A House committee approved a bill, 11 to 3, that would allow advertising on public school buses. It is a colossally bad idea that could jeopardize the lives of schoolchildren.

One of the worst ideas of all time -- advertising on school buses -- won the approval of a committee of the Florida House of Representatives Tuesday. The vote was 11 to 3. Not even close. Have the inmates taken over the asylum in Tallahassee?

House Bill 1411 is not simply bad. It is stupendously, colossally, flagrantly bad. It will get kids injured and killed.

If there are "no data" to that effect, as a committee staff report said, it is because few school districts have been so stupid as to experiment with children's safety in such a way. Moreover, no data exist on the distracting effect of the advertisements already proliferating on school buses, taxis and trucks.

As the absence of data proves nothing, committee members should have let common sense warn them off this bill.

It would be the same common sense expressed by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation, which strongly opposes any such legislation.

But, as we have been trying to report for some time, the Florida House is gripped by a radical ideology that desensitizes its victims to common sense. The root of that ideology is that any dumb thing is better than taxes.

The sponsor and supporters of HB 1411 baldly assert that school bus advertising, for what little revenue it might yield -- the staff report referred to it as "marginal" -- is a better idea than raising taxes for schools. They disclaim any responsibility for the results, or for the content of the advertising, on the premise that they are simply facilitating local control. It will be interesting to observe on how many occasions they exalt local control when bills propose tampering with the curriculum.

For the record, the three members who voted no were Reps. Stan Jordan, R-Jacksonville; Cindy Lerner, D-Miami; and Mark Weissman, D-Parkland. Jordan, a school board member for 16 years, argued the safety issue eloquently.

"The main reason we paint school buses yellow is because that's the one color that stands out," he said. "Anything that would take away from the yellow school bus could be a distraction. . . . All it takes is one child."

"At least we have an acknowledgement that we need to to find more revenue," said Lerner, calling it a "sad commentary" on antitax legislators who would rather "put all our children's lives at risk, for the sake of a few measly dollars."

Parents can take some comfort from the fact that there is no similar bill in the Senate. However, that does not excuse the committee's irresponsibility, nor is it a guarantee that some way won't be found to sneak it into other education legislation. The public needs to be heard from on this bill -- all the more so because the Department of Education is silent.

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