Shap Smith gathering school funding ideas

Statewide, property tax rates have gone up 90 cents per $1,000 of property value over fiscal years 2014 and 2015, and many voters went to the polls last week in part to protest the recent hikes.

Shap Smith, the Democratic House speaker, is looking to address the issue head-on.

He convened a 10-member working group of former, current and now-future lawmakers this fall to tackle the perennial education finance conundrum. He expects a number of recommendations to emerge from the group.

The meetings are not public, and Smith says several ideas, including the regionalization of school districts and a shift toward more income-based revenues, are not ready for prime time.

Smith says the House Education Committee will get the first crack at reforms in the funding formula; typically, the House Ways and Means Committee would start the tax writing process.

“I think it’s helpful to have a holistic view of how policy relates to spending, and how funding relates to spending. So when people are making decisions, they understand the impact of all the moving parts,” Smith said. “When we have it all in one place, we have a better opportunity to address costs with the most fairness.”

Rep. Dave Sharpe, D-Bristol, is a member of Smith’s study group and vice-chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has grappled with ways to fund education for years. He supports moving the education fund budget to the Education Committee.

The committees on Appropriations and Ways and Means still would have their turn with whatever the Education Committee proposes, Sharpe said, but the financial impacts of school policies would be contemplated before programs are fully proposed.

He said the disconnect between policy and funding often leaves lawmakers at cross purposes.

By way of example, Sharpe pointed to small-school grants, a financial mechanism for lending state support to tiny schools that have trouble staying open. As it is, the Ways and Means Committee looks at small-school grants as an expense to cut so it can shave close to a penny off the property-tax rate. But the Education Committee, literally in the room next door, might be looking at those grants as a great investment for students in small communities.

“In that case, the small-schools grant might make a lot of sense,” Sharpe said. “So there are two different rooms discussing the same issue from two different perspectives.”

Rep. Bernie Juskiewicz, R-Cambridge, a member of the Education Committee just elected to his second term, also thinks a change in process would help.

“How can you make policy without understanding what the impact of the policy is?” Juskiewicz asked.

He spent 20 years on a school board and thinks his committee’s work would improve if members understood more about the cost impacts of their ideas.

But former Rep. Oliver Olsen, R-Jamaica, just elected to a new term, cautioned that there’s no “magic bullet.”

“This is a difficult, complex issue with no easy answers,” Olsen said. “It would be naive to think somebody could come up with a grand plan, present it to the Legislature and have it be welcomed with open arms and passed into law.”

As the working group considers options to propose in January, Rep. Chip Conquest, D-Wells River, said one tension is clear to him: The balance between local control over local education and legislative control over statewide property taxes.

“If the Legislature is going to have more control over costs, that may mean less control at the local level,” Conquest said.

Any changes in the sensitive education issues — from spending to funding to governance — must have buy-in from constituents to muster support in the Statehouse, lawmakers said.

Smith said the Statehouse will be ripe for reform in the aftermath of last week’s general election. Democratic incumbents in the state House and Senate faced stiffer competition than they’ve seen in more than a decade, and Gov. Peter Shumlin, a sitting governor, was nearly beaten by a political neophyte. Many voters said they were motivated by increases in property tax rates.