Show ME the money

The polite, diplomatic way to describe Senate President Mark Lawrence’s proposal to make a cut in the sales tax contingent upon the state meeting its statutory obligation to local education is that it compels the Legislature to set priorities.

The more bare-knuckled way is this: To every lawmaker who talked voters into sending you to Augusta so you could, by golly, do something about property taxes — put the taxpayers’ money where your mouth is.

The arguments on Sen. Lawrence’s side are strong. The Legislature in 1985 made a commitment that the state’s General Purpose Aid to Education would be at least 55 percent of the cost of running public schools. Subsequent legislatures have never come close, and the state’s obligation has been shifted to local property owners. The gap between have and have-not schools only widens. The economic revitalization of rural Maine becomes increasingly unlikely. Schools that once were the pride and joy of small towns have become the source of divisive anger and envy.

The sales-tax-firsters are squirming. It seemed so simple — reduce the sales tax by a half-cent, attach your name to a $60-million tax cut, don’t worry about whether you’re really helping the working families you say you’re helping, everybody’s happy. Or at least they think they’re happy until the next property tax bill comes, until the next education program gets the ax, until the next bright, young (and bitter) high-school graduate leaves town and swears never to return. Their arguments are weak. Here’s a few, in no particular order of weakness:

If we give school districts more money, they’ll spend it on frills. Just like the towns squandered the Homestead Exemption.

Frills being roofs that don’t leak and the replacement of 20-year-old textbooks shared by three students. And, incidentally, towns did not go on a spending spree with last year’s new Homestead Exemption. At least three-quarters returned all or most of it to property taxpayers. Of the few towns that spent some on schools, what did lawmakers expect after shortchanging school districts and fouling the distribution formula for the last decade?

Gov. King recently wrote to the Maine Municipal Association that, “in the aggregate, it appears that municipalities used the homestead reimbursement in a disciplined way … not as a windfall to increase spending.” Unfortunately, his public comments have been more discouraging. He repeatedly has lamented that 20 percent of Maine towns did not pass on the homestead savings to taxpayers, but, as Belfast City Manager Terry St. Peter points out on today’s op-ed page, that conclusion is based on erroneous information.

The state is enjoying its first surpluses in nearly a decade; the people deserve tax relief.

This argument ignores the fact that the state has a surplus precisely because it has reneged on its GPA obligation and dumped the responsibility on the towns. Pencil in the GPA shortfall (about $170 million this year) and Maine is still in the red. To itself.

At roughly $6,800 per pupil, Maine already spends plenty on education.

It does spend plenty. The problem is one of distributing the burden, of closing the disparity in per-pupil spending among schools. An increase in GPA isn’t an increase in spending, it’s an increase in equity and fairness. And it’s a decrease in property taxes.

In 1993, the Legislature promised to cut the sales tax and promises must be kept.

Absolutely, so keep the 1985 promise first. It has seniority, and it’s more important. Also, the 1993 law, with an automatic revenue trigger for sales tax reductions is deeply flawed — it considers only income with no regard to the pile of unpaid bills. Maine doesn’t really want to be like the deadbeat who’s three house payments behind and goes out and buys a big-screen TV, does it?

Jonesport (or any other poor town) will never have a school as good as Cape Elizabeth (or any other affluent town), so it is not worth spending more state dollars on it.

The most offensive argument of all. It merely restates the problem. It suggests that Jonesport kids aren’t as worthy. It assumes that the next Jonas Salk, Bill Gates or Edmund Muskie will not come from Jonesport. It tells Jonesport taxpayers that, despite doing all they can, they can never do enough. With all Maine knows about the correlation between access to the state’s only modern highway and prosperity, it says “tough luck” to anyone not born in the I-95/Turnpike corridor. It makes the lingering death of rural Maine a self-fulfilling prophecy.

From the bottom of the barrel: Increasing GPA runs contrary to Maine’s proud tradition of local control; the state cannot keep its GPA commitment because of all those unfunded federal education mandates.

Since when are unfunded or underfunded education mandates from the state a sign of local control? Nobody’s saying Augusta (Learning Results notwithstanding) needs to micromanage local schools. Just give the taxpayers their money back. And if the real enemy is Washington, who is better suited to do battle — the Maine Legislature, in concert with other state legislatures, or the Jonesport school board?

The paradox here is this: one cannot go to a local selectmen’s or school board meeting without hearing the cry for property tax relief; Maine puts up with an oversized, under-experienced citizen’s legislature for the sole reason of having lawmakers deeply attuned to local concerns. That means strong schools and property-tax relief.