[Vision2020] school funding

[JLBrown]

On a different note:  do folks think it is time to re-visit how we fund our
public schools?  Below is Marty Trillhaase's column from a couple of days
ago.

Judy Brown

 

 


Idaho Falls Post Register           Wednesday March 18, 2009 


The great mistake of 2006

By Marty Trillhaase

  _____  

 

If then-Gov. Jim Risch hadn't pushed his 2006 tax shift package in a rushed,
one-day special legislative session, we would have recognized more of its
flaws.

Cutting schools from property tax support saved $260 million. Raising the
sales tax from a nickel to 6 cents on the dollar replaced $210 million. That
equals $50 million in tax cuts, which went to wealthy homeowners and
corporations. Everybody else - especially low-income families who rent their
homes - paid more.

Only a deepening recession could reveal the Risch tax shift's true damage to
the schools.

Gov. C.L. "Butch' Otter said the school budget must be slashed about $109
million next year. Just having that debate tells you something about Risch's
tax shift:

It destabilized school funding. Before Risch took office, schools relied on
a maintenance and operation levy for a quarter of their money; the state
general fund provided the rest. During its past decade, the amount of
dollars this levy produced for schools increased 77 percent to $293.5
million. Had Risch left well enough alone, the state Tax Commission
estimates the levy would have generated at least $166 million more this
year. Instead, schools are stuck with the sales tax, down 8.8 percent, and
the income taxes, down 14.5 percent.

The $114 million school stabilization account couldn't meet the challenge of
a deep and prolonged slowdown. Just keeping the schools afloat this year
would have all but depleted it, had the Obama federal stimulus package not
provided another $166 million.

Otter's right. Schools will eventually run out of money when the stimulus
and the reserve account are gone. Call that a structural deficit - schools
cost more than we're paying. The Risch tax plan never replaced the $50
million yanked from school support. It also removed property tax dollars
dedicated exclusively to schools. Now education has to compete with every
other state agency for a slice of a general fund that is shrinking by 12
percent.

Nearly three-quarters of Idaho voters approved Risch's plan in a 2006
advisory vote. But the question was loaded. Nowhere in it did the ballot
measure note school funding had been cut $50 million and otherwise
destabilized. In fact, the measure promoted the tax shift as a way to
protect funding for public schools.

Plummeting home values and a shaky economy mean money will be too short to
drop the sales tax back to 5 percent even with a restored maintenance and
operation levy. But reviving the M&O levy might relieve enough pressure on
the state budget to accelerate lifting the unconscionably regressive sales
tax on food.

Make this the defining question of next year's campaign: Do we continue
chopping away at our schools or is it time to correct this mistake?

Marty Trillhaase

 

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