You’ve been told it’s ‘for the children’ or ‘for the community’ and that you must vote yes to prevent a doomsday scenario. Ignore this, and say no.

Sick of the presidential election? Me too. But there’s one thing that, no matter what, should get you excited about voting: the opportunity to vote against bond issues.

This year, voters have been or will be asked to consider 2,326 school bonds, and that total doesn’t include any of the other purposes for which local and state governments put bond questions on the ballot. Check your ballot tomorrow for any bond issue, and make sure to vote against it.

Most of the time when the government wants to issue debt and tax you, it just does it. But there are times when the government has to come to you, the citizen, and ask politely on a secret ballot whether it can take even more of your money than it already does. And you can simply say no.

There are lots of people who don’t want you to say no. The government itself. The public-sector unions. The NGOs that will try to scoop up the extra spending for themselves. They’ll dress up these concerns as being “for the children” or make up doomsday scenarios about what will happen if the referendum fails. Ignore them, and say no.

One of the most common forms of misdirection on bond issues is when proponents frame the referendum as being about whatever the money will be spent on. So if you vote against a school bond, that means you oppose education. If you vote against a public-parks bond, that means you oppose children playing outdoors.

That is not what a bond referendum says. A bond referendum is not asking whether you believe the government should pay for schools or parks. It is asking whether you believe the government should issue additional debt and raise your taxes higher than they already are to pay for schools or parks.

That is a completely different question from whether you think it’s a good idea, in the abstract, to add on to the high school or build a new library. You can support those things without believing they should be financed with new debt and higher taxes. If that’s your position, just say no.

Public schools in particular are undeserving of greater debt-financed spending. “Congress doled out $190 billion to states for K-12 education during the pandemic, $122 billion of which was part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) in March 2021,” Aaron Garth Smith and Christian Barnard of the Reason Foundation wrote earlier this year. “For context, that’s more than three times the total federal K-12 funding for the 2020 school year and more than $3,800 per student in extra funding.”

Per-pupil public-school spending increased by 8.9 percent in fiscal year 2022, the most recent year for which census data are available. That was the largest year-over-year increase in over 20 years. Public schools don’t need more money, and they certainly don’t need more debt-financed money.

Yet, in the city of Fairfax, Va., where I live, there’s a $220 million school bond on the ballot tomorrow. That’s more than double the amount of the school district’s entire five-year capital improvement plan.

But you wouldn’t know that from this postcard the district sent me in the mail:

This is how these bond issues are usually talked about. What if your idea of community pride is not saddling the community with more debt? If the buildings are well maintained, why does the district need $220 million — a number the postcard does not mention anywhere — in debt-financed money to keep maintaining them? Why did the district not adequately budget for the high-school roof replacement, which is a regular expense that is known well in advance?

The back of the postcard includes evidence of what needs replacing:

Those doors look bad. They should be replaced. They don’t cost $220 million. The school district should use the money it already has to replace them. And if it truly can’t find the money in its current budget, the schools should hold a bake sale. Don’t insult taxpayers’ intelligence by pointing to two doors and some recurring expenses as justification for a $220 million bond issue.

But it will probably pass anyway, because voters see “schools” and think “I like schools” and vote for it. In recent years, over 75 percent of school-bond issues in the U.S. have been approved by voters. And the teachers’ unions will basically always be the top spenders in the campaign surrounding the bond issue, always urging an affirmative vote, because there is no amount of public money that will ever satiate teachers’ unions.

Don’t let that get you down. The way to change those odds is by voting, and your vote has more of a chance of making a difference in a local election with fewer voters than it does in statewide elections. Organizing local opposition to bond issues should be a greater priority for conservatives who care about their communities.

I’ve written it before, and I’ll write it again; this should be your thought process for voting on bond issues for any purpose:

The answer to at least one of those three questions will almost certainly be no, which should also be your vote on any bond referendum.