Governor Phil Scott Thursday signed H.850, transitioning education financing to the new system for pupil weighting. The bill was rushed through both houses of the Legislature in about two weeks after lawmakers realized a 2022 law was contributing to a record 20.5% statewide property tax increase – a likely non-starter at Town Meeting, just weeks away.
The bill repeals a 5% tax cap that resulted in heavy extra spending and gives school districts more time to warn and hold an annual school meeting.
The governor’s letter below appears to tell lawmakers “I told you so” about recent landmark education funding legislation.
To be fair to the Legislature, both the Vermont media and legislative leaders have been asking why he’s now criticizing legislation he signed into law. Anticipating this criticism, Gov. Scott below says “had the Legislature worked with me to do so, we would all be in a better place today.” And he urges them to do so now.
When signing the bill, Governor Scott sent the following letter to the General Assembly:
Dear Legislators:
Today, I signed H.850, An act relating to transitioning education financing to the new system for pupil weighting. The changes made in this bill are a necessary step as Vermonters face a projected 20% increase in property tax bills, and in some communities, it could be even higher. But to be clear, this bill does not solve our property tax problem. These changes will only reduce rates if school boards adjust their budgets accordingly and local voters support those changes. It’s also important to note the projected spending increase this year is $243 million, so even if every single school board makes adjustments to their budget, we’re unlikely to avoid significant property tax increases. And we should not ignore how difficult the choices that some communities will have to make around staffing, program offerings, and services.
What that means is our work in this area has just begun, which is exactly the same thing I said when I signed S.287 of 2022 – the bill that enacted the 5% cap H.850 repeals. In that same signing letter, I said “We also know this bill risks further increasing the cost of our education system in a way that compounds these underlying [inequity] issues – particularly if we continue to see fewer and fewer students alongside annual school budget growth of three to four percent, on average.” I called on the legislature to address the cost pressures this bill added – and avoid adding more costs – “before this new formula takes effect.”
Had the Legislature worked with me to do so, we would all be in a better place today. I feel the same way about my 2017 proposal to reign in rising healthcare costs for school employees and reinvest savings in kids and property tax relief. Or my 2018 five-year plan that would have enacted my 2017 healthcare proposal, phased in a modest increase in the staff-to-student ratio through attrition, addressed unfairness in our income sensitivity formula and added guardrails for towns that can afford to overspend at the expense of those who cannot. Or my recent calls to ensure local voters know the annual per pupil increase they’re voting on and to extend our universal vote by mail process to school budget votes.
All these ideas have been ignored or rejected. But any one of them would have put us on a better path to a sustainable public education system. While I appreciate your commitment in this bill, affirming it is “the intent of the General Assembly to address the delivery, governance and financing of Vermont’s education system,” this bill does not fix it. To be clear, I remain ready to work with you to both improve student outcomes and contain costs to a level Vermonters can afford.
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Categories: Legislation
You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Governor. If you’re against legislation on the basis that it would cause runaway increases in taxes, then you should not sign it. You should veto it and you should get on TV and on social media explaining to the people of Vermont (i.e. the people who voted in the Progressives that you admonish) why your ideas are better.
But no… you quietly sign bills that you “know” are going to cause pain and then (years later) say “I told you so?” This is the hallmark of an opportunist politician, not a skilled leader.
With the concerns that you have raised, I am assuming you have filed to run for the office of Governor. Looking forward to seeing your platform and how you will be a “skilled” leader.
nice attack on the commentator, but not on his comment, way to deflect.
We try and stay away from ad hominin around here, it’s just unproductive
We really aren’t afraid of name calling anymore, it’s just lame.
sounds like when howard the coward signed the gay marriage bill in the closet/// look where we are now///
Governor Scott is NOT on the side of “We The People”. He is controlled opposition. Here is a web site showing 20 Governors, including 2 territories of the US, that are pushing the Climate Hoax (along with the legislatures help) upon the citizens of their states. They are in-bed with China to destroy our local communities from within, and they openly publicize it:
https://usclimatealliance.org/members/
The states are: AZ, CA, CO, CT, CE, Guam (territory), HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OR, PA, Puerto Rico (territory), RI, VT, WA, WI.
VT school funding, health care, and college costs are all financed through a scheme that allows us to spend whatever we want while ‘someone else’ pays the bill. Now, what else do these three have in common? And now that we understand that, what do you suppose would happen with 100% government paid __________________ (fill in the blank)?
This increase in property taxes is not sustainable.
I am unable to obtain answers to the following questions from my local supervisory union:
How is the consolidation of school districts being monitored for cost savings as set forth by Act 46?
Which positions at the supervisory union level are mandated?
Why are the supervisory union budgets “off limits” when it comes analyzing for over spending? Why are the supervisory union budgets not voted on by the general public as opposed to including it the the overall budget of each consolidated district?
School costs are out of control because school administrations are self-serving, bloated pigs that are insatiable; the more they eat, the more they want to eat. The staff-to-student ratio is insane, and the Covid trough made things even worse. Now that that slop stream has dried up, let’s
shake down the taxpayer,
and keep this party going!
Slash admin staff. Trash DEI. Flush the useless positions that are outside of core curriculum. Do what a school is supposed to do, and jettison all the crap that a
school is not supposed to do.
Only then will taxpayers take you seriously.
Vermonters were swindled with a complete sham several years ago, called Act 46. The law was touted so heavily and energetically as the be-all and end-all to provide more for kids in a more efficient manner at costs Vermonters could support. And now a few years later …… LOOK. My local school district has MANY costly new administrative this and that positions and oodles of other costs which didn’t even exist several years ago. Costs are skyrocketing, student learning indicators have tanked, and we face the biggest education finance crisis in the past few decades. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. The entire superstructure of Vermont schooling needs a rigorous roto-rooting from stem to stern. This kind of hoo-haa simply cannot be tolerated and allowed to continue.
vermonters were swindled with the act 60 fraud/// still have some anti act 60 buttons in my shed///
All the Adminstration and Legislature does at this point is akin to the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dike. They write and sign garbage legislation over decades, it fails, so they paper over it sevenfold. All the while holding out the State’s bottomless tincup for “more” – and they don’t say please or thank you. If only they learned the word “repeal” and stop pretending to know what they are doing…they work for the dead corporation and soon people will find out who really profited from all this lawfare warfare.
I agree with your sentiments but the legislation is not “failing” if its aim is to gull as much money as possible from taxpayers. It is working as planned. They don’t care about educational quality. They are lining the pockets of their cronies.
Bingo!
And that pretty much sums up everything under the golden dome.
Every single issue that Vermont’s legislators have “fixed” since the Brigham decision in 2005 has increased the cost and decreased the quality of education. Every one.
Why would anyone expect this abysmal gaggle of elite socialists to do anything different.
Twenty years of political pretending- how could any reasonable person expect this “software patch” to be any different. This is an election year, if property taxes only increase 10%- every democratic socialist incumbent will be pointing out how much money they saved for the gullible voter.
Zero is the acceptable rate of increase for 2024.
I am sick of paying to have other people’s kids stupidized by a bunch of sexually deviant, ignorant twits calling themselves “teachers”. People who home-school their kids shouldn’t have to pay school taxes and neither should people who don’t have kids in school. Illegal alien brats shouldn’t even be in American schools! The tax money for schools we are being extorted for is being totally wasted and our kids are being totally ruined.
Right on!!!!!!!!!!!!