Vermont should consider a central, apolitical board to regulate school spending and decide whether districts should consolidate, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott said this week.
The growing property tax burden that school budgets have placed on Vermonters won’t be solved in the Statehouse, Scott said, because politics get in the way. And changing the complex education funding formula won’t relieve tax-weary Vermonters unless schools also spend less, he said.
Instead, he proposed that the Legislature create an autonomous board, similar to the Green Mountain Care Board that regulates health care spending, to help rein in school spending costs and, as a result, control property taxes.
Scott’s main opponent, Progressive/Democrat Dean Corren, blasted the idea as an “off-the-cuff” concept and a “total state takeover” of the education spending system. The main problem is not that schools should spend less, Corren said, but that property taxes more heavily burden the middle class.
“The property tax is the problem. Not the students, not the teachers, not the school boards who are doing an incredibly hard, thankless job,” Corren said.
Scott said he envisions an entity like the Green Mountain Care Board, the five-member panel created in 2011 to regulate health care costs in the state by approving hospital budgets and private insurance premium rates and the amounts that hospitals can receive for the services they provide.An education board could, for example, set parameters within which schools would be able to raise spending each year. Budget increases over a certain threshold might need board approval, Scott suggested.
The board could also be charged with deciding whether school districts or supervisory unions should consolidate, he said. It could also potentially play a role in setting property tax rates, Scott said.
Scott made it clear Thursday that his idea is a rough one, a concept that “smarter people” should discuss.
In the current system, school spending is paid for largely through local and statewide property taxes.
Local school districts set their budgets, but the Legislature must raise enough money to cover portions of them. As a result, many argue that voters do not understand how increased school spending affects their wallets.
The statewide tax rate for homestead property taxpayers has gone up 9 cents over fiscal years 2014 and 2015; the rate has increased 13.5 cents per $100 of assessed property value for non-residential property taxpayers over the same period.
Elected officials have known for years that property taxes were rising because of education spending, Scott said, but “we seem to kick the can down the road.”
“Politics seems to get in the way,” he said.
Corren said Scott’s idea reflects a Republican style of doing nothing and then throwing out an ill-formed idea at the last minute.
“I don’t know what state Phil is in, but here our school boards are elected by local people in order to make education decisions,” Corren said. Vermont does not need a “giant new state bureaucracy second-guessing decisions,” he said.
The problem is the property tax structure, he said, which gives low-income residents a reduced tax rate but forces middle- and upper-class people to pay a higher rate. That means the middle class is squeezed while wealthier people have no problem paying, he said.
The problem isn’t the amount of money that property taxes bring in, he said, but who is paying them. Vermont should ease the burden on the middle class by expanding the number of people who qualify for tax reductions, Corren said.
The state should also not allow communities to set a lower tax rate for second homes than they have for year-round residents, he said.
Corren said the topic of whether schools should spend less is secondary to solving the problem of who pays the property tax.
Corren said he does not support forcing districts to consolidate because it has never been proven to save money. Schools are already under pressure to spend less and the state should not add more, he said.
Scott said he is “lukewarm” on the idea of consolidation because he does not believe that it, alone, will alleviate the property tax burden.
To date, mandatory consolidation bills have failed in the Legislature. There is a voluntary program to encourage formation of Regional Education Districts, which to date has garnered scant buy-in and produced only modest savings.
Corren, meanwhile, is an advocate of single-payer health care, a system in which the government administers health insurance for all Vermonters.
He said it is not a contradiction to support centralized control for health care but not for schools. Single payer has been studied and has broad support in Vermont, whereas schools have historically been controlled locally and there is little support for centralizing control, he said.
Vermont has a state board of education, but it does not regulate school budgets.
Board member Bill Mathis said the idea of a centralized entity that removes authority from local districts wouldn’t float politically, either.
“The local boards would probably resist taking that authority away from them and then who would the rate-setting board report to?” Mathis said. The idea would create a new layer of state government, he said.
