Doomed From The Start

I learned a huge lesson in the 90's.  I saw a lot of people make careless mistakes early in a long process that doomed their entire venture.  For example, I've seen people print nominating petitions and forget to include which district they were running for or get the wrong date for the election.   

I'm not talking about a mistake that makes things more difficult along the way. I'm talking about an initial mistake that dooms an entire project from day one. 

By the end of the 90's, I was calling this type of mistake the Mars Mission Mistake. 

You may recall that it's been just over nine years since the Mars Climate probe disintegrated in the Martian atmosphere.  The Mission cost $125 million and took years of planning and construction.  The flight itself took over 10 months.   Investigators eventually figured out the reason the vehicle burned up in orbit.

NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because one engineering team used metric units while another used English units for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.

Isn't that crazy?  One team did the re-entry calculation in feet and the other team used meters.  Since a meter is about 3 times as long as a foot, the re-entry rockets tried to slow the craft down a couple minutes after it lay smoldering on the surface.  The probe was doomed before it was even launched. 

I'll never forget what the JPL Director said at the time.  "Our inability to recognize and correct this simple error has had major implications."

Talk about an understatement.

Throughout the 1990s, this type of mistake was most notably carried out by NASA and the Arizona Cardinals.  However, you may have read about the glaring "Mars Mission Mistake" in Saturday's Republic. 

You will recall that in 2006, the Legislature set up a commission to look into merging school districts.  The committee met for most of 2008 and finally came up with ballot propositions to form six unified districts.  Five of those six were rejected by the voters and now opponents of the one consolidation measure that passed have decided to sue. 

Here's their point.

However, the districts that are supposed to merge contend the ballot measure failed based on the wording in the contentious unification legislation that brought the issue to a vote.

Senate Bill 1068 stated that a majority of "qualified electors" in each affected district would be required to approve the unification plan.

I went back to the original bill from the 2006 legislative session and here's the language. 

A majority of the qualified electors in each affected school district is required to approve the proposed unification plan.

My gosh, that's an unbelievable oversight.  After all, we know what "Qualified Electors" means.  That's why everyone voted against Prop. 105.  In fact, here's the language from Prop 105.

(A spending Measure) shall not become law unless the measure is approved by a majority of the qualified electors then registered to vote in this state.

We know that "qualified electors" are different from "voters."  The opponents of Prop 105 made it clear that if approved, the measure would count people who stayed home as "no" votes.  And that is exactly what should happen here. 

In fact, only about 30% of the registered voters made their way far enough down the ballot to get to the unification proposal.  So even if they had all voted in favor, the initiative wouldn't have met the statutory requirement.

I'm sure that it was a mistake.  Someone inserted the wrong language, but the language that they inserted was clear--"qualified voter" is a very precise term.  It's not the role of the courts to ignore what the legislature wrote just because Marty Shultz says it wasn't what they really meant.   

The entire district unification process...months of hearings, thousands of hours...was doomed from the start. 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Big Sister]

The development of a bill requires some very deliberate attention to the wording. The legislators, who allowed this to pass out of committee and the floor vote understanding the very far reaching effects, did so because there was such a measure of majority as to be sure it was truly representative of the voter’s intentions. Legislators have choices when writing a referendum, they can write for a simple majority or, as they did on SB 1068, a majority of qualified electors. The law is the law and the obligation to follow it should not be diminished because a powerful lobbyist and his gang of cohorts say so.

[Joe]

It is a huge mistake only assuming this was an idea hatched in the minds of legislators, carried by legislative staffers and, after vetting by her staff, signed by the Governor. That is a huge mistake. However, when you consider this was an idea hatched by Marty Shultz and carried by Marty Shultz and that the legislators and Governor were only along for the ride -- willing to give in to his pet project because he had done some other good things for the state -- then it is more than a mistake. Let's just put it this way: if Marty Shultz were a lawyer right now, he'd be checking his malpractice insurance policy to see if he had coverage.

Oh - and it's more than just a doomed endeavor. Just think of how much time and money were wasted on this subject when we might have been working on something else more productive.

[Ann]

And this mistake just keeps on growing larger and larger. Now Marty Shultz has said the commission will meet to decide how to "reword" the question and take it back to voters. He is even proposing a statewide vote in 2010 to unify EVERY district. So, all those folks who said “No, thanks”, he is saying to you, “I don’t care what you want for your kids and your tax dollars, this is what I want!!!”

What happened to the law and since when do lobbyists get to rewrite existing legislation to suit their purpose? This looks more and more like a strongman operation in a foreign country. Some guy with lots of firepower comes in and rewrites the Constitution making him King or President for life. Pinnacle West wants this to pass, so they will just demand a do-over. How legitimate is that? And where is the oversight?

The bill that authorized this commission expires at the end of this year. Someone, or several someone’s, should pull the plug on this mess before it gets worse!

[Jean McGrath]

I think the basic premise of consolidation is flawed. Large school districts do not produce better learning or smaller budgets, just the opposite. You need only look at Tucson Unified and Phoenix Union to see how little influence the residents of those districts have over programs and spending. If Pinnacle West wants to reduce school taxes, they should promote better candidates for school boards, not consolidation. We need to get back to basics, teach all children to read in 1st grade ( can you pronounce phonics) as Dr. Carol Peck did in Alhambra District when she was Superintendent there. Her students outscored all other regular public schools in the state and she did it with the highest percentage of students from non-English speaking homes and one of the lowest wage demographics in Arizona.

