Local education control is a myth
The school property tax cap has become a hot topic in our state. Expect several “informational” meetings, advocacy bits and hit pieces over the coming weeks. A recurring theme is that school districts already have local control of their budgets, making a cap unnecessary.
This premise is naive, bordering on absurd. Towns do not control their school districts; state and federal bureaucrats do. During my six-year school board tenure, we encountered countless spending and operational mandates. Local control extends to trivial matters alone. Important decisions rest in the hands of distant, often unseen forces.
Nowhere is this more evident than in special education. Special ed spending is heavily mandated and about as transparent as Turkish coffee. It is a significant part of the budget with virtually no accountability for costs or results. Add to this legion soft mandates (certification requirements, administrative services, etc.) and your school budget contains more “Thou Shalts” than the Old Testament.
These mandates exert upward pressure on prices. This is not a “bug” — it is a feature. It is part of why per-pupil education spending has greatly outpaced inflation for decades. A tax cap introduces much needed restraint, as a majority of states have figured out.
In the Pollyanna world of true local control, a tax cap might seem redundant. In the real world of endless mandates and a politically powerful education lobby, tax caps make sense.