How’s that for adding insult to injury!

by Rob Roper

Hat tip to Tom Evslin for his recent article, Equal Educational Opportunity in Vermont Requires School Choice, not so much for that obvious observation (though it is both accurate and much appreciated) but for his brilliant insight into the potential unconstitutionality of Act 127, the pupil weighting law that is largely (but not entirely) the reason for the massive property tax increase about to slam us all.

As Evslin reminds us in his first paragraph, the Vermont Supreme Court’s Brigham decision of 1997, which led to the creation of Act 60 and the state education property tax system we have now, ruled, “Children who live in property-poor districts and children who live in property-rich districts should be afforded a substantially equal opportunity to have access to similar educational revenues.” The key word there is the last one: revenues. And substantially equal access to them is what school districts and each student in them are constitutionally required to have.

To make it even clearer about what the Court sees the constitutional role of the legislature to be in this matter, it wrote, “Money is clearly not the only variable affecting educational opportunity, but it is one that government can effectively equalize.” The key word here again is the last one: equalize. Which our erstwhile lawmakers should be engaged in “effectively” doing.

However, Act 127’s stated goal is directly contrary to this constitutional imperative. It states unabashedly, “…schools may also require different levels of resources.” Key word: different. And calls for “increase[d] educational equity by ensuring that the financial resources available to local school districts for educating students living in poverty, English learners, students in small rural schools, students in sparsely populated school districts, and students in middle and high schools are sufficient to meet the cost of educating these students.” In other words, Act 127 demands what Brigham expressly prohibits: UNEQUAL access to revenues between school districts/students.

This, of course, encouraged such districts to spend more – a lot more — which they mostly did, and, bingo, bango, bongo we’re suddenly all staring down the barrel of 14 percent, on average, seemingly unconstitutional property tax increases wondering how we’re going to afford to stay in our homes. Thanks, guys!

How bad is it? As Evslin again points out, “Next year the State will fund expenditures of over $40,000 per student in Winooski and about $20,000 per student in the Elmore-Morristown district!” Not a typo. The Act 127 formula allows Winooski to spend $40,000 — $40,000!!! – per kid. The cost to attend UVM for an in-state student, including room, board and fees, is $36,802! This is spending out of control.

Now, when the cataclysmic financial impact of Act 127 (as well as Act 64, the $30 million a year “free” school meals for wealthy kids law) on our property tax bills became an unrealistic reality in December of last year, all arguments about constitutionality aside, the compassionate and responsible thing for our lawmakers to do would have been to repeal both of them during the 2024 legislative session and start over with some serious reform of what is painfully, obviously an unsustainable public education finance system. They did not.

Even after over thirty school budgets went down to defeat by voters who simply cannot afford these tax increases, the discussion by Democrats in the Ways & Means and Education Committees was not about how to lower costs in order to lower tax rates, or how to reform education delivery to make it more efficient and effective.

Instead, the supermajority circled the wagons around their political cronies in the public education bureaucracy and doubled down on spending more and more money for poorer and poorer performance. The conversation and policy prescriptions were about how to continue the increases in spending levels with new taxes, and even at one point the idea was floated to remove voters’ ability to vote on budgets to prevent us from controlling spending (to whatever pathetic degree possible) at the local level.

Which is all by way of saying that the people we have currently elected to office have zero desire or intent to fix the financial mess they have made. For them, this firehose of our money directed at a special interest group is a feature not a bug. So, the long term solution is to vote them out and replace them with others who actually give a damn about the notion of taxing people out of their homes. In the short term, maybe someone from Elmore or another town similarly holding the unconstitutional doo doo end of the Act 127 stick wants to lawyer up and sue the state. You’ll be a hero to tens of thousands of Vermont taxpayers.

Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com