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Don’t just do something for the sake of doing something.
by Rob Roper
Dear Vermont legislators — and here I’m speaking primarily to Republicans because the Democrats are not going to pay attention or care, or, if they do, buck their party leadership – just a quick reminder that back in November 2024 your voters didn’t go into the polls screaming, “We have too many school districts!” They weren’t calling on you to close their rural schools or eliminate the local school boards whom they elected. They weren’t begging you to take away their school choice or their independent school choices. Your voters voted for you to reduce their unaffordable, unsustainable property tax burden. That’s it.
All those other things? They suck. Nobody wants them. Your voters might accept some ore even all of those sacrifices if, and only if, they serve to meet the mandate reflected in the recent resounding electoral upheaval of immediately and meaningfully reducing taxes. If the law you vote for doesn’t do this now – and at present it doesn’t – it will be seen as, well, bad. If the law you vote for contains all of the above-mentioned suck AND a property tax increase – even one of just 1.1 percent – that’s, well, really bad. Something, dare I say, you should want absolutely zero association with – the kind that comes with voting for it.
And the worst possible outcome, the political death sentence, torches and pitchforks and the whole French Revolutionesque shebang: that’s if the law you vote for results in not just all the suck but a 20 percent property tax increase landing in voters mailboxes in July 2026 (just in time for the next election) because the law you voted for did nothing to rein in spending and cut taxes, and you’ve got no money available to buy down the property tax and hide the failure two years in a row. “Bad” does not begin to describe what happens to you in this scenario. So, IMHO, don’t vote for that!
I hear the arguments, “We need to do something!” And, “Something is better than nothing.” No you don’t and no it isn’t. Not if the something you do doesn’t solve the problem of rising taxes, and not if the something actually makes it more difficult to lower taxes in the near future than would doing nothing.
While moving to a foundation formula for funding education makes sense, the one created in H.454 bakes recent spending increases – and therefore the tax increases necessary to fund that spending – into this Marie Antoinette’s cake. What we need is for that spending to be removed from said cake, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be. There is no reason why, with fewer students and no more Covid emergency, we shouldn’t be returning to pre pandemic spending levels with tax cuts resulting.
Spending on our public education system is now $2.4 billion for a student population of around 80,000 prek-12 kids and declining steadily. We spend more per pupil than any other state in the union. It’s nuts! The property taxes required to pay for this insatiable spending are up 33 percent over the past three years, and 14 percent last year alone. This year they would be going up another 6 percent if it weren’t for $44 million in education fund surplus and $77 million in general fund transfer to hide the ever-increasing spending by “buying down” the property tax rate with one-time money. But ALL that money comes out of our pockets one way or another. This is what has to stop. H.454 in its present (albiet highly fluid) state does nothing to stop it. Best case scenario, rose colored glasses firmly affixed, it might if we’re lucky “bend the cost curve” somewhere half a decade or so down the road. Respectfully, dear legislators, this was not the mission. Vote no.
Republicans were able to pick up six senate seat and 18 in the House last election because a bright line was drawn between Democrats who wanted to raise taxes/fees/etc. – and did — and Republicans who demonstrated with “no” vote after “no” vote that they opposed these policies. The voters’ expectation was that Republicans would carry through with that record this session. Good politics as well as good policy would dictate that y’ do.
Democrats, on the other hand, have embarked on a strategy of delay and dissemble in order to keep the money train flowing to their most powerful special interest groups. Step one, they succeeded in shifting the debate under the Dome from one of property tax relief to one of education delivery restructuring, and they put those special interests in charge of designing the new plan. Step two is to get Republicans – or at least enough of them – to go along with this scheme so as to share the blame when the bill lands at the taxpayers feet. They are now using Governor Scott’s threat not to let you all leave until something passes to get YOU to join them in passing something – something they and their Blob buddies like. Don’t fall for it. If what ultimately lands in front of you doesn’t lower taxes, vote no.
