Not only should legislators require real elections for officials who set tax rates. They also should consider other actions that have nothing to do with transgender abortion doctors crossing the border to stuff ballot boxes and grab guns and land:

n Prohibit law enforcement from misinterpreting federal rules as requiring all-new or reprogrammed radios at $1,000 or more a pop. The rules actually apply only to transmission of information, which could be delivered by phone instead, from rarely used databases. There’s no need to waste taxpayer money on systems that might eliminate citizens’ ability to listen to scanners.

n Require sports leagues and classifications to be changed so students, except in state championship matches, never have to spend more than an hour getting to a sports destination. Require that all events, including travel, happen outside class hours. To prepare students for life in an information economy, curricular activities should take priority over extracurricular ones.

n Invest more state money in lowering the cost of education after high school, whether it be at a college or in a vocational school. Stop cutting university funding merely because some people are anti-intellectual. At the same time, prohibit colleges from inflating undergraduate tuition to pay for graduate students, and eliminate the sham practice of saying students can complete college courses in high school. Some classes are great, but some students find they don’t learn enough to feel comfortable in the next course in a college sequence.

n Severely limit the influence bond counsels have on local governments by overturning myriad loopholes that allow borrowing without asking voters’ permission. Also eliminate the home-rule loophole, which probably isn’t legal, that allows governments to declare their hacker-prone websites to be newspapers, thereby keeping taxpayers ignorant of how much they borrow.

The list could go on. The important thing is voters let candidates in this year’s election know that they no longer will vote solely on the basis of hot-button issues.

— ERIC MEYER