Lock lawmakers in room to resolve school funding
A growing number of lawmakers finally have realized that unless they are forced to sit down and find a fairer method of funding public schools the issue will remain unresolved. Legislators are signing a petition that calls upon the governor to convene a special session to address property tax reform. A special session is similar to parents telling children that they cannot go out and play until they clean up their messes.
Few funding issues in Pennsylvania are messier than school funding, yet because there is no easy solution, lawmakers have paid little more than lip service to the crisis facing school boards and the burden that is continually passed off onto just one segment of the public, the property owner.
Last year before breaking for the summer, the General Assembly put together a task force to explore school funding options with the promise that lawmakers would deal with the issue when returning to regular session. It failed to do so and the problem has only festered.
Pennsylvania is so strapped for cash these days that increases in state subsidies are expected to be miniscule once lawmakers and the governor agree on a budget. The deadline is just days away and there is every indication that a substantial raid on the Rainy Day Fund along with huge increases on cigarette and snuff taxes and a hike in landfill tipping fees will be needed to balance the budget.
Meanwhile school districts are having just as difficult a time devising budgets. Most area schools are so strapped for cash that they are forced to raise property taxes to take care of the basics. And property owners have grown weary of being viewed as a ready source to balance budgets.
The way state laws are written, school boards have little room to tap into other sources. They must wait to see how much federal and state aid will flow in and then figure out how much local money is needed. Other than a $10 per capita tax and a share of local income taxes, school boards are locked into property taxes. School directors take the brunt of irate phone calls and boisterous crowds when taxes are raised. Little anger has been directed at lawmakers.
But there is a shift. People are beginning to understand that the state, rather than funding its half of the cost of education, is subsidizing just 38 percent of the cost. The feds’ share is about 5 percent, leaving the local share at 57 percent.
Few disagree that something needs to be done to change the state formula for funding education. The problem arises in defining the source of the additional revenue. Whether it’s an increase in sales tax, extending gambling, levying higher sin taxes, large groups of people are going to be angry.
The simplest form of lowering the reliance on property taxes by replacing it with a higher sales tax or one that is extended to food and clothing, seems workable. And it was a principle that legislators thought would work, only they didn’t have the courage to do it themselves.
A few years ago they enacted legislation that allowed school boards to do this on their own. Very few opted to do so because realistically it doesn’t work. If one district hikes sales taxes, and its neighbors do not, consumers will travel to the lower sales tax district to make purchases.
This must be a statewide rather than school district maneuver. But sales tax isn’t the only option, and lawmakers need to get serious in weighing each idea and devising a fairer way to collect school taxes.
If the governor needs to send them to their room until the mess is cleaned up, then so be it.