Op-Ed: Setting the record straight on education funding in Vermont
July 24, 2024 | By Rep. Pattie McCoy
What’s the worst thing to do when you are stuck in a hole? Continuing to dig. And what is the worst thing to do in an affordability crisis? Make things less affordable.
Yet, in the Vermont Legislature, this common sense is foreign to many of our elected officials.
With a population of about 645,000 Vermonters, the state’s Human Services budget serves one-third of that. And with just above 80,000 students statewide, the state’s Education Fund serves our dwindling student population. Yet this year, the state’s Education Fund—serving just over 80,000 and dropping—will outspend the Human Services budget, which serves about 200,000.
Let me repeat that: We now spend more to serve 80,000 students in our K-12 education system than we do 200,000 Vermonters in our Human Services system. And if we do nothing, this gap is going to grow larger and larger.
The governor sounded the alarm in late 2023, when the yearly tax letter was sent with news of an average 18% increase to our education property tax bills. He warned school districts to pay attention to this when developing their budgets. In late December, the Democrat Super Majority Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth assured Vermonters the average property tax increase would be limited to 1.5 or 2%. In reality, it’s nearly 14% on average.
Yes, Mr. Tinney, president of the Vermont NEA, the Education Fund is a beast, as Vermonters continue to have to feed it monetarily without looking at true, structural reform to the education system. If our state was delivering not only top-notch education to our students but good test scores that rivaled other states combined with a growing student population, showing our money is being put to good use, then I am all in. Our state however continues to show an annual decline in both student populations and student outcomes while the cost to educate these students increases each year.
Faced with a $243 million increase over last year’s spending by school districts, the legislature looked for ways to decrease this amount. The House Ways and Means Committee worked hard and proposed a bipartisan solution to the yield bill (education funding bill), which included several of the governor’s initiatives of structural education reform. Funny thing happened: Fewer than 24 hours later, that proposal was dismissed by the Democrat Super Majority and instead a double-digit tax increase with no bipartisan structural reforms was passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee on a party line vote.
In the end, an additional $96 million dollars was infused into the education fund to reduce the tax increase from 18% to 13.8%. But those were one-time funds to try and plug a recurring budget gap. That’s like using a band-aid on a bullet wound. Every legislator and every Vermonter should be very afraid of what happens next year to our education tax bills when the band-aid falls off.
Put simply, structural education reform is needed now! We cannot continue on this path of tax hike after tax hike. Over the last decade, dozens of reforms have been proposed by Gov. Scott and the Republicans in the legislature. Many of these haven’t even gotten a hearing in Montpelier. And what is the solution proposed by the Democrat Super Majority? Yet another commission to study how we deliver education. Since the year 2000, the legislature has enacted 38 education finance studies. The 2024 yield bill adds study number 39.
We do not need more studies to tell us that a double-digit tax hike is wrong for Vermonters.
The governor stated right along he would veto the yield bill if it did not contain structural reform and reduce the average 13.8% increases Vermonters would face.
The yield bill was one of the last bills to pass on the last day of session. It takes a week or more for the bills to make it to the governor’s desk for action. Even before the governor received the bill, he reached out to the super majority leadership, told them he was vetoing, and asked to meet to come to some consensus on a path forward. The answer from the super majority? Wait until the governor actually receives the bill. The bill landed on the governor’s desk the week before the veto date. So much for urgency.
A meeting happened and the super majority cried foul as the governor wasn’t physically in the room. The secretary of education, the secretary of the administration, the tax commissioner, and several other administration staff were in the room meaning, the governor, while not physically present, was IN THE ROOM!
To not vet the solutions the governor offered to come to a compromise, knowing Vermonters were facing a 13.8% average increase in property taxes, is disheartening. Afterall, the yield bill is one of the last bills to pass out of the House, meaning it is not taken up much before mid-April. We adjourned May 11. The bill passed the House and was vetted in the Senate, all within a three-week period. We had time to come to a consensus to reduce the burden of property taxes on Vermonters.
The Democrat Super Majority mantra that the governor never offers solutions is simply not true. Cost containment ideas proposed by the Scott Administration, as well as Republican leaders, over the past several years, have been dismissed outright. The following are ideas put forth by the governor that have been dismissed:
Enacting variable growth caps on per pupil spending
Tying school spending to student population changes
Capping statewide property tax increases
Adjusting excess spending thresholds
Meaningfully reducing excessive property tax adjustments
Asset testing the income sensitivity property for certain earners
Making the universal meals program progressive
Aligning student-to-staff ratios to be more in line with peer states through natural attrition
Implementing a multi-vote structure for districts with lower student-to-staff ratios
Setting statutory boundaries on health care cost sharing
Adjusting the funding formula to tighten the connection between spending and taxing decisions
Strategically utilizing reserves to soften rate increases
When people talk about the political environment in Montpelier, let’s be clear: The governor in January put forth several initiatives. Most notably a tri-partisan housing bill, which included many of the governor’s initiatives, was introduced the third week in January. House bill 719—which would have reduced hurdles to building new housing—was sent to the House Committee on Housing and General, where it sat “on the wall” all session long.
As I stated on the floor of the House before voting to sustain the governor’s veto on the yield bill: “Not doing anything because the Super Majority says we don’t have time is not an option I can support. Sustain the veto and work like heck to get a yield below double digits, that has short-term and long-term solutions, that gives Vermonters relief from an average property tax bill increase of 13.8%. I cannot go back home to my constituency and tell them we didn’t do anything because we didn’t have time. That is unacceptable to me, and it is unacceptable to every Vermonter we serve.”
It seems the Democrat Super Majority has chosen the unacceptable path. This election, we have an opportunity to send a message to Montpelier by rejecting the elected officials who have pushed the failed policies of the past over and over again.
Let’s make it clear to them that Vermonters cannot afford—and will not tolerate—double-digit property tax hikes and a broken education system. We can and must do better.
State Rep. Patricia McCoy is a Republican from Poultney representing the Rutland-1 legislative district.