In a finding that will surprise nobody who has attended a town meeting or city budget hearing, state government’s shrinking share of public education funding has increased the burden on homeowners and businesses that pay property taxes, according to the NH Fiscal Policy Institute.
Specifically, the group said in a report released Wednesday that since 2007–2008, the share of school expenses paid with state funding has fallen from 34.9 percent to 25.6 percent, while the share from local property taxes has grown from 54.1 percent to 63.5 percent.
Other state aid comes from a variety of sources, including the business and profits tax, lottery profits, utility tax, rooms and meals tax and tobacco tax. Some of these sources have been trimmed or re-allocated by the state legislature and governor in recent years.
The report gives a detailed description of the workings of the Statewide Education Property Tax, known as SWEPT — which counts as state aid even though it is collected by each town or city as a property tax and varies from place to place.
For most towns and cities, the money stays in the local school district where, because it is counted as state aid, it reduces the amount of non-property-tax aid that the state provides. Communities with high levels of property assessment – that is, lots of expensive land and buildings – or relatively few students may have excess SWEPT funds which are kept by the town.
For more details, see the report at nhfpi.org.
