This financial crisis on the local and national level has never surprised me! It is simple math! When you spend more money than you take in, you will go broke! This is a lesson I learned when I took over a local union financial secretary job to straighten out its busted financial account in a steel mill in Massachusetts many years ago!

Hasn’t Rhode Island’s general treasurer, Frank Caprio, given our taxpayers enough warnings of a financial crisis that our state representatives have failed to address? Warnings such as the expensively run school operations that are bleeding property owners? Many years ago, I started writing to various newspapers about a growing financial crisis in our school operations. Rhode Island taxpayers are paying at least 50 percent more taxes for public education than the rest of the nation, but this has not yet penetrated our state representatives’ ears!

Large states such as California and Texas operate all of their schools from a few large county districts. Meanwhile, Rhode Island, which has only five counties, has chosen to operate its public schools via 36 school districts. Consider the high operational cost for each school’s administration staff, multimillion-dollar school administration buildings and school committee — plus the pension plans which many communities have not properly funded. That could cost billions. Our state legislators need to take over our public-school system and end these costly fiefdoms.

THOMAS D. MacLANE Sr.

Pawtucket