Letters to the editor for March 11, 2009

The March 7 front page article did a nice job of lending credibility to the idea of a do-over election for Minnesota's Senate race. It made me ponder, for a moment, what Norm Coleman would have to say if the situation was reversed.

Hey, wait a minute, we don't have to imagine, do we? When he led the race by a similar number of votes the day after the election, he told the world if he were in Al Franken's shoes he would request a stop to the mandatory recount just to save Minnesota taxpayers their hard-earned dollars!

DON INGRAHAM, LONSDALE, MINN.

Kudos to Annette Meeks for her March 9 commentary, "Secrecy in the public sphere." She presented cogent reasons for the Legislature to reject attempts to keep city government budget and legislative proposals secret.

Those who care about transparency in the government decisionmaking process should be working to convince Gov. Tim Pawlenty and his administration to come away from their antidemocratic positions on government information.

Recently, those positions have included a proposal to presume that government information ought not be public (reversing current law), to treat many records of the governor's office as not "official" and therefore disposable, and to delete public e-mails from state computers after a short period of time. The governor has also vetoed a bill that would have made budget and legislative proposals of his administration more public.

In addition to destroying the ability of both current voters and future historians to assess the Pawlenty administration, these positions reflect a strong opposition to our core value that a democracy cannot function properly if the governed are denied access to information about how their government makes decisions.

In his March 1 commentary, Mitch Pearlstein suggests that there is no relation between school funding and achievement. To the contrary, funding that supports smaller class sizes, more individual attention for students and a more conducive learning environment makes a huge difference. Significant research supports that point, as do examples from thousands of students and teachers.

Pearlstein also argues that a reduction in school funding does not mean students would learn less, implying that such a reduction would not be detrimental to education. Clearly, the opposite is true. When school funds are cut, students pay the price. It is more difficult to learn in a crowded classroom, and as academic programs are cut, so are the opportunities for schools to meet students' needs and help them reach their potential.

He argues that K-12 schools can better handle cuts than the University of Minnesota. But he misses the point entirely. Education is not a zero-sum game. We can't pit K-12 schools against the University of Minnesota or the MnSCU system. It is an integrated system. K-12 schools prepare our students for higher education, and higher education is the engine that helps drive the state by preparing well-educated workers and leaders. You can't have one without the other. That's why we support strong funding for both systems.

The educational system from pre-K through higher education has served Minnesota well over the years. We need to figure out ways to support the depth and breadth of that system and to see it as an integrated whole, not as disparate parts.

TOM DOOHER, PRESIDENT, EDUCATION MINNESOTA, ST. PAUL

Dedicated high-speed rail lines of this type make sense. People will leave from and arrive at city centers, and scarce airspace and congested airports will be reserved for longer-distance trips where rail can't compete as effectively.