[Source: Orange County Register] Buoyed by a friendly official title and summary from the attorney general, backers of a new ballot initiative to overhaul Proposition 13 are moving full steam ahead with their plan to eliminate tax protections for certain businesses in order to provide what they say will be “full and fair funding” to local schools.
Despite Prop. 98 requiring roughly 40 percent of the state’s general fund be dedicated to our public education system—and very generous, additional investments from the governor—supporters of this new initiative claim California schools are underfunded.
Over the next year, split roll advocates will convince voters that the revenue generated by “split-roll” taxes on businesses will turn struggling school districts into state-of-the-art learning centers overnight. If you’re skeptical of this claim, you have good reason to be, because it’s likely that money won’t make it to the classroom, as rising pension costs continue to eat away local school districts budgets.
For example, Los Angeles Unified School District has seen its pension costs rise from $305,754,980 to $531,995,788 in four years – that’s a 92 percent increase. A report from EdSource shows that statewide, most school districts haven’t fared much better, seeing their average per student pension costs double to $1,020 since 2012.
It’s been projected that without additional pension reforms, the costs to local governments will continue to rise. Yet, split-roll may not even be the solution to our state’s public school woes.
A study from Pepperdine University shows that the introduction of split roll would likely lead to increased instability for local government finances as they’d be more impacted by ebbs and flows of the real estate market. What’s more troubling is that the same study shows split roll would cost the state economy $71.8 billion dollars of lost output and 396,345 lost jobs over the first five years of its implementation.
I can assure you these facts won’t deter those who are eager to feed local government with your hard-earned tax dollars – and for good reason. According to the California Policy Center, voters approved 71 percent of local tax proposals, adding $2.9 billion in new taxes. One could reasonably speculate that clever marketing and artfully crafted ballot statements urging voters to support students led to inordinately high success rates for local tax measures.
However, as California continues to struggle with record poverty and homelessness, and voters grow increasingly weary of the continuous bait and switch on prior tax increases, there may be some hope that government will finally be forced to live within its means.
After all, voters have seen the same spending promises made on other tax increases, such as the gas tax, only for lawmakers find legal loopholes to spend the money on their pet projects.
Depending on who you ask, when compared to other states, California’s per pupil spending is either at the low end of rankings or falls somewhere in the middle. What’s not up for debate, however, is that when you examine the amount of revenue that reaches actual classrooms, the increase in overall funding is being outstripped by rising costs.
Perhaps it’s time for government to learn how to do more with less.
Corrin Rankin is president of Legacy Republican Alliance. She can be reached at corrin@legacyrepublicans.org.
Source: Orange County Register
October 24, 2019
