Colorado City district should account for public funds
 
Editorial
The Spectrum
 
If you accept public funds, the government is going to want to know how you are using them - no matter what your religious beliefs are.

That's why it was good to see the state of Arizona finally take action to investigate the Colorado City Unified School District by executing a search warrant on the district's offices on Wednesday. The Arizona Attorney General's office said it has been investigating the district for the past two years, but long before Wednesday the state would have had reason to investigate the district's finances.

For example, teachers went unpaid for three pay periods during the last school year and the district has a staff of approximately 100 paid employees to serve a student body that numbers around 300. One can only imagine the numbers on the budget reports that were being sent into the state.

Given the makeup of the Colorado City community, which is mostly members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which teaches polygamy as one of its central tenets, one has to wonder if Arizona authorities were a bit apprehensive about taking action for fear of being accused of religious persecution. It is only natural to not to want to be the one who led a 21st century version of the Short Creek raids. However, getting a school district to account for how it is spending public funds has nothing to do with religion. When someone accepts public monies, whether he has one wife or three, the state has a responsibility to make sure taxpayers' funds are used in an appropriate manner.

The Arizona authorities may well have an argument that they needed time to build a case, but one has to wonder how long it would have taken them to move in if the same practices were being conducted in the Beaver Dam School District, which is also in Mohave County but removed from the FLDS church.

While the speed of Arizona's investigation can be questioned, the state should nevertheless be given credit for having created and passed legislation that will allow it to put the district into receivership as early as August, before the beginning of the next school year.

Hopefully by then, the state can work things out so that the funds for the Colorado City Unified School District are being well spent on the people they were intended for - the students.
 
TheSpectrum.com
Originally published May 26, 2005
 
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