[W]hat was once a two-front battle being waged by Gov. Phil Scott’s administration to keep school spending down shifted to an exclusive focus on statewide cost-containment measures after Town Meeting Day.
In the fall, the governor asked school boards to be cost conscious while budgeting. They delivered. On Tuesday, towns approved 96 percent of school budgets, which collectively kept spending increases to 1.5 percent — less than the 2.5 percent line he drew in the sand and well below the 3.5 percent growth expected.
Now, the administration is calling on state policymakers to take up cost containment measures to create another $40 million in savings this fiscal year in order to fulfill Scott’s pledge of no new taxes.
“School boards have done their job. Now it’s time for the state to take over and do its job,” said Commissioner of Finance Adam Greshin.
He said Scott is “very happy and impressed” with the fiscal discipline of school boards, but the governor is not satisfied.
The problem? There will still be at least a 5 cent increase in property taxes because of a $40 million shortfall in the education fund. The deficiency exists because lawmakers applied millions in reversions to fiscal 2018 and dipped into reserves to lower property taxes, which now has to be made up in the current budget.
Rep. Scott Beck, R-St. Johnsbury, who sits on the House Education Committee, said making up that deficit this year would inevitably require further cuts to the school budgets passed this week.
“The vast majority of school districts approved their budgets and the only way to get $40 million at this point in time is to take it out of budgets that have already been approved by voters. That is the only place you can go,” he said.
In December, Scott held an education summit to discuss ways to address spending, reiterating the need to keep spending increases to 2.5 percent. Beck now wonders why Scott didn’t ask for negative spending.
“If the administration wanted them to come in at negative one or two why didn’t they say that? Maybe they would have met it,” he said. “The cliche of moving the goalpost is overused, but jeez.”
Any other year, the state would be rejoicing over a 1.5 percent increase in spending, said Nicole Mace, head of the Vermont School Boards Association.
“The reason we are not celebrating is because property taxes are still projected to increase 5 cents and that is because of actions the state took,” Mace said.
The budget hole was created by state policymakers, and the solution shouldn’t involve the state taking over the budgeting process, she said.
Greshin said he doesn’t want to do that. He wants lawmakers to consider the governor’s list of potential cost containment measures and introduce “additional means to reduce costs” for fiscal 2019, and every year after.
At the start of the legislative session, Secretary of Administration Susanne Young presented lawmakers with a laundry list of policy options that could tighten school spending. Some of the options include moving to a statewide school employee health care contract, changing how special education services are rendered and paid for, and increasing the student to staff ratio.
However the cuts are made, Mace said officials should think twice before trying to take back another $40 million from school districts. Local budgeters did their part and voters approved those budgets, she said.
“For the state to turn around and declare they are going to take over and somehow take 40 million more dollars out of school budgets calls into question the entire integrity of the budgeting process,” Mace said.
Greshin said it wasn’t just about fiscal 2019, and that the proposed cost containment measures would have a lasting impact.
“We have to do everything we can to provide an affordable education product not only for students and parents, but also for Vermont taxpayers,” he said.
