(Jon Margolis writes political columns for VTDigger. His opinions are his own.)
Gov. Phil Scott’s first proposed budget was bold, effective, confusing, contradictory (in more ways than one), politically moderate (like its author) and politically shrewd, but politically risky.
And full of numbers that may not entirely add up.
Not that there is anything unusual about that. The creation of a government budget is a creative art, one in which the dollar figures are not irrelevant but not always central.
In this one, for instance, Scott said the changes he proposes in the state’s school financing system would keep property taxes from going up. Reading the same proposal, House Education Committee Chair David Sharpe, D-Bristol, said the governor’s plan “would raise property taxes.”
Lawmakers and their budget experts were also unclear as of Wednesday afternoon on the details of Scott’s proposed transfer of both responsibilities and money from the general fund to the education fund. As Sharpe read the figures, the transfer of money to the education fund would not be enough to pay for all the new obligations of that fund. The difference, he said, would have to be made up from higher property taxes.
And when all the transfers were complete, said Rep. Janet Ancel, D-Calais, the Ways and Means Committee chair, “there will be a $35 million hole in the general fund.”
Whoever turns out to be right, the current confusion at the Statehouse (on Wednesday afternoon even the budget experts at the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office were still trying to parse some of the data) is one reason — though not the only one — that Scott’s ambitious package is unlikely to be accepted by lawmakers, at least not as a package.
One key element of that package could be rejected soon. According to Ancel, her committee was told Wednesday morning that if Scott’s plan to postpone school budget votes from Town Meeting Day in March until May 23 was not approved soon, his broader school finance proposals might be in danger.
“I looked around the room,” Ancel said. “I didn’t see one yes vote.”
No surprise. Town meeting, in Vermont, is held in esteem that sometimes seems to border on reverence. Diluting its prominence is a tough vote.
So, perhaps, is dealing with Scott’s innovative plan for spending more on education: Spend less on education.
It’s one of the contradictions in his budget message. To find the money to expand early child care and pre-kindergarten schooling and to increase funding for the Vermont State Colleges System, Scott called for cutting teachers’ pay and school budgets.
That’s not the way he put it. Vermonters by and large like their schools and the men and women who teach in them. Calling for cuts in school programs and smaller paychecks for teachers might not go over too well.
So the governor talked about “parity” between teachers and other state workers when it comes to paying for their health insurance, and about “level funding” for school budgets.
But make no mistake about it. These are pay cuts and budget cuts.
Their purpose is not solely to save money. Scott is a real moderate Republican. He wants government to spend as little as possible, but he wants it to provide services, in this case for young children and college students.
Still, if teachers have to pay more for health insurance, their take-home pay will be lower. Scott said forcing teachers to pay 20 percent of their health insurance premiums instead of the 15 percent many now pay would save $15 million. That’s about $1,500 a teacher.
Or maybe it isn’t, and maybe the savings are not as much as Scott assumed. Nicole Mace, the executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association, said all teachers in Vermont will switch health plans next year. Under the new plan, she said, premiums will be lower, so teachers could pay a higher percentage of their health care premiums without suffering a loss in take-home pay.
On the other hand, she said, “it’s not clear to me that there are any savings to the state” from the governor’s proposal.
As to the school districts, if they have to spend no more money next year than this year (not in total spending, but in “education costs,” which is most of their spending), they will have to cut people, programs or both. The rest of the world will not be level funded. Contracts already agreed on will require pay hikes. Health care costs will rise. The cost of supplies — from computers to pencils — will creep up.
So the district, required by law (as Scott envisions it) to spend not a dollar more, will have to cut something to keep the total “education cost” dollar figure “level” with the previous year’s. One solution would be to renegotiate those contracts to reduce teacher salaries. Another would be to fire teachers or other staff. With 227 school districts in Vermont, there is a real possibility that a few hundred teachers will be looking for jobs or leaving the state in a year or so.
The other contradictory feature of Scott’s education plan is how Montpelier-centric it is.
And from a Republican governor. It is Republicans who most avidly sing the glories of local control, who decry “one size fits all” solutions and assail Democrats for thinking (as Republicans view it) that “Montpelier knows best.”
Now a Republican governor is proposing state laws seizing one important issue from the local collective bargaining table, ordering local school boards not to increase spending, and setting a new date for localities to vote on their school budgets.
The contradictions, confusions and likely difficulty of getting the Legislature to go along with his program explain the political risks for Scott.
But he also scored political and policy points. If nothing else, as Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, noted, the governor is forcing people “to have the conversation that nobody wants to have.”
That conversation is about school costs continuing to go up, driving up property taxes, even as the schools educate fewer children every year. Many Vermonters agree with Benning that the state “can’t sustain what we’re doing.”
Scott has proposed a stark solution, a reset of the school spending system that would cost jobs and almost surely degrade the quality of public education, at least for a while. Most of that money, after all, was not being wasted. It was buying good schools.
But that doesn’t mean the conversation Scott started will not be useful. And it presents a political challenge for the Democrats, too. They don’t have to — and probably will not — accept Scott’s solution to the school spending problem. But they would be well advised not to leave the impression that they don’t recognize the problem.