[Realist]

Even if the Commission can work its way around this error, there's another ignored landmine in its way: the Federal Voting Rights Act.

Any plan that eliminates elected positions (such as school board seats) needs to be approved by the Feds. Apparently that's something else the Commission failed to tell anyone.

[Ann]

Oh no, it came up. It is among the many things Marty says the "new school board" will have to figure out.

Like how to pay for the huge costs of such a worthless effort (Jean is right), how to handle multiple contracts, benefit packages, pay schedules, and almost 40,000 children to educate in an area still growing even in this economy. But that is just a minor inconvenience.

Marty pushed it, Linda Gray signed her name to it, and now taxpayers get to foot the bill for this folly. Sen. Huppenthal has opposed any further action by the commission; as the new Senate Ed chair and a hopeful for Tom Horne’s job….let’s see if he has the stuff to stop this train wreck.

[peoria]

Obviously the courts will decide the interpretation of the language.

However, don't blame Marty Shultz or Linda Gray should the language be interpretated as meaning more than the majority of voters.

The language of very few bills at the legislature is actually drafted by a legislator. Staffers and/or attorneys for the lobbyists generally draft the specific language of a bill. It is then generally reviewed by the attorneys at the legislative council, the rules attorneys for both the House and Senate, etc.

So this was not just an oversight by a single person.

Personally, I think we should find a way to blame Janet!

[Joe]

Peoria: I agree with you about Linda Gray but not about Marty. Marty is a well-paid and experienced lobbyist. Some would call him an uber-lobbyist. They are paid to get bills through the process and that means not only schmoozing with legislators but drafting language and getting that language in the bill. Sure legislative council and legislative research staff have a say in it, but if the lobbyist is carrying that bill, he's the one that is accountable. And that's what makes this so remarkable: this truly has been Marty Shultz' pet project for decades. You would have thought he put a little more care into it. Then again, maybe the emperor has no clothes and Marty isn't the lobbyist everyone thought he was.

[DGN]

Clearly the wording was a mistake, but doesn't anyone find it telling that the districts are working against the wishes of their constituents?

Apparently, the voters and taxpayers in the affected districts are unsatisfied with the status quo. But the education bureaucrats who practically worship the status quo would sooner use lemon juice for eye drops than submit to change.

I can't blame people for wanting to save their own jobs, but that's the only purpose this lawsuit serves. These deistrict leaders will completely ignore the vote even though as a pure marketing survey it should tell them they are not meeting the needs of their customers. But when did educrats ever care about that?

[Joe]

DGN: Change to what? For what purpose? I don't think the "educrats" are resistant to change if it is backed up by research and makes sense. Unification doesn't. Not here, anyway and not this plan. As to the district going against the will of their constituents...I think you are off base here. This thing passed in these six districts only because there was no campaign to inform the voters as to what unification would do and wouldn't do. (A fair point whether they should have done so). It isn't a coincidence that unification failed every place there was a good information campaign -- the more people heard about it, the less they liked it.

As Greg says, less than 30% of the people voted in this unification election. A bare majority of those passed it. That is hardly a mandate for change -- especially when most didn't understand it.

[DGN]

So, Joe:

You're saying the people in these districts are happy? The only empirical evidence we have (an election) shows the people who cared enough to vote are not pleased with the status quo. Apparently, they like the idea of unification -- that's the change.

Your claim that the "yes" voters must not have understood the implications of the vote is ad hominem and unsupportable. You can't possibly know the mind of each voter. It's the typical argument of a candidate on the losing end of a vote. Do better than that.

Your argument that a majority did not get out to vote may well be fact, but that's not how we govern in the U.S. Bill Clinton did not get even 50% of the vote in 1992, but he was undisputably elected. Ev Mecham did not get 50 percent of the vote in 1986, yet he, too, was undisputably elected. Light rail became a reality in Phoenix even though a tiny fraction of voters turned out and approved it.

I list all of these things as examples, not because I support or oppose any of them. They simply point out how we run things here.

Finally, I laugh at your suggestion that educators will support change if it's research-based and makes sense. I'm in a perfect position to know that's just not true. The American education establishment is the most status-quo loving group of people this side of the Vatican. Any time someone tries to bring in reform, the school boards association, the unions, the administrators, etc., will crawl out of the woodwork to oppose it. I've seen it dozens of times at the legislature.

And education research? 90% of it is pure garbage. Any researcher who wants to keep his or her job will arrive at the conclusions the benefactor paying for the research grant expects.

Cynical? Maybe; but with good reason.

[Joe]

DGN:

I realize what it sounds like when I say the voters didn't understand the issue and that's why they approved it -- I alluded to that in my post. What I do know is that there was no organized effort (call it campaign if you want) in the districts in question. In the others that failed there was.

And as to the assertion that the education establishment clings to the status quo...I would say you have that perspective based on where you sit. You are only looking at change happening from the Legislature on down, not where most of the change happens from the ground up. Educators change their approaches every day; school boards change programs and policies every day: these happen because there is a need for it, proven by experience and research -- not because some overhead governmental entity mandated it. That is the essence of local control. Why is it that we think real innovation, productivity and growth will occur in business when they are unfettered by regulation and we don't take away their money (taxes)...but all of the same rules don't apply to public education (only of course they need public money to do their jobs).

This has been an interesting exchange and you make some great points. I would say though that, bottom line: the measure did not pass by the plain language of the requirement set forth in the law and that should be the end of it. There is no ambiguity in the language and you only look to intent if there is ambiguity.