Spending Cuts Would Be Unwise
PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSIONS
MSWORD
ACROBAT
As I write this, the Governor has just finished his
inaugural speech in which he made several proposals to cut the cost of primary
and secondary education. Ostensibly his
objective, stated in the speech, is to “share the pain” of the current economic
crisis across all elements of Vermont society.
However, it is hard to take this reason seriously since for several
years he and his closest advisors have been obsessed with the cost of
education, particularly the fact that this cost keeps increasing as the number
of students declines. The purpose of the
administration’s efforts, from the absurd 60% supermajority to “vote twice” to the current proposal to
freeze state funds for education at the 2009 level, is clearly to make property
taxes so onerous that communities will vote down even reasonable school
budgets. All of this in support of this philosophy: “There is nothing about
public schools that can’t be improved by giving them less money.” What
substantive programmatic changes should result from cutting resources is never
discussed, reminding us of the local naysayers who, when faced with an
explanation of why schools need a particular level of support, simply respond
that they don’t care. “It’s just too
much money.”
Among the specific proposals made by the Governor is
his speech is to scrap Acts 60 & 68 since they are “broken and beyond
repair.” This is at best disingenuous,
since there is no evidence that either of these laws is responsible for either
increased school costs or increased property taxes. Unfortunately, the Governor is not the only
one who blames the tax and distribution system for economic strain at the local
level – too many legislators and commentators find this an easy hit. In fact, both of these laws address very real
inequities in the education and tax systems.
Act 60/68 recognized that property taxes should be paid not from the
value of the property, but from the income of the property owner. Hence income
sensitivity, an act of genius, in which lower income residents are protected from
tax burdens that might jeopardize their homes. The cry from opponents of property taxes
that, “Granny who lives on social security will be taxed out of her house” is
simply not true since Granny will pay a low percentage of her modest income in
property taxes. Act 68 responded to the
Supreme Court finding that allowing towns to raise
whatever monies they could afford to support education was inherently unfair
and a violation of the state Constitution.
The Governor’s proposal to restore the ability of towns to fund
education at whatever levels they please is both unconstitutional and very
unwise.
And
the much maligned unfunded mandates probably get too much blame as well. If
special education were not required by law, would we do it anyway? I certainly hope so. The simple facts are that education is
expensive under any circumstances, and particularly so in a rural state where
the population is widely distributed in small communities. (Although this is overstated too – did you
know that if we eliminated the 60 smallest school districts from our
calculations the statewide average per pupil cost would actually go up?) There
is very little “low hanging fruit” – the only way to make real cuts in
education is to stop doing important things that we would like to keep
doing. If the Governor wants to do that,
then his administration has an obligation to join the conversation on what
these things might be and to come clean with the citizens of Vermont about his
choices.