Helping schools, cutting taxes

Legislators should forgive the wild threat made Monday by Gov. Angus King to veto the entire Part 2 budget unless he got his half penny off the sales tax. Not only was his remark made worse by the terrible timing, coming just two days before a hearing on the issue, but he says he is still willing to negotiate.

And while negotiating would be easier if the governor would forgo the magisterial pronouncements, legislators overhauling Maine’s school-funding system have come too far to be distracted now. They have assembled an improved formula after years of failed attempts, established a way to provide real property tax relief and have found an ongoing source of funding in the half penny the governor covets. So when the Legislature’s Taxation and Education committees meet jointly today to consider whether to set the state’s education formula right for the first time in a decade, their members know that they have the rare chance to make a real difference in the lives of schoolchildren statewide.

The policy work and number-crunching on the funding formula itself has already been done by the Education Committee. What Maine needs now is vision. It needs a commitment to improving the quality of life in Maine through improving the quality of education. It needs the understanding that just getting by isn’t good enough, and it needs the resolve to do something about it. It needs lawmakers who know that the history of Maine’s recent budget surpluses is the history of school funding denied. That if state government had paid its fair share to educate primary and secondary students in Maine, much of the surplus would be gone, and property taxpayers would have a lot more money in their pockets right now.

No one knows this better than the Senate chairman of Taxation, Richard Ruhlin of Brewer. He recently observed that other states have found a direct correlation between the level of education of residents and their level of wealth. Maine, overall, contributes a fair amount for education but, he observes, taxpayers are forced to rely too heavily on local property taxes, “the most regressive and most onerous of the taxes.”

The Taxation Committee, according to Sen. Ruhlin, must help find “a sustainable and stable base to commit increased support for education.” He should find plenty of support for that idea across the aisle, with Republicans. They have been saying much the same thing for the last couple of weeks, and now will have a chance to build bipartisan consensus on this idea. To be sustainable, however, means more than merely saying Maine can spend more money on education; it means putting into writing a commitment that helping schools is something more than just a one-year whim.

Legislators from rural areas should be particularly interested in getting such a commitment. Layoff notices from traditional industries have arrived weekly this spring. Small towns are losing jobs and then people. Lawmakers from these areas cannot afford to let their towns sacrifice the one attraction they have to sell, a good school system, to give politicians the chance to do a victory dance over the sales tax.

Sure, much of the added money sent to municipalities will go right back to taxpayers, but many school districts have been so shortchanged over the years that they could afford to take the pressure off property taxpayers and still have enough money to finally offer that honors class so important to colleges or to keep their top teachers by paying a semi-competitive wage.

Increased state funding for education that leads to a serious reduction in property tax is not only long overdue, it is the fair thing to do. Augusta passes a huge unfunded mandate down to towns and cities every time it fails to fully fund General Purpose Aid to Education (GPA). And that failure is a business stopper: the pro-business party might ask which tax is more likely to keep an entrepreneur from relocating in Maine, a high property tax or a half penny on the sales tax. The answer is obvious and sets the priority.

Municipal officials know this, too. The Maine Municipal Association recently asked 70 members whether they supported a proposal by Senate President Mark Lawrence to provide majority funding to GPA before dropping the half penny on the sales tax. Remember, these officials have been scrambling for years to attract new businesses. Given the choice of property or sales tax relief, 77 percent of those who responded chose to support the Lawrence legislation.

The results are no surprise. Municipal officials are on the frontline for both business development and taxpayer complaint. What is a surprise is that these officials have held their tongues while some Augusta politicians, led by Gov. King, have rejected the idea of providing property-tax relief through education funding because, they say, local officials would fritter it away. “It’s like free money to them,” the governor said not long ago. Maybe, or maybe letting local taxpayers decide how to spend money rightfully theirs is not such a bad idea.

Sen. Lawrence’s bill does that by ensuring that much of money the state owes for education expenses is sent to the municipalities. Call it a form of local control. Call it a down payment on education costs. Just don’t let this chance slip by without demanding the state live up to its end of the bargain.