Voters will not give you any kudos for “working together.” They will not consider the nuances of deals cut in the back corners of the cafeteria that made a bad bill better. They will not care that you “did something.” They will only judge you based on what their property tax bill is in July 2026 – and what part you played in creating (or working to stop) that number with your vote. So, unless the final version of H.454 miraculously turns into a sweet tax-cut package, vote no.
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
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Categories: Commentary, Education, Legislation, State Government
Really? I’m no mathematician, but $30,000 per student per year? Death and Taxes! Montpelier’s 2 goals!
Dems will never vote for anything that will cause them lose the “teacher vote”. We need to consolidate schools, reduce staffing, etc. Force school districts to improve their test results or lose further funding. Our schools and our teachers are not delivering a quality education!!!
Communities like their community schools. Run all of them pre-K through 8 and consolidate at the high school level. Also the House Committee on Education, Rep Peter Conlon as Chair, never took up H89 school choice voucher which would create competition and improve outcomes.
You need to deal with property appraisal fraud and the bonding of this debt or you are never going to solve this problem. The debt credit system requires more borrowing of money to keep this ponzi scheme from a total collapse . Property taxes are the glue that holds this together until you are no longer able pay them.
Richard, we need an entire article dedicated to this important issue!
Richard, Renee, et al.: Property appraisals are not the problem. Whether your home is worth $200,000 and increased to $400,000 or $600,000, the appraised value increase doesn’t increase your property taxes. Only increased education spending increases your property taxes.
Of course, if the value of your home increases because you added on to it, that’s different. But if ‘the State’ comes in and says your ‘Common Level of Appraisal (CLA)’ is below ‘fair market value’, and they force your listers to increase appraised values across the board to reflect ‘fair market value’, then everyone’s home value increases uniformly. And if spending remains the same, the proportionate property tax rate decreases commensurate to the increased appraisal, so you pay the same property tax you did before the appraised value increased… as long as spending hasn’t increased.
Caution: Our legislators often try to blame higher property appraisal values for our increased property taxes. They’re lying to you when they do. Again, the ONLY reason your property taxes increase is because you’ve added on to your home or, as is more often the case, because education spending has increased.
And by the way, stop blaming the teachers for this debacle. They are forced to follow a curriculum that is mandated by administrators and curriculum advisors in the state’s Department of Education. And, these are constantly in a state of change which often requires abandoning last year’s program, and all the supporting instructional materials, for the latest and greatest new idea. This is how they retain their jobs, by constantly changing curriculum . With little or no change, their positions would become redundant! The cost for constantly changing is abhorrent, with the monies going into the pockets of outside companies pushing these latest changes. “Education “ is big business in case you haven’t noticed!
absolutely correct Mr Fagan, not the teachers fault, it is the Unions, state and federal.
this restructing should not be labeled educational reform, it is financial reform aka property taxes. what we all need is more classroom time! if your not a parent you might not be aware now they have early dismissal 5 times a year in my schools, plus teacher conf days where kids are not learning, please go calculate how many full 5 day weeks are completed in a calendar year. its vacation, holiday, teacher conf day.
an onto the cost and struggle with daycare. there is no talk from the union on class time. school is still only 180 days, less than half a year. we have gone from black & white TV, 8 track, cassetter, streaming, rotary phone to wireless? Yet we are still at 180 days of school days for the last 7 decades plus. do give me the its about the children unless you want to teach them, yikes!
Teachers aren’t ‘forced’ to do anything. Vermont is an employment-at-will State. Vermont Agency of Education employees across the board aren’t forced to work for the public-school monopoly. They work in the public schools because they are well paid to do so, regardless of their performance or the outcome of their students. To claim that teachers or administrators shouldn’t be ‘blamed’ (i.e., held accountable for their actions) for what they do is frighteningly similar to the ‘I was only following orders’ defense we consistently see and hear throughout history in war crimes litigation. If private school teachers did what the public school teachers do, they would lose their jobs because no one would choose to send their kids to those schools.
I forwarded this to my GOP mates in the State House.
Just looked up instate tuition at UVM, living at home, $19,000 per year, and we’re spending $30,000 per student per year for K through 12. I know out of state at UVM subsidizes instate, but really? This is crazy!
