GOP and GPA

Being the minority party in a legislature is not easy. Being a minority party with an independent governor, who may or may not support your position, is harder still. But as lawmakers wrap up the details of another session, Maine Republicans have reason to feel some satisfaction with the way GOP lawmakers handled themselves in Augusta this year. Now the question for the party is where it can go from here.

Certainly, Republicans did not get everything they wanted, but compared with previous legislatures they did well by staying involved until the very end. They drew the governor to their side on some issues, such as the sales-tax decrease, battled him on the gas tax and helped lead on funding for research and development. The work of GOP Sen. Peter Mills was crucial to the state’s improved funding formula for schools.

One area in which they missed, however, should have been a natural for them. Though the GOP proposed an increase in school-funding dollars, they appeared not to grasp the issue for what it was. As the party prepares its strategies for the next session, school funding that meets the intent of the law should be high on its list.

Here are just three reasons for the party to take the lead on this issue:

Adequate school funding provides a level playing field for all of Maine’s children. If the GOP expects everyone to be treated equally, with no special favors, then they must start out with equal opportunity. That currently is not the case, when schools in some rural districts worry about having enough textbooks to pass out as schools in wealthier communities worry about the number of students going on the spring-break trip to Paris.

Instead of addressing the issue of unequal opportunity, Republicans this spring raised the white flag on it. GOP Sen. Mary Small of Bath — you know Bath, the place with the state-subsidized shipyard — simply decreed that, “It does not cost the same in Kittery to educate a child as it does in Milo.” This outrageous refusal to consider the effects of disparate levels of funding is an unacceptable conclusion to a solvable problem.

Any honest lawmaker would admit that the Maine’s ongoing surplus this year is the result of sticking property taxpayers with a school-funding bill that is the proper responsibility of the state. The choice was whether Augusta would continue to send this unfunded mandate to towns and cities or strengthen local control by meeting the statutory 55 percent of funding for General Purpose Aid to Education.

Local control should be a core issue with Republicans, yet they opted for the unfunded mandate instead. It is understandably difficult to serve in Augusta and not develop an Augusta outlook on the rest of the state. But Republicans would better serve the ideals of the party if next time they chose to put more faith in municipalities, which have form of government that is closest to the taxpayer.

What stood in the way of greater school funding this session was the half-penny drop in the sales tax. In choosing between the sales-tax cut and the break for property taxpayers, Republicans relied heavily on the idea of fulfilling a promise made in 1993 to lower the sales tax. They conveniently ignored the promise made in 1985 — a promise that has yet to be kept — to fund schools at 55 percent.

This selective memory is understandable for lawmakers to the south. Schools there generally do not rely as heavily on state assistance and, on average, the higher incomes there offer the possibility of greater savings on a reduced sales tax. But northern lawmakers have no such excuse. By forgoing the school-funding promise for a sales-tax cut, they turned down millions of dollars for property taxpayers and for schools that are hurting.

State government — Republican, Democratic and independent — now has an unbroken, 15-year run of failure to fund schools as Maine law intends. Its lack of action on this issue signals clearly that it does not regard the poorer parts of this state as deserving of the opportunities available in well-funded districts.

Republicans have too often seen school funding as just another expensive line in the state budget, but they would serve Maine better if they could see how closely full state funding meets the ideals of the party.