Look deeper at the numbers
In his opinion piece Spencer Wyland, spouse of Republican Senator Dan Innis, echoed his husband’s recent article blaming local tax problems on Democrats. For me both pieces were laugh-out-loud moments. Republicans have controlled our state government for eight of the last 10 years and have cut or diverted pubic school funding in various ways. Wyland states that this is not true, because in 2004 the state sent his school district $415,640,255 and in 2026 that had risen to $715,470,264. Apparently he neglected to factor inflation into the argument, and if one uses the Department of Labor inflation factor for 2004 to 2026, if state funding had stayed level, it would have been $803,919,653 in 2026. In other words, the state funding was reduced by over $90,000 in real dollars. Thus local property tax increases are needed just to keep up with declining state support.