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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Letter: Fund classrooms without new taxes

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I attended the Senate Education Committee town hall. They discussed and then took citizen input on the final piece of the McCleary vs. State of Washington case for education funding.

Washington’s Senate Bill 6130 proposes a “levy swap,” reducing property tax levies for local citizens as the state picks up the balance for “fully funding” K-12 basic education.

Missing in action were Representatives Brandon Vick, R-Vancouver, and Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver. Education is the single largest line item in our state budget. Why wouldn’t they want to hear input from residents on our state’s “paramount duty”?

(Rep. Lynda Wilson, R-Vancouver, was on a legislative tour of state corrections facilities.)

All listed sources of possible “revenue” were tax increases. There were no funding cuts in other programs. Over the past three decades, the Legislature allocated $2 on non-education items for every $1 spent on education. Only one resident addressed this issue, asking legislators to have “courage” to “take funds back from non-education spending and put them into classrooms. That’s where the learning occurs.”

With average residents’ wages remaining flat as we recover from the Great Recession, I would ask legislators for no new taxes. Make the difficult choices. Fund education first, and then allocate the remaining existing tax dollars.

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