Editorial: Wolf's school book veto was political

Gov. Tom Wolf should put away his veto pen.

The governor is getting a little too comfortable killing legislation with his signature. He has used it more than any other Pennsylvania leader in 40 years with 53 notches in his belt and another year in his term.

He did it again Wednesday when he vetoed a bill that would require school districts to publish information about their textbooks and other materials on their websites.

A Democrat, he is looking at this through a very political lens. At the same time, he says the Republican-heavy Legislature is doing the same, with a bill that “politicizes what is being taught in our schools.”

That is, indeed, something happening right now, in Pennsylvania and beyond. People have questions about what is being taught. But what the governor is missing is that while it might be politically motivated, it’s not exclusively partisan.

On the right, people have concerns about possible teaching of things such as critical race theory — an academic school of thought about race and its impact on areas such as law, education and economy. On the left, there are questions about what isn’t being taught — such as the variety of books representing minorities that were banned at Central York School District.

This is exactly why posting the information online is a positive thing and why the governor should have let the bill pass into law.

Among his reasoning was that the information already is supposed to be available. That’s true. But information about Legislature spending is supposed to be available, too. It has been less than easily accessible and resulted in calls to make it more public.

The state Legislature regularly passes laws about things that already are illegal, breaking them out and specifying something as a new, deliberately separate crime. In recent years, that has happened with strangulation and sextortion. Wolf allowed both to become law.

It is never a bad idea to have as much information available as possible when it comes to what the government is doing in our name and for our kids. The governor should have kept his pen in his pocket.