School funding law illegal, court says
BOISE – Idaho lawmakers’ attempt to turn the tables on a long-running school funding lawsuit came to a crashing halt Wednesday when the Idaho Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.
“The Legislature has cost the schools another year and a half in getting a real solution,” said Robert Huntley, the former state Supreme Court justice who represents a group of school districts who sued the state. “Now it’s time to get out of the state of denial, and work together to fund the school system.”
Three state district judges had previously ruled the move unconstitutional.
Rather than pay more to help local school districts build, maintain and repair school buildings, lawmakers in 2003 passed a law aimed at ending the districts’ increasingly successful funding lawsuit against the state. Under HB 403, the districts that sued were turned into defendants in separate, local lawsuits, and courts were told to raise local property taxes, without a vote, if school districts didn’t fix their building problems themselves.
The high court, in a unanimous decision, said lawmakers couldn’t do that. HB 403, the justices wrote, “is unconstitutional as a special law directed at one particular lawsuit, and is also violative of the separation of powers doctrine of the Idaho Constitution.”
The court’s decision leaves the state where it was in 2003, before the Legislature passed the controversial HB 403. At the time, lawmakers were facing a court order to fix Idaho’s system for funding school construction and repair, which was declared unconstitutional by a district court in 2001. The court said that Idaho’s system leaves poor school districts unable to provide safe schoolhouses for kids because it relies almost entirely on local property taxes to fund school construction.
“Nobody ever likes to lose cases,” said Deputy Attorney General Michael Gilmore, who argued the case for the state. “For all practical purposes, it’s as if 403 doesn’t exist, so let’s go forward.”
Before the bill passed, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican, and state schools Superintendent Marilyn Howard, a Democrat, had convened a task force to negotiate a settlement to the decade-long lawsuit. The task force favored millions more in state aid to school districts, but lawmakers refused to consider the plan.
“The governor put forward his own ideas on a solution for it, but the Legislature chose another direction, and the governor endorsed their idea (by signing HB 403),” said Mike Journee, press secretary for Kempthorne. “He’s going to take a fresh look at all the options again, and see what the best route is to go in order to try and finally bring this to resolution.”
Huntley said, “In 1965 the Legislature passed a sales tax to fund schools. Since then, the Legislature has enacted more than 55 exemptions… . If we repealed some of those exemptions, there would be more than enough money for public schools, for universities, and for health care needs such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program. So I’m hopeful now that the Legislature will reform the sales tax act, remove some of those exemptions that shouldn’t have been passed in the first place, and go on to properly funding state government responsibilities.”
However, a legislative task force that looked into exemptions last summer couldn’t agree on anything, and made no recommendations.
The Supreme Court’s decision on HB 403 returns the case to where it last stood – with the state appealing 4th District Judge Deborah Bail’s order to fix the schools. That appeal, which includes numerous technical objections, will be considered by the Supreme Court, likely within the next six to eight months.
Chief Justice Linda Copple Trout, writing for the unanimous court, noted that the state has argued in earlier appeals in the case that school districts can’t sue the state, but the court has made it clear that they can. The school districts, she wrote, “having standing, proceeded with this case over a decade ago.”
The decision said in HB 403, “The state is attempting to end legislatively the … suit and effectively remove itself from any further responsibility or liability… . Such a law is arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.”
Plus, the justices noted that lawmakers can’t turn over their taxing powers to the courts. That’s a form of taxation without representation, and is not the way the system is supposed to work, the justices said.
The justices also rejected the state’s attempt to throw Judge Bail off the case. In 2001, Bail ruled Idaho’s current system of financing school construction unconstitutional, and ordered lawmakers to fix it.
“To follow the state’s argument would be tantamount to allowing the state to remove a judge whenever it wished,” the justices wrote. “There is no basis for finding that she cannot continue to sit on this case.”
While Huntley said he thought the court’s decision should spur action to solve the state’s school repair problems, Gilmore said, “There’s really no need to do anything until we get a decision on the main appeal,” which could take many months.
“So I would hesitate to say anybody needs to rethink until we find out what happens there.”