IT’S long past time for some gutsy public official to come forward to acknowledge and address serious anomalies in GovGuam spending priorities, and attempt to do something about it. Under current law, GPSS stands at the head of the line for funding, regardless of what may be happening elsewhere.
It’s a voracious, top-heavy money sponge, gobbling public funds at alarming rates under the umbrella of laws crafted by well-meaning but frustrated, desperate and somewhat naive lawmakers; laws created as backlash to the consistent policy of every administration to shortchange public education, predictably resulting in perpetuation of chronic deficiencies in staffing, physical plant, equipment and supplies, and some of the lowest standardized test scores in the nation.
Complicit in this abysmal mess is the entrenched self-serving GPSS bureaucracy — demonstrably more interested in job security and compensation than in educating the student body — as evidenced by its failure to show improvement regardless of funding levels. I ask this question: when, and how, did public education somehow become more important to the community than the public health and safety of its members?
Spending priorities are disastrously skewed. Education is not, and never has been, a matter of life or death. Nevertheless, emergency room patients commonly wait for hours at GMH to be seen, availability of specialized expertise and treatment is problematic, and space is limited. The disabled are grossly underserved, prompting federal intervention. Public safety agencies are habitually short-changed, and we’re increasingly vulnerable to criminal activities, much of it drug-related.
These conditions persist because GPSS consumes more than half of available funds. We’re locked into this upside-down view of reality by local law that must be changed soon. Who will step forward to acknowledge this travesty, and do what needs to be done to put it right?

DAVE DAVIS
Yigo, Guam