Thinking Twice on the Divided Question 
By John McClaughry

In the final moments of a legislative session, strange things can happen. And so it was on May 13, when a novel educational cost control provision suddenly appeared and was speedily enacted into law.

For four months the 2007 legislature struggled with little success to develop legislation to control the rising costs of education, and with it the rising residential property tax bite. But soon the Menace of Global Warming, the now-vetoed energy bill, and Sen. Shumlin's various new taxes on Vermont Yankee occupied center stage.

So suddenly it was crunch time, and the legislature looked very much like it was going to have to go home and face resentful property taxpayers without doing anything significant on the most potent issue in Vermont politics.

In the conference committee on the education cost control bill, Sen. Vince Illuzzi threw out an idea. If a school district spends above the statewide average, and its proposed budget contains a percentage increase that is more than an inflation index plus one percentage point, let's require the voters to vote twice: first, on a budget with an "average" (approximately four percent) increase, and second, on the excess amount over that level.

Desperate for something to show hard-pressed taxpayers, the conference added this "Divided Question" or "Think Twice" provision to the bill. Both chambers quickly supported it, and Gov. Douglas approvingly signed it. The provision takes effect for school budgets voted on in the spring of 2009.

But soon after adjournment of the session, legislators began to wonder just what they had done. After all, this scheme had never been the subject of hearings in either chamber's education committees, or anywhere else. Although a similar divided question proposal had been briefly considered in 1992, long before Act 60, this year's version was a wholly new idea to most legislators.

The first to sound the alarm was, not surprisingly, the Vermont-NEA. Within four days the teachers' union lobbyists, blindsided by a legislature they thought was in their pocket, shot out an eight-age critique of the measure to their 11,000 members. It ominously expressed its dismay that so many union-endorsed legislators had voted to accept the plan.

Their worry is understandable. Voters will invariably pass the first budget, and are then highly likely to vote down the second one. That way the voters can feel that they voted to support the legitimate needs of the children, but rejected wasteful spending (that would drive up their property tax rates.)

To begin with, this dynamic will be at work in half of the state's school districts, but it could soon spread to all school districts. Why shouldn't the voters of every district have a chance to freeze school spending at the 104% level, and reject the excess?

With the Vermont-NEA and the Vermont School Boards Association energetic in their opposition, this provision is almost certainly a dead duck. When the chastened Democrats return for the 2008 session, the bruises of their local Vermont-NEA activists still showing, they will almost certainly make sure that there is never a divided question choice.

If the legislators don't repeal it outright, they'll delay it until it can be studied further, say, by 2050. Or they'll trigger it so that it doesn't go into effect until cost per pupil reaches $33,400 (that will be in 2030, if present trends hold). Or they'll limit it to schools where average teacher compensation reaches $100,000 a year (far above current levels).

The plain truth is that a legislative majority that owes its political control to the efforts of its friends in the Vermont-NEA cannot seriously control educational spending. The union's mantra is ever-higher salaries for ever more (unionized) employees, all "for the children". Any proposal that might undercut this maxim will quickly find itself squarely in the union's crosshairs.

Cutting back on educational spending would mean dropping lightly populated classes and closing small community schools to increase the nation's lowest pupil-teacher ratio. Or shifting defense of special education lawsuits from the district to the state. Or offering the voters a split vote on administrative and instructional budgets (the 1992 proposal, then outspokenly opposed by the Vermont-NEA). Or breaking up the government school monopoly by giving every child a voucher to attend lower-cost independent, charter, virtual, or other schools.

None of these ideas is a silver bullet. But when the legislature starts talking about ideas like these, there will be hope for progress in restraining educational costs. Don't hold your breath.
 

John McClaughry is President of the Ethan Allen Institute