GOP has another school funding bill
BOISE – House GOP leaders introduced a new school-construction funding bill Monday, but it still has all the same “punitive” provisions against school districts that raised concerns about an earlier version last week.
“I think any bill that you bring like this has to have vinegar to go along with the honey,” said House Majority Leader Lawerence Denney, the bill’s lead sponsor. Otherwise, he said, “We end up building all the buildings in the state.”
The new bill, like the earlier House Bill 690, sets up a $25 million loan fund for school districts that have unsafe schoolhouses but can’t pass bonds to fix them. But to access the money, a district would have to be taken over by the state, run temporarily by a state official who could fire its superintendent, and its voters ordered to pay a no-vote property tax increase to repay the state funds after they’ve specifically voted twice against such an increase.
“There’s not much honey there – I think that’s almost all vinegar, to tell you the truth,” said Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow, a sponsor of HB 691, a Democratic alternative plan.
Last week, the House Education Committee voted 10-8 to wait a week before considering either HB 690 or HB 691, and seek additional information from sponsors of both bills. Some members asked if the two bills couldn’t be merged to make a better plan.
The Democrats’ HB 691 would spend about $57 million a year to match school districts’ bond payments, both for existing and future bonds, and to match district expenditures for maintenance. Both bills attempt to respond to an Idaho Supreme Court order.
On Monday, the House Ways and Means Committee, a leadership panel headed by Rep. Jim Clark, R-Hayden Lake, held a hastily called meeting and introduced the new bill, which hasn’t yet been assigned a number. Notice of the meeting was posted about an hour and a half before it started, and was posted only inside the House chamber – where, since the House was in session, the public couldn’t go. It also wasn’t listed in Internet postings of legislative committee meetings.
“I can’t do everything,” Clark said. “I didn’t even think about the Internet last night. … I forgot.”
The quick meeting was the first for the Ways and Means Committee this session. The panel voted 4-3, splitting along party lines, to introduce the new GOP bill.
Denney said he lifted two ideas from the Democratic bill to add to the new version: Requiring school districts to submit annual maintenance plans based on “best practices,” and expanding the number of school districts that would receive matching funds for their bond payments.
The original GOP bill removed most school districts from an existing matching-fund program.
Denney said GOP leaders will ask the House Education Committee to substitute the new bill for HB 690 and HB 691 when it reconsiders those measures on Thursday.