Democrat Senator Thomas Chittenden, who serves on the Finance Committee, does not support H454 because it does not cut taxes. He has two posts on FB on education reform/H454. Although I think he erroneously likens “Unity” in “Freedom and Unity” to state control, I’m glad to see he does not support H454 in its current form because it does not cut taxes.
Senator Chittenden stated that H454 increases taxes for towns that have been conservative in their spending and distributes more money to the schools in those towns. Meanwhile towns that have voted to spend more for their schools will see their taxes reduced, but also a reduction in money sent to schools. He also doesn’t like it that it reduces local control. Even the most liberal voters in my town want to see: 1) retention of community schools 2) a breakdown of what the state regulations that impact local budgtes so voters can see how much local control they actually have.
‘The inherent vice of capitalism [School Choice] is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism [the public-school monopoly] is the equal sharing of miseries.’ Winston Churchill
H454 doesn’t change the course of Vermont’s education Titanic. It merely rearranges the deck chairs. Only the lucky few who move to another State, or who get on the School Choice or Homeschool ‘lifeboats’ will survive.
There is an education bill that can save us. H.89. But it’s still collecting dust on the education Titanic’s bridge because our elected captain thinks Vermont’s education system is unsinkable… as long as it gets more money (i.e., fuel). And we all know how that’s going to work out.
The answer to “We need to do something” is a four-letter word the Prog/Dems will never do: Cuts
The H.89 School Choice bill effectively decreases the cost per student for those students choosing independent school by $10,000 per student. If every Vermont student was able to (and did) choose an independent school, the $2.4 Billion education cost would drop by $800 Million under the current funding formula. Your property taxes would decline 30%.
No. It won’t happen overnight. But as more and more parents use the new-found freedom to choose an independent school, the more ‘cuts’ taxpayers would see.
Id like to see what would happen if school choice meant tax dollars follow the child, even to a private or homeschool situation.
If we want change in Vermont this is what every Vermont citizen should vote for next year.
If the governor told all Vermonters to reject every school budget over and over we would get change. Will he?
If NPR said the only way for school funding for change is to vote down every school budget, we’d get change.
If Vermont digger said vote down every school budget next election we’d get change.
We will see who controls the above next town meeting. The oligarch is strong in Vermont, 10 people make the entire agenda for Vermont and it’s not you or me.
I guess we could vote for Nikki Haley and see what that gets us.
The property tax appraisal system is a fraud and the only people supporting this system are laundering money using tax exempt bonds. Where is that extra value if you do not invest capital into your house or property???? There is no extra value to be taxed. This is the FEDERAL RESERVE debt credit system and TRUMP is going to add three trillion dollars more to federal debt. More inflation coming in the future. Some people on this web site speak with confused mindsets.
The State’s property appraisal system has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve or Trump’s policies… except for the possibility that when Trump eliminates Federal Department of Education grants to Vermont’s public school system, the Vermont public schools are going to be forced to cut programs or raise local taxes to make up the difference.
And when they do raise local taxes to make up the difference, rest assured, they will try to blame the increase on property values…. again, a lie.
If anyone is interested in how Vermont’s Property Appraisal System works and wants to know how to appeal any fraudulent appraisals, just read this manual.
https://outside.vermont.gov/dept/sos/Municipal%20Division/tax_appeal_handbook_2007.pdf
From the Property Tax Manual:
“The law assumes you know what you are doing, and penalizes you when you fail.”
If only the law penalized our legislators when they lie to us.
Thank you H. J. E. for your information, but I think I will have to disagree with your assessment on this subject. The reappraisal of property in Bloomfield Vermont raised my value of my building from three thousand one hundred dollars to four thousand two hundred dollars and that was because capital investments were put into the building. The common level of appraisal are an extortion operation to transfer wealth from one property to another for the purpose of taxation in other towns. This was the purpose of act sixty to transfer wealth from the rich towns. Looks like commie land now has run out of rich towns. Some of the other properties in Bloomfield had their values raised over forty percent. Did they all make capital investments???? This is a pure communist system that has been set up by the bankers debt credit operation with inflation. You can not inflate your way out of bankruptcy. The new grand list from Bloomfield was sent to me and my building on leased land is the lowest value on the grand list.
