The Journal Star still hasn’t put yesterday’s editorial on their website where everyone can read it. I don’t blame them. It was so bad I’d want to just forget the whole thing, too, if I were they.

Still, I subscribe to the paper, so I have a copy of it, and I just remembered another ridiculous statement of theirs I failed to mention in my earlier post:

Now State Sen. George Shadid says he’ll ask the governor not to sign legislation he sponsored to help District 150 pay for new schools. [ . . . ] Shadid must surely recognize it’s not the School Board or superintendent he’s attempting to punish, but Peoria’s children. His bill and this issue go way beyond just this one school.

The bill to which they are referring is SB 2477 which lets the Public Building Commission issue bonds for school construction — in Peoria only, and only through the year 2011. So when the editorial board says this bill goes “way beyond just this one school,” remember that it only applies to Peoria’s school district, which is currently planning to build a total of six schools within the next five years. “Way beyond” seems a bit hyperbolic, don’t you think?

But on to their main point. What would happen if the governor didn’t sign this bill? Would it punish Peoria’s children, as the Journal Star contends?

In a word, no. For one thing, their statement assumes a new building is so desperately needed that the denial of it is considered punishment. That contention hasn’t been proven.

But besides that, the school district could still issue bonds for school construction without this bill — they’d just have to get the voters’ okay via a referendum. Isn’t that awful? Imagine! Having to (gasp!) communicate to the public and (*wheeze*) persuade the public to invest in such a plan. Horrors! Funny, I sense a trend here . . . .

I get the impression that the Journal Star editorial board has joined the school and park boards in believing the public is too stupid or too bothersome and must be avoided at all costs. It’s a shame they think so little of us, considering we’re the ones who will be paying off this construction through our property taxes.

Sen. Shadid is doing the right thing by not letting the school board continue to leave the public in the dark. Why a newspaper would advocate a governmental body keeping the public in the dark is beyond me — it seems to fly in the face of their mission.

But what do I know? I’m just one of the 113,000 stupid taxpayers in Peoria.