School officials air fears over tax proposal

Local school officials got a chance Monday to sound off on the proposed property tax shift expected to pass this week during the Legislature’s special session.

The Idaho School Boards Association is holding meetings around the state this week for state lawmakers and school board members and administrators to discuss the past legislative session and talk about the next one.

But with just four days left before the 2006 Legislature votes on one of the largest changes to school funding the state has seen, discussion at the meeting in Coeur d’Alene focused on the present proposal, which shifts some school funding from property taxes to sales taxes.

The basic concerns were:

“The stability of the sales tax versus the stability of the property tax.

“The possible loss of local control.

“The fight for state funding.

If there were a guarantee that funding for education will remain stable no matter what happens to sales tax revenue, “I think there’ll be a lot of us, especially in property tax counties like Kootenai County, that would be on the bandwagon,” said Harry Amend, superintendent of the Coeur d’Alene School District.

Coeur d’Alene GOP Sen. John Goedde, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said the $100 million stabilization, or reserve, fund that the bill requires is more than enough to cover potential economic downfalls.

Goedde said he looked into amending Risch’s proposal to require a two-thirds vote to spend any money from the fund. That won’t happen during the special session, but Idaho School Boards Association Executive Director Cliff Green said it will be one of the recommendations his association makes for the 2007 legislative session.

Lakeland School District Assistant Superintendent Ron Schmidt questioned the entire special session, asking why there’s a rush to pass a bill that the public hasn’t had adequate time to review and debate.

Rep. Marge Chadderdon, a Republican from Coeur d’Alene, defended the process, as did Goedde, who cited last summer’s interim property tax committee and the meetings it held throughout the state.

“To have teachers say there was no public input is just simply ludicrous,” Goedde said. “We heard from thousands of people.”

Though state education associations are united in their opposition to the bill, Vern Newby, chairman of the Coeur d’Alene School District’s board of trustees, said he’s supporting the plan because high property taxes can deter people from supporting schools with supplemental tax levies. Meetings like the one Monday evening are a good way to gauge what to look at if the bill goes into effect and what amendments could be passed later, he said.