Silence vote another waste of taxpayers' time

Column originally published Oct. 26, 2007

They're serving apple juice in our school cafeterias.

This is an everyday occurrence, as common as broken pencils, lost homework and detention. The apple juice service is a free will thing, with food supervisors and superintendents choosing on their own whether apple juice is the right thing for their students.

But here come the state lawmakers. They love apple juice. They really, really love apple juice. They love apple juice so much, they want to make offering apple juice mandatory in every public school in this fine state. Even though the governor disagrees, they overrule him. They can't come up with enough votes to fully fund the actual education, but gosh darn it, that apple juice will be everywhere.

Of course, if a school doesn't want to serve apple juice, there's no real penalty. Sure, the law says apple juice is mandatory, but no agency has the power to kick down the doors and demand little plastic cups of apple juice be plainly visible for all to see and purchase.

Ridiculous? Maybe. True? Of course not.

But replace apple juice in our cafeterias with silence in our classrooms, and there you have the present state of affairs in Illinois.

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