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E-mail Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2009 > January > 26 > Entry
Strickland education plan expected Wednesday
Gov. Ted Strickland’s office is saying that education will be a major focus of his state of the state address Wednesday and the presumption is his long awaited education reform plan will be unveiled.
GA big part of the reform the governor has promised is a new school funding approach that would address the current system’s failures that were highlighted in four Ohio Supreme Court decisions that declared that system unconstitutional.
But given the circumstances, it’s hard to see how Strickland can propose a new system that could come close to making things better for schools.
What schools really need is a new, reliable income source besides property taxes. A shift away from property tax would be a great improvement. The problem is, you have to replace property tax with revenue from somewhere else. The most obvious choices would be statewide income or sales taxes.
In a stable economy, the governor could make a case for hiking income or sales tax in return for freezing or lowering property taxes for schools. But I cannot see how he can press for that now. Ohio currently has a budget shortfall estimated as high as $7 billion. If any new tax were to be proposed, how could it be for new spending rather than to balance a budget that already is out of whack?
So what else can Strickland do? He can make zero-sum changes to the sources of revenue for school that don’t actually bring new revenue into the system. So less property taxes and, say, more sales taxes for schools would need to be balanced by more property taxes for directed toward the things sales tax used to pay for. Again, its hard to see how that could make things better.
Perhaps the governor has an idea we haven’t thought of. Let’s hope so.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: School Funding
Comments
By Mary
January 27, 2009 9:11 AM | Link to this
It seems your use of the term “better” means more money. Maybe instead he will address some setting of priorities and focus on greater efficiency, but I am not holding my breath.