After claiming he was going to run a strictly positive campaign, Gov. Rick Snyder has a new negative attack ad out that features a retired teacher named Linda Thaler.
Turns out that she lives literally right next door to Snyder’s vacation home on Gun Lake in Middleville, Michigan.
The reality is that, despite Ms. Thayer’s contention otherwise, her neighbor and friend Rick Snyder HAS cut funding going to classrooms. Here’s the lowdown on the ad:
The Snyder ad references Public Act 236 of 2003. That particular bill passed 38-0 in the Michigan Senate and every Democrat in the House at the time voted against it. In other words, it was a bipartisan bill, at least in the Senate, and both the Senate and the House were majority Republican at the time. The bill appropriated $152.4 million in new revenue to close an expected shortfall in the School Aid Fund. Details can be found in the House Fiscal Agency report HERE.
In other words, the contention that Schauer and Granholm were solely responsible for the cuts in education funding is a lie. It was something that had bipartisan support.
Here are the details regarding the cuts to school funding as outline in the 2011-2012 School Aid Budget:
- K12 cut: $930,663,300
- Community college cut: $12,000,000
- Higher education cut: $216,000,100
- Total education cut: $1,158,663,400
Snyder and his Republican colleagues did, indeed, shore up the teacher pension fund but they did it at the expense of money going to the classroom. His claims that he didn’t cut school funding are disingenuous, at best, and deceitful lies at worst. Ask any school board member in Michigan if they have more money to spend on their classrooms since Gov. Snyder came into office. Go ahead. Ask them. They’ll give you the truth.
The ad references a Detroit Free Press article from February 2nd of this year as proof that Snyder hasn’t cut education funding. Here’s the title of that article:
“Analysis: More money for Michigan’s schools, but not for its classrooms”.
[M]ost school districts have less money for the classroom today than when Granholm left office.
Snyder is counting on you not to scratch below the surface.
It’s no coincidence that the only teacher Rick Snyder could get to go to bat for him is his neighbor on Gun Lake, a teacher who clearly retired long before the draconian cuts that Snyder and his Republican pals in the legislature inflicted on our public schools were put in place. No other self-respecting teacher would dare to tell such a bald-faced lie in public. The education of children is simply too important to them than to lie on behalf of Gov. Snyder.
UPDATE: Gov. Snyder finally found a second teacher willing to do an ad for him. It’s the Vice Chair of the Oakland County Republican Party. Read about it HERE.
[Meme provided by the Schauer campaign via Facebook]
