Klarinet Archive - Posting 000585.txt from 2002/10

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] More about school budgets
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 18:51:46 -0400

Bill Wright wrote,
>An article in the local news paper quoted a school
>board member who said that all instrumental music
>programs at the elementary level will "most likely"
>be eliminated from all elementary school budgets in
>our area next year because of budget shortfalls.
>
>(This school board member is also president of a local
>foundation that is trying to create a private endowment
>to keep the programs in operation, so she's clearly in
>favor of music instruction, not against it.)

*All* of them? Really? Your local citizens may have such a hard time
believing this extreme claim that they'll yawn and do nothing. They'll
assume that the scary story is nothing but a way to get attention, and that
money for music can come from fat in some more expendable part of the budget.
The unforseen consequence might be that some of the music programs do end up
getting eliminated, unnecessarily.

The school board member's exaggerated-sounding cry of alarm is known as the
"Washington Monument ploy." It got its name during the years when reduction
in funds left the Washington Monument standing unfinished as a national
embarrassment, like a jagged, broken fang sticking up conspicuously from the
Capitol Mall. When funds turned up to complete the construction, no perfect
match could be found for the old stones. To this day, there's a visible line
of demarcation where the old stones end and the new stones start. The stink
behind the scenes: The budget shortfall was phony, but construction stopped
anyway. Stopping construction supposedly "proved" that the budget shortfall
wasn't phony, so that next time someone claimed that fiscal disaster loomed,
everybody'd remember the Washington Monument, believe the story and pressure
legislators to fork over the money.

The tactic worked well for years. Advocates for various worthy causes would
go to Congress at the national level or to elected officials and voters at
the local level and wail, "Oh, if you don't fund our [whatever] more
generously, we'll have to abandon it, just like the Washington Monument, a
national disgrace!" As time passed, though, the ploy became less effective,
because round about the time the story leaked out that the original
Washington Monument ploy was a scam, the general public started realizing how
often we've heard this old trick. Officials and citizens alike are rapidly
getting deaf to this tactic.

I'm now cynical enough to *assume* that usually, the people asking for the
money don't really need it so desperately for the popular, worthy cause they
claim is threatened. They need it for some less-popular reason that they'd
rather not talk about in public. As if by magic, once the budget passes,
funds magically turn up for the popular, worthy cause, after all, even if
there's no new funding to re-route to the less-sexy project.

There's considerable danger in calling the bluff, however. The district
where I attended high school in California tried the Washington Monument
gambit once too often, a few years after I left. Oops--cynical voters yawned
and voted down the bond initiative, which opponents successfully smeared as a
"tax and spend" extravagance; but this time, the budget shortfall was real,
and my old school district did have to scale the music programs way back.
Those programs have never been fully revived to this day.

I hope someone slips your well-intentioned school board member a word of
advice that her dramatic claims need equally dramatic evidence. If all she's
got are ordinary "lies, damned lies and statistics," she risks that citizens
simply won't believe her, even if she's telling the unadulterated truth.

Lelia

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