Last week's column on the questionable idea to use one-time state surplus money to begin a presumably ongoing upgrade of Arkansas teacher salaries engendered pushback both resentful and substantive. Now, to the higher-quality pushback: I've been challenged on my concern about using one-time surplus cash for teacher raises passed along to future budget years. I'm asked: Isn't it a choice as to what to use one-time money for? Then all that got amplified by inflation, by higher wages producing more state withholding and higher tax collections on what those higher wages were buying. John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame.

Source: Washington Post June 15, 2022 09:11 UTC