[H]ouse legislation that would alter school spending caps and a Senate bill that would repeal the caps moved a step closer Thursday to a final debate in the General Assembly.
The House Ways and Means Committee voted “without enthusiasm,” as the chair put it, for a 0.9 percentage point increase in thresholds statewide, and the Senate Finance Committee approved a repeal.
“My preference would be to repeal the thresholds,” said Rep. Janet Ancel, D-Calais, chair of Ways and Means. “I will vote in favor of this motion because I want to have a bill moving and this is the most likely to move, but I’ve been clear that my vote on the floor may not be the same as it is in here.”
A few hours later, her counterpart in the Senate, Sen. Tim Ashe, D-Chittenden, voted to repeal the allowable growth thresholds after hearing about well managed school districts cutting to the bone and still getting hit with a tax penalty. Ashe would prefer a return to the old spending thresholds for now.
“Neither AGP nor the excess spending threshold gets to management,” Ashe said. “It isn’t the concept of district-by-district thresholds that is bad, it is just that what was chosen this time was too blunt an instrument.”
The allowable growth percentage, or AGP, assigns each school district an amount they can increase spending from 0 to 5.5 percent based on the previous year’s per pupil spending. If a district votes to spend more than the allowed amount they are fined with a double tax on each additional dollar.
Last week, the House Committee on Education passed legislation that would add 0.9 to each school district’s allowable growth percentage to help defray an unexpected 7.9 percent rise in health care costs.
The bill then moved to Ways and Means where Rep. George Till, D-Jericho, questioned the reasoning behind 0.9. “I will vote for this to get it out of here, just to move things along,” Till said.
Rep. Patricia Komline, R-Dorset, threw her support behind the 0.9 fix so that she could offer an amendment on the floor. She later regretted her vote when she learned that the legislation was so tightly worded that no amendments could be made to the legislation.
Rep. Jim Condon, D-Colchester, voted against the 0.9 increase. Condon said he wanted to keep the spending thresholds “as is” because his district was in good shape. “We are making due with caps and frankly it would be a benefit to the citizens of my town if everybody else did so too,” he said.
While Rep. Adam Greshin, I-Warren, says the allowable growth percentage is working as intended, but he recognize that the unanticipated health care costs have caused some “pain” and he voted for it. “It seems as though we finally found a threshold with some teeth to it,” he said.
House Ways and Means voted 9-1-1 to move the 0.9 fix to the House for consideration.
Within hours, the Senate Finance Committee voted 7-1-1 in favor of moving repeal of the allowable growth percentage to the full Senate for consideration.
Correction Jan. 15, 2016, 10:18 a.m.: The House and Ways and the Senate Finance votes have been corrected.
Sen. Ann Cummings, chair of the Senate Committee on Education explained why her committee supported eliminating the cap.
“It sounded good at first, but as it started to work out it became obvious that none of us knew school budgets, and it turns out they are a lot more complex,” Cummings said. “What became obvious was we were impacting the low spending schools. We are sending a mixed message: We want you to merge, we want you to provide a good education, but then we are putting on a threshold that makes cuts to that good education.”
Her point was made moments later in testimony from Winooski School District. Every year since 2009 Winooski has spent less than the state average per pupil. In 2009 they spent $290 less and in FY2015 they spent $1,034 less than the state average.
“We are the school that is exactly not the school you were looking for with Act 46,” said Julian Portilla, a school board member for Winooski testified. Winooski has a steady student population, a simple governance structure and close to 900 students, according to Portilla. He said they have had lean budgets over the years and have the lowest property taxes in the county. “Winooski will always serve folks at the lower end of the socio economic scale so if we have to limit our spending we will always be underserving our kids,” Portilla said.
Sen. Kevin Mullin, R-Rutland, voted against repeal because he recognized the good work boards have done keeping budgets down, and he believes repealing the cap won’t happen in time for most school boards to benefit from it. Mullin would like the Senate to look at ways to help school boards in fiscal year 2018.
Senators felt the allowable growth percentage was sprung on them. “Last year, the cap was dropped on us in a way that was very uncomfortable,” said Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden. “That discomfort has now expressed itself across the state in different ways. I think it is unfortunate that it happened in this way — legislation that we feel inappropriately affects the citizens of this state.”
Sen. Mark MacDonald, D-Orange, also felt that AGP was oversold to the Senate. “If the bill had produced results anywhere near what was advertised we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“We tried, it didn’t work out the way we thought,” said Cummings, “We are going back to square one.”
