GoBigEd

Posted 9:42 AM by Susan Darst Williams

KATE WITEK'S PETITION DRIVE:
HELP HER, OBI WAN-KENOBI --
SHE'S OUR ONLY HOPE FOR PERFORMANCE AUDITS

We're keeping fingers and toes crossed that State Auditor Kate Witek gets enough signatures to get on the November ballot as a petition candidate. The deadline is Friday. I myself have collected eight signatures without even hardly trying; I hope scads more come in.

Yes, it stinks that she switched parties and invested her considerably admirable conservative pedigree with the darn old Democrats, but look at it this way: she's still the same person, and she's still our best hope for ever getting meaningful audits of education tax dollars.

Nebraska is the ONLY state in the Union that does NOT do performance audits of its governmental operations. Nebraska is the ONLY state in the Union that doesn't fine-tooth comb its education spending, at least a little. Witek has been pleading with GOP activists on this one, and getting nowhere. No wonder she walked. It's an obvious need, and they're too deep into cya status-quo governance to allow it.

It's embarrassing, and it's a big reason Nebraska's K-12 spending per pupil has topped the $8,000 a year mark. With our favorable demographics, that figure should be at least $1,000 or $2,000 less. The reason it's not is that we have zero, zip, nada accountability . . . but we could have fairly good levels if we could get performance audits in place.

Witek is up to speed, active nationally, and unassailably firm on this point. Other auditor candidates don't appear to even have this on their scopes. She's our best hope of ever getting it done.

So if you want to sign a petition, email me at swilliams1@cox.net, and if you're not too awful darn far out of my way, I'll come to you and get your John or Joan Hancock.