Anew report confirms that a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would take education-funding decisions away from state lawmakers and taxpayers would carry a stupendous price tag.

The Legislative Service Commission says the plan would cost more than $600 million in its first year and much more every year after that.

Along with mandating 5 percent increases in per-pupil spending in 2009 and 2010, it would cost $284 million per year in property-tax relief for seniors and the disabled.

Reducing the amount taxpayers contribute directly to their local schools eventually would cost more than $1 billion per year. And while those who received the proposed tax reductions would cheer, those reductions would have to be made up with new or higher taxes imposed on everyone else.

But the stunning cost is not the only reason this proposal is bad.

Backers of the proposal, which would declare education a fundamental right, want more than just additional money for schools. They want to take decisions about how much money to spend and how to raise it out of voters’ hands and give unchecked authority to courts and an unelected committee.

The plan would place funding for schools above all other state spending priorities. It would disregard reality, declaring that the legislature must provide a certain amount for education, regardless of how much money is available.

Because the legislature can’t conjure cash from thin air, creating an untouchable pot for education would inevitably take money away from Medicaid, prisons, social services and every other important state program and function.

Worst of all, the amount to be spent on schools would be determined not by the legislature, which represents the collective will of voters, but by a committee appointed by the Department of Education. Because any decision by such a committee would be controversial, lawsuits are virtually guaranteed.

This would be an intolerable removal of public input from the funding of one of the state’s most expensive and most important programs.

Giving voters some control over schools’ income is the most effective way to make schools responsive to the public. Some reform of the funding system to reduce the frequency with which school districts are required to go to voters would be helpful. But removing voters altogether from the equation would free those controlling school spending from any accountability.

If the proposed constitutional amendment were to pass, schools never would have to talk to voters again.

That’s not democracy, and it’s not how education should be run in Ohio.