Communities could lose funds under 1B plan

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AUGUSTA – An estimated 140 Maine communities would receive less school funding under the Legislature’s Question 1 proposal, according to an analysis by the Department of Education.

Meanwhile, although all towns look like winners under a separate proposal drafted by the Maine Municipal Association, it remained unclear this week how the MMA plan might affect towns in the long run.

Maine voters will decide on Nov. 4 which plan to endorse when they cast their votes on Question 1, unless they defeat them both by voting for the third option of doing nothing.

Both plans aim to reduce the burden on local property taxes by shifting more of the financial responsibility for education to the state – roughly $250 million a year.

In the end, the debate can be defined geographically between Maine’s wealthy coastal towns, which get little state aid; and their poorer neighbors inland, some of which now get as much as 80 percent of their educational costs paid by the state.

For example, the Legislature’s measure, crafted by the Baldacci administration and known as 1B, would send less money to 140 towns. Some would see only a modest reduction, while others, such as South Portland and Kittery, would lose millions annually, according to the DOE analysis.

The richest Maine communities would continue to receive their minimum subsidy under 1B, even though they otherwise would not qualify for any state education help.

“The thing I think will really awake some people is that so many communities really do take it on the chin” under the plan developed by the Legislature and Baldacci administration, MMA spokesman Michael Starn said this week.

“I don’t think [the Legislature] thought out the impact on individual school districts on an annual basis,” Starn said. “We think [1B] was hastily put together with the real motive being to defeat 1A as opposed to really being sincere about offering a viable alternative.”

To confuse the issue further, the wealthy communities would get their subsidy based on an old formula in law that was not repealed by the Legislature, while all other towns would receive funding under the new 1B formula.

Susan Cameron, the DOE’s expert on school funding, said the education department did not have time to merge the 1985 education funding law, which remains on the books, into the 1B proposal.

“There are some errors and missing information [in 1B] that we’ll have to deal with” if the proposal passes, Cameron said.

She said the state’s school funding law is so complex that the state did not try to “clean up” all of the inconsistencies in drafting 1B.

The 1B plan, therefore, repeals some elements of the 1985 school funding law while leaving old provisions intact.

“It’s going to be done,” Cameron said of the changes, “but it’s going to be done piecemeal.”

Although both the MMA plan, known as 1A, and the Legislature’s competing 1B plan envision the state paying 55 percent of all education costs, how the money is divvied up varies dramatically, according to officials on both sides of the debate.

There are two major differences between the competing ballot measures.

First, the MMA plan would take effect July 1, 2004, and pay for all special education costs for all schools in Maine, including places like property-rich Mount Desert Island, which would receive $1.84 million a year in state aid rather than their current $430,000, according to data provided by the MMA.

In addition, the MMA plan would amend the existing school funding formula but continue to use it as a base.

Under the MMA plan, “the rich towns will suck up the money whether they need it or not,” state Rep. Peter Mills, R-Cornville, said Friday.

“It was an insidious, overtly political way of reaching out to the rich towns” to get their support for the MMA plan, asserted Mills, a veteran legislator who serves on the Appropriations Committee.

“It pits the rich towns against the poor towns and that’s a horrible thing to do,” he said. “It appeals to the worst instincts in people.”

However, Mills admitted that the minimum subsidy also has been a political issue, though meager in comparison to overall state education spending. He explained that historically the Legislature has provided some money to wealthy towns in order to get lawmakers from those communities to support the annual school funding bill.

Mills cautioned voters not to put much stock in projections under either proposal and admitted that for 1B anyway, the state could not estimate how much school districts would get after fiscal year 2006 because the Department of Education guidelines aren’t completed yet.

The second major difference between the plans is that the Legislature’s proposal would reimburse towns for only the expenses the state deems are essential in helping Maine students achieve the new state Learning Results standards.

All other operational costs would be eliminated from the Legislature’s new funding formula.

For example, South Portland would lose nearly $3 million a year under 1B.

However, some communities, such as Bangor, would get hefty increases under either plans – $3.4 million under MMA’s 1A plan or $2.2 million under the Legislature’s B1 proposal.