New Haven Independent

If Governor Rell agrees with her Education Finance Commission’s final report, and if the Democratic controlled legislature in the 2007 session concurs —two big ifs—then the state would increase public school funding by more than $1.25 billion to be phased in over four years.

The Commission’s recommendation represents the most significant overhaul of education funding in the last 20 years and it is long overdue. Connecticut is more reliant on property tax to finance K-12 education than any other state in the nation.

Critics say the crisis in public school funding began in 1988 when the state devised the Education Cost Saving formula (ECS) grant system but never fully funded it. Over the years, an inequitable formula to begin with was recast over and over in order to help finance inner city schools.

The ECS formula is based not on the average income level of a town’s residents, but on its “grand list” —the record of all taxable and non-taxable property in the community. This means that shoreline towns like Branford, Guilford and Madison get only a pittance in state funds to educate their kids. Why? Because if a town has a five or ten or 15 mile stretch of sand and sea, land taxed at an extremely high rate that means the town is deemed “wealthy,” even if its residents are not. The result: virtually no state education funds for these towns.

It takes more than $10,000 to educate one public school student. Last year Hartford received $7,245 per pupil in state funds; New Haven, $6,464; Bridgeport, $6,224 and Waterbury, $5,524. In contrast, Guilford received $725, Branford $372, and Madison only $225 per pupil per year. If the Governor adopts her Commission’s proposed minimum aid requirement, shoreline towns would eventually receive about $970 per pupil while the cities would climb to nearly $9,000 per pupil per year. .

State Senator Edward Meyer, whose 12th District includes Branford, Guilford and Madison, says “small towns contribute to the state a large amount of income and sales tax revenue and get only five percent of their school costs.” Meyer said that to change this inequitable and entrenched system of school financing, bolder steps need to be taken by these town’s citizens.

“You start off with the fact that the legislature will be carrying out the will of the people,” but, he added, “remarkably there is no organized proponent of property tax reform.” Past efforts to increase the per pupil grant to $1,000 have failed, largely because leaders of key legislative committees represent cities. Their school systems benefit and it is in their interest to preserve the status quo.

Tom Scarpati, Madison’s First Selectman, was a member of the Governor’s Commission. Scarpati has long been a critic of the state’s educational funding policies and he agrees with Meyer that a strong, organized voice needs to be heard in Hartford. Scarpati suggested that a coalition of the 42 towns now at the bottom of the distribution list be formed.

“The current policy funds the cities about $6,200 per student while Madison receives $225 per student which is a 25 to 1 ratio,” he said. “I agree that the poorer communities should receive the greater share of education funding, but 25 times as much seems unfair.

“If the Commission’s recommendation to raise the Minimum Aid Ratio to ten percent for the 42 wealthiest municipalities is adopted,” Scarpati said, Madison’s ECS grant would increase from $250 to $970 per student over four years. “My personal recommendation was to increase the minimum aid ratio to 15 percent. That would have yielded $1,456 per student for Madison. But I could garner no support for that level within the Commission and had an extremely difficult time protecting even the ten percent level,” he told Madison residents in a letter on the town’s website.

The ECS has been the focus of the Education Finance Commission’s year long work. It is also at the center of a lawsuit filed in Hartford Superior Court by the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (“CCJEF v. Rell”) and a group of public school students and their families from various communities. Branford has joined the lawsuit. The litigation is overseen by the Yale Law School Education Adequacy Clinic.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit assert the state has failed to adequately and equitably fund its public schools. One key issue that both the Commission and the lawsuit address is that the current ECS grants have not been fully funded by the state even though they are required to be.

CCJEF Project Director Dianne Kaplan deVries said the Commission has taken the first steps but “it did little to improve the distribution of funding across municipalities. Instead of addressing these critical education adequacy and equity issues, what is recommended is merely to fully fund a flawed twenty year old formula,” she said.

The words “property taxes” do not appear in the Commission’s report, in part because the Commission focused on how the state currently supports or does not support public education. But the words property taxes do appear in a prior 2003 Blue Ribbon Commission report chaired by New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, Jr.. This commission found the property tax is regressive, is not an accurate measure of wealth and does not correlate with a property owner’s ability to pay. This 2003 commission called for a massive overhaul of the property tax system. The arguments were solid, but the legislature ignored the Commission’s work.

We hope this Commission report, however limited, doesn’t wind up the same way. But there is concern. When Governor Rell announced the creation of the Education Finance Commission in January, 2006, she said it had the “vital and monumental” responsibility to address disparities in aid for school funding for the state’s major cities and 169 towns.

Yet to our knowledge the Governor did not even issue a press release when the Commission ended its work in December. The report summarizes the findings of the Commission’s three sub-committees, but it lacks an executive summary or a detailed overview. It fails also to identify the Commission’s members and their committee assignments.

On the political level, the move toward forming a coalition for towns like Branford has already begun. At a meeting last month, Branford’s Democratic Party unanimously approved a resolution “to work with the State Democratic Party to push the current democratically controlled state legislature to develop and implement a more balanced tax system.” This would “directly assist cities and towns in reducing the over-reliance on property taxes through a more equitable level of support for public education.”

The DTC said it would engage the community and build momentum to make 2007 the year for state tax restructuring. Putting the property tax issue where it belongs—-in the laps of state legislators and the Governor—-is crucial for local politics. In Branford’s last First Selectman’s race, for example, it may have had a decisive impact on the election’s outcome. Democrat Cheryl Morris’s campaign literature boldly asserted that her opponent, incumbent John Opie, was directly responsible for “skyrocketing” property taxes, when, in fact, he had nothing to do with how the state sets up funding formulas and property appraisals.

Scarpati, a Republican, said the message is clear. “There is little sympathy,” he said, for the so-called wealthy municipalities. “If we are to receive the recommended ten percent grant, it is imperative that we state the importance of this issue to our legislators and to the legislators and chief executives of the other forty-two municipalities. The Commission’s activities may have concluded, but our work has just begun.”
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