3/25/99
Having signed off on a $4.4 billion state budget, for reasons best known by Republicans, and leaving only about $100 million or so up for grabs, the legislators have pretty much pared down the issues to (1) reducing the sales tax to 5% and (2) increasing general purpose aid to education by $155 million.
The sales tax reduction seems a lock because a surplus revenue statute would probably kick in anyway.
The education issue is more complicated. There are no set statutory parameters on exactly how much education is funded. Presumably, local schools are funded 55% by state revenues.
But there the bucks stop and lobbying kicks in. The legislative education lobby in Augusta is the largest of all lobbying groups. Add principals, superintendents, teachers, governor and mindless editorials in the Bangor Daily News and the rhetoric is enormous. Massive lobbying efforts despite the fact that Maine's 285 elementary and secondary school districts and Maine's approximately 60,000 students have one of the highest expenditures per pupil in the country - in 1997 the 14th highest among states at $6,369.
More funds for education is not the paramount legislative priority on the minds of Maine citizens despite the huge volume of media activity by the education lobby. In numerous polls, discussions and economic seminars, all regions of the state - southern, central, coastal, northern and western - indicate forcefully that jobs is the most important issue facing Maine citizens.
And Maine jobs are going south.
The education lobby blames the out-migration on lack of education funding which is a syrupy slice of motherhood and apple pie. Who doesn't want more money for kids? But are the kids getting the money?.
Last year the legislature did appropriate more money for education. It did nothing to reduce property taxes because local education boards either kept the "local share " the same or even increased it for salaries and other personnel benefits. The average annual salary of Maine classroom teachers in 1997 was $33,800. Not too shabby for 185 days of work.
If the legislature goes along with a bundle of education bills increasing the state's share by $155 million, there is no doubt that a majority of these funds will go to teachers' unionized salaries.
There is a problem with the school funding formula which nobody understands. There have been attempts to "reform" the formula since its inception in the 1980s.
An outfit called the Coalition for Equitable School Funding is the latest advocate for a change. It wants, among other things, that the formula be changed to add an income factor as well as a cost of living factor to "produce taxpayer equity."
The Coalition says the current formula has created gross taxpayer equity. That is, data shows that property taxpayers in some communities pay as little as 1% of their income in property taxes to support public education while taxpayers in other communities pay more than 5% of their income.
The Coalition further says that no school funding formula is fair that depends exclusively or primarily on property value as a measure of a community's ability to pay.
However, the basis for funding education which is a majority state function is the local property tax because of its tangible, somewhat stable equity. Relying on income or other factors is an ever changing intangible base. Ironically, the ever increasing school budgets also increase property values - a tail wagging the dog.
The state education authority is supposedly a planning, appraising and interpreting agency and should not have much direct power over a community. But it increasing does through the legislature and its actions.
Much the same for the federal government involvement whose powers and money should be confined to equalizing educational inequalities among the states and individuals. But increasingly a plethora of federal grants, once unconditional, have direct strings tied to Congress.
Maine communities will probably receive more educational funds through the present legislature. But legislation to change the formula will be faced with legislative action not to.
Education does not hang free in space . It operates continuously within organized cultural patterns. And indeed so within the cultures of the Two Maine's.
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