Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk has brought some much-needed common sense to a school co-location plan that has been like a runaway train in the halls of the State Capitol in St. Paul just two weeks into the legislative session.

Thank goodness.

The proposal for a $100 million-plus new grades 7-12 school building that would house students of the Virginia, Eveleth-Gilbert and Mountain Iron-Buhl districts is, in part, a trojan horse for a grab of $2.5 million of Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation Board economic development funds each and every year.

While a public vote of support is needed from at least two of the three school districts involved for the co-location to be enacted, the only vote required to snatch millions and millions and millions of IRRRB economic development funds over the years would come in the Legislature. That’s because even if voters in the three school districts give a “thumbs-down” to a co-location, the new IRRRB fund for school building infrastructure on the Range would still be created and financed by $2.5 million annually of dollars that would otherwise go into the Douglas J. Johnson Fund.

NO! NO! NO! — 2.5 million times NO!

It is remarkably disappointing that all Iron Range lawmakers, with the exception of Sen. Bakk and Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake, have embraced this funding mechanism as if a new Quad Cities school building will attract new businesses and jobs and therefore families and kids. That’s just not a rational proposition.

We find it a terribly unfortunate and misguided stance taken by DFL lawmakers Sens. David Tomassoni of Chisholm and Tom Saxhaug of Grand Rapids, along with Reps. Jason Metsa of Virginia, Carly Melin of Hibbing, Tom Anzelc of Balsam Township and Joe Radinovich of Crosby to sign on to bills that would siphon off economic development funds, especially considering that the Iron Range unemployment rate in 2013 soared high above the state average.

And equally troubling is that IRRRB commissioner Tony Sertich also supports what would be a raid of economic development dollars from within the Iron Range, not St. Paul, of the property taxes of all Rangers paid by mining companies’ production dollars.

Just consider these jobless numbers on average from last year:

. Statewide: 5.1 percent.

. Virginia: 7.2 percent.

. Hibbing: 7.4 percent.

. Grand Rapids: 9.4 percent.

. Overall Iron Range: 8 percent.

Those are very worrisome numbers for our region. And they come at a time when taconite mining has been going pretty much full bore the past few years. We shudder to think how high the jobless rate on the Range would climb if there was a downturn in the always cyclical mining industry.

And now some legislators, who are not showing leadership on this issue but rather being led by a lobbyist, want to take funds away from economic development to create a new fund for school infrastructure.

This would be plain and simply, nuts!

— Mesabi Daily News, March 11