How to make appraisals explode much higher???? SCAM DEMIC caused massive disruptions in the real estate markets with phony expansion of the money system, causing massive increasing values in the price of housing, and that has increased the amount of home less persons. Now you are being taxed on the fraud of high priced property mostly bough on speculation and now values are dropping in many parts of the country. All you need is a group of people coming into your town and buying property and paying fifty percent over the current value and you get a false common level of appraisals. St. Albans City has properties being bough up by out of state buyers. One may want to look at this and see if the values are real. They are also building many taxpayer funded low income housing units.
SAMP LLC. mailing address is 211 Lake Street St. Albans City Vermont is buying many properties in St. Albans City. The companies LLC. filing status is active as of November 4 2024.
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Is there a website where we can go to see how many administrators/educrats there are per district versus how many teachers per district? And also see how much money we spend on all those layers of fat vs how much we spend on the actual teachers? The school where I used to teach had no curriculum (it was essentially the Wild West and each teacher basically did what they wanted) yet we had a Director of Curriculum and an Assistant Director of Curriculum. I couldn’t tell you what they did all day but I know they made more than me. The same could be said for our Director of Equity. She of course has since changed her job title so as to fly under the radar with the new DEI rules, but she is still there, making six figures a year and appearing once a year at Inservice to do a 10 minute presentation. Other mystery positions funded by our taxes include the Director of Social Emotonal Learning, her Assistant, and the Family Outreach Coordinator (who is addition to the four Full time Guidance counselors and the NCSS mental health people). There are many more but their titles are so nonsensical and vague that it is hard to remember them all. Plus, we never saw them since they all worked in a separate building; frankly, they didn’t know or actually have anything to do with the teachers or the students. Now I am not a Math teacher, BUT my common sense tells me that if we got rid of all these non-essential, make- believe positions across all the VT school districts that we could free up some serious cash.
Let’s start with Outright Vermont, subsidized, by the Agency of Education, for their work supporting/grooming (supposed) LGBTQ+ minors. (FYI Mike Pieciak our secretary of the Treasury is on the finance committee of Outright Vermont.)
Next go to IRIS, Vermont’s Ethnic Studies program, that will be implemented this fall into PreK-12 curriculum. Who knows how much time and money the Vermont Principals association has invested in this poison.
Our children are lacking proficiency in math, reading and science and this is the kind BS our state offers to our youth.
We need a DOGE to meticulously go through our school budget and expose waste and get rid of the many unnecessary administrative positions and programs.
Testimony from Dana Kaplan, Executive Director, Outright Vermont, to House Education Committee, 2/16/23.
“AOE [VT Agency of Education] has been responsive and increased funds [to Outright Vermont] from $20k to $37k to $60k, a clear honoring of work they know is important and don’t have the capacity to implement themselves.”
https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2024/WorkGroups/House%20Education/Mental%20Health%20in%20Schools/Outright%20Vermont/W~Dana%20Kaplan~Outright%20Vermont%20-%20Written%20Testimony~2-16-2023.pdf
There is no amount of education “reform” legislation that is going to stop the demographic and economic tsunami that is sweeping over Vermont. There are simply not enough children left in Vermont to justify the monstrous education bureaucracy in place. Just as Vermont does not have enough economic engines to sustain this same bureaucracy, and who really wants to pay for an education system that uses a curriculum and methods that result in an outcome where children cannot read, write, understand math and cannot think critically. Reform results in reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic at a ridiculous expense.
It is going to be catastrophic, watching a slow moving train wreck would be somewhat amusing if it were not for us having to pay for it AND our children suffering because of it. Vermont is headed for financial reckoning, you can only cook the books for so long before the house of cards collapses.
Come on neighbors hear the good sense here …unless it decreases the tax confiscation juggernaut vote it down…please