While the basics of writing a budget involve determining how much revenue is available and how that revenue should be divided, the devil is in the details. Such will be the situation facing state lawmakers when they convene in January and begin haggling over education funding.
At stake is the Legislature’s compliance with the state Supreme Court’s decision in McCleary v. Washington, which determined that lawmakers have not lived up to their “paramount duty” as spelled out in the state constitution — adequately funding K-12 education. The justices earlier this year held the Legislature in contempt for not following the 2012 ruling, but declined for the time being to issue sanctions. The devil, however, resides in the issue of school levy equity.
As part of the McCleary ruling, the court ordered the Legislature to increase state spending and reduce its reliance upon local levies to pay for basic education. As the Associated Press explains: “School districts were supposed to use local tax levies to pay for ‘extras,’ like supplemental programs. But because state dollars have not covered all the basic needs of school districts — the impetus for the McCleary school funding lawsuit — districts have been using levy dollars to pay for some salaries, student transportation, and other costs of basic education.” The Ridgefield School District, for example, this year charges $3.77 per $1,000 of assessed property value as part of a $7.2 million levy; the Hockinson School District receives $7 for each $1,000 of property value.
Because of such discrepancies, meeting the McCleary mandate will require more than simply shifting roughly $3 billion to schools from other state departments or raising an additional $3 billion in revenue. Fixing the school levy conundrum will need to be part of whatever solution is devised by lawmakers, further complicating an already complicated task. Sen. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup, said: “That’s one of the huge inequity problems we face. We have to do some levy reform.”
Gov. Jay Inslee’s proposed budget, which was rolled out last week, fails to address levy reform — a fact that has generated some criticism of the governor’s plans. Among the ideas from lawmakers is one that would raise property taxes across the state and move about $1 billion of property-tax income from local control to state control. The money would become part of the state’s regular school budget, and proponents say that would benefit struggling school districts while not hurting those districts that have strong tax bases and could, indeed, get voters to approve levies to pay for “extras.”
For taxpayers, that is the most important issue. The theory in some circles is that, while the state will increase funding for K-12 education, that increase will allow individual districts to reduce their reliance upon local levies. The net impact upon taxpayers should be negligible in some districts, while poor districts could benefit from a redistribution of tax dollars. How it plays out in reality remains to be seen. As the Associated Press reported: “Previous attempts at making the system more equitable have not succeeded because some districts had special agreements grandfathered in and some districts, like Seattle or Bellevue, have more taxing power than most other places in Washington.”
The simplistic explanation is thus: The Legislature must increase school funding, but it should work to do so without unduly increasing the burden on taxpayers. But that’s the simplistic part. The reality of any plan will be much more devilish.