Ads on the sides of school buses do not constitute a sign of the apocalypse. Western civilization will survive.
The reason such a once-unthinkable concept may soon become a reality in Indiana does represent a big problem, though.
State government leaders have failed to properly fund something as basic and important as public-school transportation. They have taken fiscal austerity and conservatism to a pathetic extreme.
Those “reformers” — dominant for the past decade — effectively choked off adequate funding for school districts to operate their buses. Caps on property taxes, enacted by an understandably popular referendum in 2010, saved Indiana property owners $704 million on tax bills last year, but also drained $245 million in funds that Hoosier schools relied upon for buses and other high-cost items.
As a result, cash-strapped Muncie schools tried a local referendum to help pay for their buses, but voters said no.
So the Muncie district asked the Indiana Department of Education for permission to end the school bus service it could no longer afford. The state said no.
Has anyone in the Statehouse read “Catch 22”?
With no alternatives, school districts came up with the idea to allow advertisements on their buses. Creative? Yes. Desperate? Yes.
After losing a half-million dollars in bus funds last year because of property tax caps, Zionsville school administrators pushed their local legislators to craft a bill to allow the ads. House Bill 1062, alive in the current General Assembly, would create a pilot program granting three school districts the rights to splash ads on buses next school year. Zionsville officials have no idea how much money the ads will generate, but they need any and all new revenue. If it works, schools around Indiana may join in.
Is this what we’ve come to as a state?
“We need to find a solution other than having schools have to rely on selling advertising to keep their buses running,” state Senate Minority Leader Tim Lanane, an Anderson Democrat, told CNHI’s Maureen Hayden. At least one member of the super-majority Republican Party sees the incongruity of the situation. “If it’s something a local community wants, I think the state should provide the option to do [the school bus ads],” said Rep. Todd Huston, R-Fishers, author of a transportation bill that includes the bus-ad pilot program. “It’s not deemed as something that solves the larger problem, but it can be used as a complementary revenue source.”
The “larger problem” is exactly that. The tax reformers spawned it, sold it to the public and pipelined it into reality. They lack the courage to repair its unintended consequences and, barring a stunning sea change in voting trends, have no visible political incentive to do so.
So let the school bus ads roll. If you’re wondering what these promotions might entail, fear not. Lawmakers do care about the ads’ content. Alcohol, tobacco and other products forbidden to minors are restricted by the bill.
So are political ads, which is probably in the legislators’ best interests. They’ve likely imagined possible challengers buying space on school bus fenders to ask passersby, “Like this ad? Re-elect my opponent and you’ll see more.”
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