Ann Manwaring represented Halifax, Whitingham, and Wilmington in the Vermont House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017.
WILMINGTON-For six of the ten years I served in the Legislature, I was on the Appropriations Committee. We spent a good deal of our time in that committee listening to state agency administrators present their financial needs for the ensuing fiscal year, which would begin the next July 1.
By the end of the budget process, when the governor would finally sign the Big Bill, as it is affectionately known, every state agency would know how much money it would have to do its work for the following year. The same process would begin again, with the opportunity for the Appropriations Committee to hold the agencies accountable for the outcomes of the prior year's spending.
But schools in Vermont have no such assurance, as the money each school receives for the work it is expected to do travels with students.
Until classes start in the fall, two months after their fiscal year begins, schools don't know what their student population will be and thus what their revenues will be. This is a tough way to run any organization, whether it is a for-profit, a non-profit, or a public entity - especially one that is so essential to the well-being of all of us.
Larger districts fare better than smaller ones, but all of necessity have had to adopt strategies to cope, some of which might have the unintended consequence of putting upward pressure on their budgets, and thus the property tax.
This is a direct result of the shift from local financing of education to the Act 60/Act 68 financing framework. But these two educational reform laws only speak to how to finance education. The legislation is silent about organizational structure and accountability.
Education in Vermont is a statewide system tied together by its financing structure. Please do not think that because I am from one of the fabled Gold Towns that I am trying to upend Act 60 - I am not!
But I do hope that the powers at the state level will recognize that to be effective for those who benefit from its work and for those who pay to support the work, any system needs financing, effective organizational structure, and transparent accountability.
As the Legislature struggles with this year's notable increases in property tax rates, I'd like to suggest some what-ifs.
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What if, instead of distributing funds from the state Education Fund in one bucket, which includes all costs based on the equalized pupil count for each school, as is now the case, the Legislature were to create two buckets?
One bucket would continue to travel with the student and include all those costs directly associated with student outcomes, such as teacher salaries, curriculum development, classroom supports, food service, libraries, sports, and others.
The second bucket would include facilities costs, such as building and grounds maintenance, utilities, heat, staff caring for infrastructure, bond payments, etc. This bucket would be given to schools at the beginning of the fiscal year, thus granting to schools for the first time since Act 60 assurance of at least a portion of their financing needs for the school year.
Both buckets would be derived from the locally enacted budgets, as is now the case. One great benefit of such a framework would be to diminish uncertainty of how to operate a school inherent in the present system.
Other possible outcomes of a two-bucket strategy might be:
1. Better accountability for a significant portion of school spending as facilities management is more straightforward.
2. Possible additional shared services might be found.
3. Opportunities to manage school capital financing differently might arise.
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What if property tax increases caused by Legislative actions were managed differently?
I was part of a small Legislative working group whose task was to identify all the Legislative actions that caused increased costs to schools.
We identified 130 pieces of legislation enacted in the previous five years. The cost impact of some was small, such as the requirement for using healthy cleaning products. Some were significant, such as pre-K. All were worthy of consideration.
But Legislators were asked only to evaluate the value of the proposal, not how to raise the revenues to pay for it.
As a result, Legislators are given a free pass to celebrate improved services without the burden of voting to raise taxes to pay for the action.
This is fundamentally different from program or policy changes that are part of the state's General Fund obligations.
Vermont has created a system to ensure that new policy or program initiatives to be operated by state government are paid for within existing revenues. It works!
The state is able to live within its budget based on expected revenues, even though we, unlike most states, have no constitutional requirement for a balanced budget.
It works also, in part, because Legislators are loathe to vote to increase taxes or fees, regardless of the value of the proposal.
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What if the state, both the Legislature and the administration, especially the Joint Fiscal Office of the Legislature and the administration's Department of Taxes, were obligated to collect and publish statistics about property tax revenues and expenditures as robustly as they do now for all the General Fund revenue sources?
Good policy requires good data. The cultural frame that guides the state's financial footing is focused on the General Fund, a perspective that is a holdover from a time when the property tax was essentially a local tax. That changed with Act 60.
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And finally: What if the state committed to focus on measuring outcomes, not inputs, for our community-based education system?
What if it took significantly more responsibility for the education property tax, some $1.4 billion, to the same understanding and commitment now afforded General Fund revenues and spending?
And what if the state took as its mission to complete the changeover inherent in Act 60 by embracing not just financing but also effective operations and transparent accountability, as all three are necessary for a well functioning system?
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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