Group for Miss. ed funding prop outspends opponents on TV
Published 2:00 pm Thursday, October 15, 2015
- In this March 23, 2015 photograph taken in Jackson, Miss., former Netscape and FedEx executive Jim Barksdale confers with his wife Donna at a college board meeting. Barksdale, and former Secretary of State and timber magnate Dick Molpus and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation have given at least $1.6 million to two charities that have in turn given $2.6 million to Better Schools, Better Jobs, a campaign committee supporting Initiative 42, which voters will decide on Nov. 3. The ballot initiative is designed to guarantee adequate funding to public schools. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Supporters of a Mississippi school funding proposal are spending three times more on TV commercials, so far, than opponents.
Better Schools, Better Jobs has spent $536,910 for television spots, and Improve Mississippi Political Initiative Committee has spent $174,780, according to figures released Thursday.
The numbers come from the Center for Public Integrity, which analyzed data about political advertising on broadcast television from Kantar Media/CMAG, a media tracking firm that offers a widely accepted estimate of the money spent to air each spot.
The figures cover ads aired through Monday, yet they represent only part of the money spent on political advertising. They don’t include ads for radio, online, direct mail or TV ads on local cable systems. The estimates also don’t include the cost of making the ads.
Mississippi’s Nov. 3 ballot will have dueling education funding proposals, one put there by a voters’ petition process and the other by lawmakers.
More than 100,000 people signed petitions for Initiative 42, which says: “Should the state be required to provide for the support of an adequate and efficient system of free public schools?” It would allow people to sue the state in chancery court to seek additional money for schools.
“Some politicians want you to vote ‘no’ on 42, which means fewer teachers, classrooms stay crowded, not enough textbooks or computers and even higher property taxes,” a narrator says in a pro-42 commercial.
Critics say 42 would take budget decisions out of legislators’ hands and put a judge in charge. The legislative alternative, Measure 42-A says: “Should the Legislature provide for the establishment and support of effective free public schools without judicial enforcement?”
This is the first time legislators have put an alternative dealing with the same subject on the same ballot as a citizen-sponsored proposal.
“If Initiative 42 passes, one liberal Hinds County judge can get all of the power — the power to take your money from your school and give it to the school district he chooses,” a narrator says in an anti-42 commercial.
The current formula for most state spending on schools is called the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. It has been fully funded only twice since it was put into law in 1997. While Gov. Phil Bryant and fellow Republicans who lead the Legislature say the state is putting a record amount of money into education this year, critics say funding for MAEP has fallen $1.7 billion short since the budget year that started in July 2008.
Campaign finance reports filed on the secretary of state’s website show Better Schools, Better Jobs has raised and spent significantly more money, overall, than the more recently created Improve Mississippi Political Initiative Committee.
IMPIC has received contributions of $25,000 each from the political action committees of several business groups, including state associations for manufacturers, bankers, home builders and real estate agents. It has also received contributions of $10,000 each from the campaign funds of Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, House Speaker Philip Gunn and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Herb Frierson.
Most of the pro-42 money has come from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, timber magnate and former Democratic Secretary of State Dick Molpus and former Netscape and FedEx executive Jim Barksdale, according to documents reviewed and interviews conducted by The Associated Press. Those three are giving money to Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation and New Venture Fund, which in turn are giving it to Better Schools, Better Jobs. The Southern Education Foundation says it’s also giving money from its own reserves.
