Alaska's constitution is the fundamental document for the state. It sets forth basic principles and individual rights, the structures and responsibilities of government, and other provisions for the functioning of the state.
Amending the Constitution is a serious matter. We've done it before to strengthen our right to privacy, to establish the Permanent Fund, and for other purposes. But you make a change only if the need is great, the justification is clear, and you don't create more problems than you solve.
An amendment is before the Legislature to delete the following sentence from the Constitution's section on Public Education: "No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution." (House Joint Resolution 1, Senate Joint Resolution 9).
Supposedly, the amendment is needed so that home-schooled and other children could obtain vouchers for private or for-profit schools. But is that all the amendment does? No way. Eliminating that one sentence would allow the state to appropriate or otherwise spend public money for the direct benefit of any religious and other institution.
I can't imagine that such is the intent of the amendment's legislative sponsors. Yet, those would be the doors this change would open.
Beyond that, I'm appalled by the nonsense and drivel that has surrounded consideration of this amendment. The argument that legislators should "just let the people vote," and the Legislature would later decide what is to be done, denigrates the amendment process of the Constitution, which requires a two-thirds vote by the Senate and the House to just bring a proposed change before the electorate. This is serious stuff, and the people need to know what they're voting for.
The lack of consideration and specificity is further evidenced by the pretense that there are no financial effects to this proposition. As others have calculated, the negative effect on public schools of spreading limited education funds to religious and other private institutions could run about $100 million, having particularly deleterious effects in rural areas. The cost in the long run could be far greater.
Alaska's Constitutional Convention extensively discussed the particular sentence that some legislators now wish to eliminate. It was included in the Constitution not because of any such federal requirement. The Statehood Act provided only that we have a system of public schools open to all children of the state and that it be free from sectarian control.
And despite the implication by some, the language that amendment supporters like to refer to pejoratively as the "Blaine Amendment" was not included out of any anti-Catholic bias. In the nonpartisan Convention, there was none such.
All constitutional delegates, every one, including the about 20 percent who were Catholic, supported the education provisions of Article VII as they exist. Today's education language is in the Constitution because all convention delegates accepted the basic policy that public funds were not to directly benefit religious and private educational institutions.
That policy is in line with the fundamental reality that separation of church and state protects both -- public schools remain open to students of all faiths and religions, and religious schools remain free of the government regulations and interference that are inevitably connected to public funds.
So let's please protect Alaska's system of public schools, reject the education amendment, and leave the Constitution be.
Victor Fischer was a delegate to the Alaska Constitutional Convention, and was a member of the Territorial Legislature and state Senate. He is author of "Alaska's Constitutional Convention" (1975) and "To Russia with Love: An Alaskan's Journey" (2012).
By VIC FISCHER