This Massive Property Tax Increase May Be Unconstitutional
How's that for adding insult to injury!
Hat tip to Tom Evslin for his recent article, Equal Educational Opportunity in Vermont Requires School Choice, not so much for that obvious observation (though it is both accurate and much appreciated) but for his brilliant insight into the potential unconstitutionality of Act 127, the pupil weighting law that is largely (but not entirely) the reason for the massive property tax increase about to slam us all.
As Evslin reminds us in his first paragraph, the Vermont Supreme Court’s Brigham decision of 1997, which led to the creation of Act 60 and the state education property tax system we have now, ruled, “Children who live in property-poor districts and children who live in property-rich districts should be afforded a substantially equal opportunity to have access to similar educational revenues.” The key word there is the last one: revenues. And substantially equal access to them is what school districts and each student in them are constitutionally required to have.
To make it even clearer about what the Court sees the constitutional role of the legislature to be in this matter, it wrote, “Money is clearly not the only variable affecting educational opportunity, but it is one that government can effectively equalize.” The key word here again is the last one: equalize. Which our erstwhile lawmakers should be engaged in “effectively” doing.
However, Act 127’s stated goal is directly contrary to this constitutional imperative. It states unabashedly, “…schools may also require different levels of resources.” Key word: different. And calls for “increase[d] educational equity by ensuring that the financial resources available to local school districts for educating students living in poverty, English learners, students in small rural schools, students in sparsely populated school districts, and students in middle and high schools are sufficient to meet the cost of educating these students.” In other words, Act 127 demands what Brigham expressly prohibits: UNEQUAL access to revenues between school districts/students.
This, of course, encouraged such districts to spend more – a lot more -- which they mostly did, and, bingo, bango, bongo we’re suddenly all staring down the barrel of 14 percent, on average, seemingly unconstitutional property tax increases wondering how we’re going to afford to stay in our homes. Thanks, guys!
How bad is it? As Evslin again points out, “Next year the State will fund expenditures of over $40,000 per student in Winooski and about $20,000 per student in the Elmore-Morristown district!” Not a typo. The Act 127 formula allows Winooski to spend $40,000 -- $40,000!!! – per kid. The cost to attend UVM for an in-state student, including room, board and fees, is $36,802! This is spending out of control.
Now, when the cataclysmic financial impact of Act 127 (as well as Act 64, the $30 million a year “free” school meals for wealthy kids law) on our property tax bills became an unrealistic reality in December of last year, all arguments about constitutionality aside, the compassionate and responsible thing for our lawmakers to do would have been to repeal both of them during the 2024 legislative session and start over with some serious reform of what is painfully, obviously an unsustainable public education finance system. They did not.
Even after over thirty school budgets went down to defeat by voters who simply cannot afford these tax increases, the discussion by Democrats in the Ways & Means and Education Committees was not about how to lower costs in order to lower tax rates, or how to reform education delivery to make it more efficient and effective.
Instead, the supermajority circled the wagons around their political cronies in the public education bureaucracy and doubled down on spending more and more money for poorer and poorer performance. The conversation and policy prescriptions were about how to continue the increases in spending levels with new taxes, and even at one point the idea was floated to remove voters’ ability to vote on budgets to prevent us from controlling spending (to whatever pathetic degree possible) at the local level.
Which is all by way of saying that the people we have currently elected to office have zero desire or intent to fix the financial mess they have made. For them, this firehose of our money directed at a special interest group is a feature not a bug. So, the long term solution is to vote them out and replace them with others who actually give a damn about the notion of taxing people out of their homes. In the short term, maybe someone from Elmore or another town similarly holding the unconstitutional doo doo end of the Act 127 stick wants to lawyer up and sue the state. You’ll be a hero to tens of thousands of Vermont taxpayers.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.
Okay got a couple of things:
First, someone will have to file a lawsuit.
Second, it will take some time and effort from somebody to take the issue to court. And be adjudicated and then repealed.
In the meantime, they will still be taking money from us and I guarantee you the towns/state or whatever collection body will not be returning the unconstitutionally collected money to the taxpayers. Of that, I am certain.
Third, you state that the long-term solution is to vote them out. Well.... our little district of 4 thousand folks has no significant conservative voice and indeed in my little town, no Republican party exists and I can't get a single person to agree to reorganize so that we can have some input in to the voting process!!! The apathy is astounding. And now a wildly liberal/left/woke/Dem has announced her run for Rep and the local paper called her a "shoe-in" since no one has registered to run against her from any party. I can't post anything conservative on FPF because I'm censured. And honestly, would it really make a difference? There simply aren't enough conservative voices to get conservatives in office to countermand the supermajority. I think that is what distresses so many conservatives of whatever party. It's like running into a tidal wave thinking you are gonna power right through it and survive.
It's utter madness I tell you. I can't do this by myself and on the rare occasion I do run into a conservative from my area as soon as I mention anything that might require actual action, I get ghosted. I get it. No one wants to fight a losing battle. But criminy.
I will post something on FPF and take a screen shot and then I will go back a few days later and another "newsletter" will have come out and my submission will be gone. I'll send it to you if you like.
To sum it up, people need to get off their backsides and take an interest. Otherwise, their offspring will someday say, well my ancestors could have done something, but they were too busy doing something else (I get that everyone is busy... but losing your money and your freedoms aren't worth fighting for????)
Sorry for the rant.
Thanks for writing this and hopefully more people will read it. I will share it as best I can.
I entirely sympathize with P.B.in her despair at living in a town whose voters clearly have drunk the dem/prog kool-aid. It is really difficult to rouse the citizenry to get a realistic view of their own predicament. I have posted here too many times saying the only way to reverse this insanity is to actually vote these people out of the Legislature .
However, this tax hike is so onerous and so unnecessary that it may be the straw that just might break the camel’s back. Property owners in P.
B.s town will see and pay the increase. Renters in her town don’t pay property taxes but the landlords do and that cost will have to reflected in higher rents. There will come a point when enough of these voters say “stop this madness “. And as a corollary why do we not hear more about the fact Rob Roper raised in a recent article: New Hampshire has twice our population but gets along just fine with a budget one half the size of Vermont’s. So Vermonters are saddled with paying 4x the taxes per capita versus New Hampshire’s residents . To paraphrase Hamlet: there is some very rotten in the state Denmark (
Vermont).