Connecticut Faces a School Tax Revolt
By LEWIS M. ANDREWS, August 23, 2008; Page A9, Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121944926645165231.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
On
June 30, the board of education and the town council in Enfield, Conn.,
convened to hear the results of a citizen cost-cutting committee. Among its
other recommendations, the 17 residents recommended replacing some public
school teachers with low-cost college interns, restricting the use of school
vehicles, and increasing employee contributions to benefit plans.
These
may seem modest steps toward fiscal responsibility -- but they are emblematic
of a significant change in this very blue state: growing disenchantment with
the price of government, especially of public education.
Over
the past two and a half decades, the student population in Connecticut has increased only 10%. Yet the
cost of schooling more than doubled -- to $8.8 billion in 2006, up from $3.4
billion in 1981. Seventeen years ago, the state enacted an income tax with
promises to cut other taxes. Instead, real-estate assessments soared, creating
a massive income transfer from the private to the public sector, fueled in part
by a state cost-sharing formula that uses taxes on residents in the suburbs to
subsidize urban schools. Helping to soak up all that money were binding
arbitration laws, skewed to give teacher unions an advantage in collective
bargaining negotiations.
The
result is that the average teacher salary is now the highest in the nation --
$57,750 excluding benefits, according to the latest survey of the
American Federation of Teachers. Meanwhile, the American Legislative Exchange
Council reports that Connecticut
is one of the 10 states with the heaviest property-tax burdens. According to a
calculator on the Web site of the Nonpartisan Action for a Better Redding, a local taxpayer
group, even the smallest municipalities unnecessarily spent millions on school
construction, much of it to meet a predicted increase in population that never
materialized.
The
calculator enables the resident of any town to compare the cost of constructing
and staffing a new building (or addition) to the cost of simply subsidizing the
overflow number of students to attend private, parochial or home schools. Says
David Bohn, president of the group: "You could extend the subsidy to
children already in such schools and still save hundreds of millions long
term."
Now
taxpayers find themselves caught between falling real estate values and ever
increasing property taxes. And for what? The National
Assessment of Educational Progress puts eighth-grade proficiency figures in the
state at 37% for reading, 35% for math, 33% for science and 53% for writing.
Connecticut law does not allow a statewide referendum to
curb school spending with a property-tax cap, as do ballot measures this year
in Nevada and Florida. Nevertheless, most towns in Connecticut fold the
school budget into the municipal budget, which can be voted on at a town
meeting, or by annual referendum, or by a petition-inspired referendum,
depending on the local rules. So citizens do have the ability to rein in public
spending if they choose to act -- and that is what they are beginning to do.
This
spring Avon, Farmington, Stonington
and Ridgefield
-- all affluent communities -- rejected the politicians' original spending
plans. On June 17, the voters of suburban West Hartford,
where public schools have often ranked among the best in the state, rejected
the town budget by a lopsided 7,037 to 3,711. As of the end of June, a record
85 of Connecticut's 169 municipalities had or were planning budget referenda;
and the median approved spending increase was 3.8%, lower than the 5% last year
and 5.3% in 2006.
Limiting
government at the state level is more difficult, thanks in part to a 1964
Supreme Court decision (Butterworth v. Dempsey) requiring that
representation in state legislatures be based solely on population. By
depriving rural regions of their traditional influence, urban Democrats and
public sector unions have more influence. From 1970 until 2005, total state
spending skyrocketed to $4,322 per capita from $863 in real dollars -- in spite
of near-zero job growth and a decline in net population for every year except
one in the decade between 1997 and 2006.
But
at the local level, there are nearly as many Republican chief executives as
Democrats, and both parties outside the big cities are relatively conservative
on fiscal issues. This is leading to more than just budget defeats.
Mike
Guarco, chairman of the finance board in Granby, has
formed the Connecticut Municipal Consortium for Fiscal Responsibility, a
bipartisan alliance of elected officials representing 117 of the state's towns.
The group fights against binding arbitration, "prevailing wage" laws
for public building projects, and burdensome state mandates (such as a
requirement that all student suspensions be supervised in-house). These are the
three largest cost drivers of K-12 education.
There
are other ideas in the air. In Chester,
First Selectman (Mayor) Tom Marsh proposes to pay students not to attend public
school. He wants to give $1,500 a year to families who send a child to
vocational school, $3,000 to families who homeschool,
and to put $5,000 in a college scholarship fund for anyone transferring to a
private high school.
Mr.
Marsh also wants to give a full two-year community college scholarship worth
$5,000 to students who graduate from public high school in three years.
"If we can persuade families to consider options outside the system,"
he says, "we have the potential to save significantly long term."
With
this gathering grass-roots rebellion -- and with the archbishop in Hartford
advocating a tax credit for corporations that help poor students attend private
schools -- the public education establishment is increasingly nervous. Last
December, the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education and the
Connecticut Association of Public school Superintendents wrote an unprecedented
joint letter to every school board and superintendent in the state criticizing
Armand Fusco, the retired school superintendent who advises the citizen
cost-cutting committee in Enfield.
Mr.
Fusco has not backed away. He notes that even before the Enfield citizens' commission offered its
recommendations, the very existence of the committee spurred the town council
to reject a requested 3% increase in the school budget, and to forestall
efforts to raise the property tax rate. For next year, Enfield has already adopted zero-based
budgeting.
The
time is coming, says Mr. Fusco, for all Connecticut
schools to "distinguish between needs and wants."
Mr. Andrews is executive director of
the Yankee Institute in Hartford, Conn.
************************************
The Federation offered the
following on the aforementioned in the comment section of the article …. http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=3802
The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer
Organizations (FCTO) takes this opportunity to compliment Mr. Andrews on his
excellent article. FCTO has been
challenging the State of Connecticut’s
Binding Arbitration and Prevailing Wage Laws for years. Mike Guarco is to be commended for all he has accomplished with
bringing elected officials from 117 CT towns together to oppose these cost
driven mandates. As the Mayor of East Hartford, CT,
I stood alone in this challenge from 1989 to 1993, and while on the town
council for 8 years. Hopefully, in 2009,
the elected officials from the 117 towns will join together, at the Capitol in Hartford, to protest Binding Arbitration and Prevailing
Wage laws which have placed Connecticut
on the map as having one of the highest property taxes in the nation. At minimum, all 117 elected officials should
appear before the State legislature at Public Hearings on these laws as their
input, as elected officials, could be the catalyst for change. The Federation has determined that
approximately 85% of all property taxes in the 169 towns in Connecticut pay for personnel related
expenses to include wage increases, pensions, healthcare, workers comp,
etc. Some pensions exceed base pay as
overtime is factored in. The 85% percentage
figure is guaranteed to increase as towns and states throughout the nation are
required under The Governmental Accounting Standards Board to disclose and
carry on their books the taxpayers’ financial obligation to retired town and
board of education employees for healthcare and life insurance, which has
helped to drive Connecticut’s debt to $49 billion. Susan Kniep, President, The
Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations, Website: http://ctact.org/ , email: fctopresident@aol.com