By Irene Wrenner
(Editor’s note: the author is a Democrat candidate for the Chittenden North state senate seat which she lost in 2024 in the Red Wave general election, powered by voters’ concerns about property taxes. As she notes, Republicans voted No against the proposed 13.8% property tax increase passed by the Democrat super-majority earlier that year. Many Republicans voted no in hopes that the Legislature and the governor could find a compromise that would further reduce the property tax rate.)
Who do YOU blame for school tax rates going up double digits in 2024?
One party lost 25 seats in the legislature that year because voters heard just one side of the story.
As with many complex issues, blame was reduced to a soundbite.
Actually, no one voted for a 0% tax hike in 2024 to fund schools.
The choice we legislators had in 2024 was:
Vote Yes on the Yield Bill (leading to a 13.8% tax increase), or
Vote No on the Yield Bill (leading to a 30% tax increase). **
Accordingly, members of BOTH parties voted for a large increase to pay for education expenses that year.
Democrats voted to fund school budgets that had passed in each town with current dollars through an average statewide homestead and non-homestead tax rate increase of 13.8%.
Republicans voted to fund those school budgets with a 30% tax increase on non-homestead taxpayers only, which includes ALL businesses. Millions of dollars would have also been borrowed to keep schools open at unfavorable interest rates, the financing of which would have cost all taxpayers.
The Democrats held enough seats to pass H.887 and override the Governor’s veto that year.
Businesses should have breathed a sigh of relief. Some of them already had one foot out the door. They didn’t need a 30% property tax hike to send them packing for good.
Voters often tell me they’re concerned about keeping businesses in Vermont.
And they don’t want their residential taxes to go up.
Legislators get it: We are taxpayers, too.
It was a choice between two awful outcomes that year.
Which increase would you have chosen:
13.8% or 30%?
_______________________________________________
** VT Legislative Joint Fiscal Office (nonpartisan analysis):
Fiscal Implications of No Yield Bill in Fiscal Year 2025
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Categories: Commentary, politics
ms. wrenner is at best, disingenuous. At no point in her time in the legislature did she offer substantive spending cuts, nor legislation that unraveled the Gordinian knot surrounding education spending. In fact, her argument is invalid, as her voting record shows her zeal to add cost to education- S187 of 2024, S102 of 2024- negates the argument she makes.
This is precisely why Irene Wrenner does not belong in the Vermont Senate. Once again, we’re being offered a carefully constructed political narrative instead of the whole story.
Ms. Renner wants us to believe that the only question worth asking is whether Vermonters should have accepted a 13.8% tax increase or suffered a 30% increase. That’s a convenient way to frame the debate when you want voters to accept the lesser of two evils without questioning why we’re continually being presented with those choices in the first place.
For years, Vermont has used hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to buy down property tax increases and soften the immediate financial blow to homeowners and businesses. But shifting money around doesn’t eliminate the underlying costs. It simply obscures the true price of the system and leaves taxpayers paying the bill through other means.
And what have we received in return?
Student proficiency remains deeply troubling, with roughly half of students meeting proficiency benchmarks in key subjects, depending on the assessment and grade level. That means far too many students are falling behind academically, even as the cost of educating them continues to climb.
Where is the accountability? Where is the meaningful effort to control spending, eliminate inefficiencies, and demand better results for the money we’re already spending?Instead, we’re repeatedly told that the choice is between one painful tax increase and an even worse one. Borrowing costs become the threat, higher taxes become the solution, and the underlying spending problem remains largely untouched. Year after year, taxpayers are expected to accept the same logic while education costs rise and student outcomes fail to demonstrate the progress Vermonters deserve.
Calling one tax increase the lesser of two evils doesn’t make it sound fiscal policy. It simply avoids the harder question: Why does Vermont’s education system seem incapable of controlling its costs while delivering consistently better academic results?
And where is the discussion of meaningful alternatives?
School choice, expanded educational options, homeschooling, and a funding model that follows the student deserve serious consideration. Education funding should serve children, not simply perpetuate an expensive system regardless of its results. Families should have greater freedom to choose the educational environment that works best for their children, and schools should have to demonstrate that they are delivering value.
Ms. Wrenner wants credit for choosing the less damaging of two outcomes. But Vermonters deserve legislators who will challenge the assumptions that keep putting us in this position, rather than simply explaining why the next increase was unavoidable.
The real failure isn’t that legislators had to choose between two bad outcomes in 2024. It’s that Vermont’s political leadership continues to treat those outcomes as inevitable while failing to confront the systemic problems that produced them.
Vermonters don’t need another explanation of why taxes must go up. We need leadership willing to ask why we’re spending so much, demand better results, and pursue alternatives that put students and families ahead of the system itself.
That is the conversation Ms. Wrenner should be having. Instead, she’s asking us to congratulate her for choosing the lesser of two evils.