stop falling for this ploy.