Grim Tax Shift Picture Gets Grimmer

Eight years ago, Idaho’s Republican leadership made you a promise. They would reduce your property taxes while taking care of your schools. Too bad it didn’t work out that way. During his brief stint as Idaho’s interim governor in 2006, U.S. Sen. Jim Risch ramrodded to passage a tax shift - repealing the property tax that then provided schools with $260 million and replacingit with a penny increase in the sales tax that generated only $210 million. Then his successor, Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter, cut school budgets even more to free up cash for tax cuts. The result, Idaho Education News’ Kevin Richert reports, has been $1 billion worth of supplemental property taxes school patrons have implemented to backfill some - but far from all - of the schools’ losses during the past eight years/ Marty Trillhaase , Lewiston Tribune. More here.

Question: If Idaho had a do-over, would you like to see property taxes, rather than the sales tax, used to pay for maintenance and operations of our public schools?