[WestMALocals] Fwd: Press Release| Broadhurst is the Education Candidate

[Owen Broadhurst]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Owen Broadhurst <owen.broadhurst at gmail.com>
Date: Oct 13, 2006 5:00 PM
Subject: Press Release| Broadhurst is the Education Candidate
To: aan at turley.com

Owen R. Broadhurst
96 Elbert Road
Agawam, MA  01001-3202
413.786.1508

AGAWAM – The Green-Rainbow Party candidate for State Representative in the
Third Hampden District, Owen R. Broadhurst of Agawam, insists that the
Democratic Party has failed our schools and that only the Green-Rainbow
Party has the recipe for their success.



Noting that proposed changes to the foundation budget and Chapter 70
distribution bring our schools to nowhere near the funding levels they once
enjoyed prior to the Democratic Party sponsored devastation of both Chapter
70 funding and local and regional aid for transportation, Broadhurst argues
that no Democratic Party legislature will pass into law the single-payer
health plan and fair tax formulae needed to restore the promise of public
education as the foundation of equal opportunity for all regardless of class
or race.



"My friend, former state representative candidate and present Whately School
Committee member Nat Fortune, observed that 'with ever increasing bills for
energy, transportation and health care, increasing mandates, and decreasing
funds, schools have been left with an impossible choice between cuts in the
programs most needed to meet ever-rising state and federal standards or
hikes in local taxes and fees that fall most heavily on those who can least
afford them'", notes Broadhurst. "The proposed FY 2007 budget is at long
last an improvement, but it in no way makes up for the damage Democrats have
caused in the past. We must no longer permit the Democratic Party their
terrible record of child abuse."



Broadhurst insists on the following reforms:



*Revise the foundation budget so that determination of costs is based on the
actual standards that schools are required to meet. "We should not apportion
aid based on a fiction," argues Broadhurst, "but should base it on the
mandates of the state instead."



*Revise determinations of community contributions to be based on relative
community wealth and the realization that property taxes are not an
appropriate funding mechanism for public education. "Communities in Western
Massachusetts are being short-changed," argues Broadhurst, "despite – or
perhaps precisely because of – how the least affluent communities largely
exist outside of the Beltway. You can't squeeze blood from a stone."



*Revise the means through which the Commonwealth generates revenue. "We can
raise revenue from 15 to 20% while slashing the total tax burden – the total
accumulated costs of property tax, excise tax, sales tax and fees as well as
income tax – for more than 80% of the population," Broadhurst observes. "Not
one opponent will reduce your burden."



*Embrace a single-payer health plan. "The savings to cities and towns if a
single-payer plan is implemented would prove enormous," Broadhurst contends,
"but the Democratic legislature robs Peter to pay Daddy Warbucks while all
opposing candidates – claiming ironically to support affordable health care
– refuse to condemn the terrible fraud of a 'universal health care plan'
that the Democratic legislature passed as a sick joke."



"We all want stronger, better schools," Broadhurst says, "but I happen to be
the sole and only candidate offering a genuine plan for how we finally might
achieve them"


-- 
Owen R. Broadhurst
Candidate for State Representative
Third Hampden District
http://www.owenbroadhurst.org

-- 
Owen R. Broadhurst
Candidate for State Representative
Third Hampden District
http://www.owenbroadhurst.org