More from the Front Porch Forum/VT Legislative Cartel – this time on the Education charade.
by H. Jay Eshelman
On December 6, 2023, Front Porch Forum (FPF) published a ‘DEC. 1 Tax Letter’ from our Windham 3 legislators, in response to Commissioner of Taxes, Craig Bolio’s, warning that the State of Vermont is: “based on specific calculations outlined in State law, and as a result of collaboration by the Department of Taxes, Agency of Education, Department of Finance and Management, and Joint Fiscal Office”, projecting “property tax bills to increase by an average of 18.5 percent next fiscal year, driven largely by a forecasted 12 percent increase in year-over-year education spending”.
If VDC readers recall, I commented here on VDC that “This is the usual ploy. In the fall, the various school boards begin working on their budgets for next year. They always come in with an outrageously high initial estimate. It’s their modus operandi. And they are oblivious to the appearance of their projection. Honestly, they don’t think. They do what they’re told to do.”
Suffice it to say, the predicted legislative back peddling and finger pointing has already begun.
And while the FPF publication designated our legislator’s missive as being for ‘Discussion’, we all know now what that means in the context of the FPF Public Benefit Corporation. This is especially noteworthy given that I can’t find a reference to this FPF/legislative missive anywhere but on FPF.
So, without further ado, what follows is a copy of the FPF missive.
Dear members of the Windham-3 community:
We are writing to offer some clarification to a recently issued letter from the State Tax Commissioner about projected property tax rates.
The December 1st tax letter was received by many in local government on November 30th, and it raised a lot of concerns. We hope to address some of these by forwarding this op-ed from Representative Mike McMarthy (SIC*) from St Albans, chair of the House Government Operations Committee. His piece clearly articulates the process of establishing the education tax rate which starts on December 1 with the tax letter and is completed with the signing of the “yield” bill by the Governor sometime in May.
Between now and then, we will listen to you and work with our colleagues in the Legislature to achieve the best possible results for our students and our taxpayers.
As always, please contact us with questions or concerns.
· (HJE notation) The representative’s correct name is Mike McCarthy.
The December 1 tax letter was sent out by the Scott administration with a blistering press release. It went out a day early, which was a surprise to school administrators and legislators, and maximized the coverage in the news cycle of a projected tax increase looming next year. The Governor cast blame on school districts and the legislature. He focused on the sticker shock of a whopping 18% average property tax rate increase that could (not will) occur if several things come to pass: if preliminary school budget figures are all approved in March, if a complex reformulation on of how we weight the cost of educating students with more needs goes into effect as is (which got a bipartisan vote and which Governor Scott signed, by the way), and if the legislature takes no action at all between now and July 1, 2024.
The December 1 letter is required by law and it is an important exercise. It is, by nature, a starting point. In my time as a legislator I have worked to make sure we provide school districts with the money for budgets we all approve locally on Town Meeting Day without relying solely on Property Tax increases. We fund education with property taxes (about 30% of the Ed fund), the Sale & Use tax, the lottery and a variety of smaller funding streams. We income-sensitize the property tax for your “homestead” and provide renter rebates to help about two out of three families get a discount based on their ability to pay. The legislature never ends up with the property tax increase modeled in the December 1 letter. Tax rates next year will depend on a lot of decisions that are yet to be made by local districts and the legislature.
We citizen legislators could use the Scott administration’s help, perhaps a proposal to deal with some of the unusual cost pressures on schools. As usual, no specific proposals are forth-coming. With all of the Governor’s popularity and six years in office it should be shocking that the things that cost the most in state government (healthcare and education) have not seen any bold plans or new initiatives from the executive branch. It’s easier to blame local districts or the legislature for the costs of schools and hospitals than to propose painful cuts to teachers, cutting programs or advocating an unpopular revenue source or tax increase.
I will be honest with my constituents about the hard questions left unanswered by the administration. Should we ask districts to spend less, even in a year when much of the apparent increase in local and state education spending is back-filling COVID-era federal funds that will no longer be available? Has the administration maximized the amount of federal funds available for schools, especially when it comes to needs like security, construction, healthcare and counseling? Have rapid changes in property values and a lack of ability for towns to adjust assessments warped the property tax model?
We will have tough choices to make this legislative session, but as we return to the Statehouse in Montpelier I’ll be listening to neighbors, teachers, parents, school board members, business owners and everyone in our community about how we get our students what they need in an equitable way with the least amount of pressure on property taxes. Fortunately, as we heard at our December 1 fiscal briefing, revenues are strong and the much-feared recession is not upon us. We have resources, especially the well-off among us. We also have huge challenges to tackle. Fear-mongering about a projected (not proposed) tax increase is cynical and unhelpful.
Many of us are feeling the pain of rising inflation, higher interest rates and an economy where wages and salaries don’t keep up. It is easy to be cynical and point fingers in times like these. Instead though, I’ll continue to work together with other community and state leaders to make sure we are supporting our students without breaking the bank for Vermont households in the coming year.
Rep. Mike McCarthy
Saint Albans, VT
Email Author
As VDC readers consider education funding for their March school district annual meetings, they should keep in mind that:
– the VT Agency of Education employes roughly the same number of people, from Superintendents, to teachers and paraeducators, to bus drivers, as there are K-12 public school students in the entire State,
– We’re already spending as much to educate a first or second grader as it costs to send an in-state student to the Vermont State University for a full year’s undergraduate degree course load – including room and board,
– More than half our public-school students can’t meet grade level proficiency in reading, writing, math, or science (at my high school it was recently reported that half our 9th graders were reading at elementary grade level),
– And nearly 90% of those students graduate anyway.
Think what you will about the socio-economic indoctrination in our public schools.
Again, you won’t see any of these issues discussed by our legislators cloistered on Front Porch Forum. Nonetheless, every Vermonter should have access to these discussions, despite them having been judged to have offended anyone’s ‘terms of use’.