Aside from the motivations behind the Commissioner’s actions, I doubt the commissioners are aware that the statutes only authorize  — not mandate — the provision of transportation (G.S. 115C-239 and 115C-252) services by local schools. In addition, the statutes only require local schools to provide  services to the extent practicable (115C-263).

Charter schools can choose to provide food and transportation services to students, and parents know when they apply for admission whether it is provided. Transportation and food services can require significant additional expenditures and this will come at the expense of educational services. As more charter schools compete for students you will see schools use these two services as additional benefits to draw students.

Requiring charter schools to provide food and transportation services would require significant additional expenditures with no additional funds to purchase buses or build cafeterias. The requirement would erode institutional autonomy and flexibility, once a defining quality of charter schools.

If traditional public schools are not required to provide transportation and food services, requiring charter schools to do so is unfair and unreasonable.  To the extent practicable is reasonable phrasing here.  Why shouldn’t charter schools be governed by the same principle?

Orange County has allocated $84,500 in taxpayer money to put the sales tax on the ballot, including $50,000 to tell voters how it would benefit residents.

Durham’s referendum campaigns are bankrolled by two private committees, which together have spent about $8,311.

Daren Bakst, director of legal and regulatory studies at the John Locke Foundation, cites an Orange County video and a flier distributed by Durham Public Schools as examples of illegal endorsements. He has asked the counties to remove such information from their websites and to stop disseminating it to students and their parents.

Small problem – using taxpayer funds to lobby for or endorse such measures is against the law.

Last year, the General Assembly passed a law that says counties, municipalities and school boards “shall not use public funds to endorse or oppose a referendum, election or a particular candidate for office.”

Orange County is no stranger to using taxpayer funds to lobby for yet more taxpayer dollars. I wrote about this issue in 2008, before the new state law was enacted, but the legality of local governments using taxpayer funds to endorse tax increases was clearly in doubt.

But just what kind of taxpayer-financed “education” is legal? The North Carolina Court of Appeals attempted to clarify this issue in 2002 in the case Dollar v. Town of Cary. In that case, the court declared that the “determination of whether advertising is informational or promotional is a factual question. … It is not necessary for the advertisement to urge voters to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘for’ or ‘against’ a particular issue or candidate in order for the advertising to be promotional.”

The Dollar ruling seemingly draws the legal line at “informational” versus “promotional,” and “education” versus “advocacy” in terms of the message being disseminated by county officials. In their quest for more tax revenues, local officials have often straddled this line.

….

According to a March 6 article in the News & Observer, a petition is being filed with the Orange County Board of Elections to investigate possible election violations stemming from the board’s decision to pay $10,000 for public research polling regarding local tax options.

Taxpayer-funded opinion surveys like this one violate election laws when they are used for strategic, rather than educational, purposes. Was the Orange County poll used for strategic purposes? According to Mark Hertzog of Hertzog Research, LLC –the company that conducted the poll for Orange County — “It (the poll results) can help determine how best to put that issue to your voters during a campaign.”

Given their recent controversy, Orange County officials should have known better than to use taxpayer funds for such a blatant endorsement of a ballot initiative. But their insatiable desire for more tax dollars is simply too strong.

In December 2010, the Smart Start contractor Child Care Services Association (CCSA) mismanaged a multi-million childcare scholarship contract, kicking nearly 200 children off the scholarship halfway through the year, sending parents scrambling to find another source of affordable childcare and affecting childcare providers who had to make up for lost revenue.

Now, Durham County Smart Start has decided to give CCSA the scholarship contract, again.

Despite protest from members of the public, allegations from board members claiming the committee that makes funding decisions is not representative of the community it serves, and appeals from board members who claim they never got a straight answer as to why CCSA botched the contract, the board carried the decision. Roughly one third of the board, those most affected by the CCSA funding mismanagement, were listed as having conflicts of interest and were unable to participate in the final discussion or in the funding vote.

Durham County Smart Start appropriates around 80 percent of its budget to CCSA.

View the full article and video footage of the Durham Smart Start board meeting here.