The Impact of the Taxpayer Protection Act on the Mequon Thiensville School District

Memo from Peter Stone, President Mequon Thiensville School Board  - March 8, 2006

You asked for my thoughts on the so-called Taxpayer Protection Amendment, a proposed amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution now being discussed in the Legislature.  The topic is of particular concern given the recent defeat of the Mequon-Thiensville school referendum and the fact that the Legislature has made no progress in resolving the problems caused for schools by the disconnect between the current arbitrary statutory revenue limit and the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO) law and other state expense mandates.  Our projected revenue limit increases for the next three years are 1.43%, 1.74% and 2.23%, while the QEO remains at 3.8% and costs for such things as special education, interest and energy continue to increase at even greater rates.  The deficits that are essentially being imposed upon us by the state are expected to total $6.5 million over the next three years.  As the defeat of the referendum illustrates, even in an affluent district like M-T that has traditionally valued its excellent school system (and a district that our state senator and representative have acknowledged has essentially done everything right over the years), it's still very difficult, if not impossible, to persuade residents to vote to increase their property taxes to exceed the revenue limit.

        The proposed constitutional amendment would only make the situation worse for schools, since it would leave the current revenue limit, QEO and arbitration laws intact and would constrain schools to the lesser of the statutory or constitutional limit.  The amendment would establish two conflicting systems of revenue limits, based on different formulas and with different exceptions.  Wisconsin used to value local control in education, but the state's usurpation of power has, to the detriment of the public schools, overridden most aspects of real local control.   It's essential now that the Legislature return to this concept and give local districts the tools they need to effectively manage their schools.  Enactment of the Taxpayer Protection Amendment would be a step in the wrong direction.

        I believe quite strongly that amending the state constitution to include a revenue limit formula would be an exceedingly poor decision and a complete abdication of legislative responsibility.  In our representative democracy, state legislators and the governor are elected to make the tough decisions at the state level, and local school board members are elected to make the tough decisions for their school districts.  To do so, we're all supposed to be informed about the issues so that we can make good public policy decisions, while carefully weighing and balancing all competing interests.  The current laws regarding school revenues and expenses have plainly been broken for some time, and it's difficult enough to attempt to find a legislative fix.  Building formulas into the constitution which at some future date will no doubt prove problematic means those changes will then be nearly impossible, given the appropriately cumbersome process we have for amending the constitution.  (Even if only one legislative session must pass another amendment before there is a statewide referendum, the process will still be very difficult).  I don't have any confidence that constitutional formulas can be found that will anticipate and allow for all necessary contingencies, and I don't believe that government by repeated referendum is effective or efficient.  If there is a better school formula than what we've got (and there has to be) and if there are better formulas for all units of government, give them a try first by enacting new laws (and yes, this will mean actual negotiation and compromise by the governor and the legislature).   I have urged our elected representatives  to vigorously and publicly oppose any amendment of the constitution, whether called a taxpayer bill of rights or a taxpayer protection amendment.  State legislators and school board members are all, in our elected capacities, protectors of the taxpayers, and the voters have periodic opportunities to throw us out of office if they think we're not doing our jobs well.  Of course, governing should mean more than sloganeering and politicking - which, unfortunately, has come to characterize the approach of so many Democrats and Republicans in our state.

        It's unfortunate that discussion and  drafting of the proposed amendment occurred in a closed caucus, without exposure to the light of day so that we all could see what's really happening.   Basing growth in the school revenue limit formula on an inflation index that doesn't take into account the unique increases in costs that schools actually experience,  particularly mandated costs for such things as special education and increases in teacher salaries and for benefits such as health insurance, doesn't bode well.   What about the 40 - 50% increases in energy costs we have recently experienced - we can't turn off the heat or the lights and we need gas for our buses.  The amendment's formula doesn't make allowances for these and other school costs that regularly increase at faster rates than the consumer price index.  Moreover, revenue will still decline disproportionately if enrollment falls, because the amendment doesn't provide relief to declining enrollment districts and because the current statutory revenue limit will then likely apply.  The reality, too, is that school costs vary greatly across the state, and one size doesn't fit all.  Costs for many things are higher in southeastern Wisconsin than in the northern part of the state.  Defining revenue for schools to  include all fees could impact efforts to have users fund greater percentages of such things as extracurricular activities to free up scarce resources for the classroom.  (In M-T, we have shifted more than 50% of the cost for high school athletics from the taxpayers to private funding.   While this might not be the right thing to do for all districts, it is for us, and districts certainly shouldn't be deprived of the ability to make the local decisions that are best for them.)   

        Since so much of a school district's budget is for salaries and benefits and most of that is for the teachers, continued restrictions on revenue growth greater than the growth in school costs will necessarily mean larger class sizes and fewer specialists to provide extra help for such things as reading and math.  This is particularly true since local districts don't have the authority to implement other changes.  If this is the objective or an acceptable outcome, than the proponents of the amendment should say so and not pretend that decisions don't have consequences.  Unfortunately, the state can limit direct aid for education and continue to restrict district revenues without having to make the hard decisions of what to cut year after year and without having to come to grips with the insidious nature of the assault being made on our schools.  There will be a price to pay if we continue down this road, and that price will unfortunately be a decline in the high quality of the public education of which we have been so proud.  State and local officials are rightly concerned about the increasing burden of the property tax, and all local taxing authorities have an obligation to cut the fat out of their budgets.  But once this has been done, to avoid the  many long term adverse consequences of a lesser public education, there must be an honest discussion about alternative tax revenue sources.  This will, of course, take leadership from both parties that, unfortunately, has thus far been sorely lacking.