Vermont's Class Act

...Irving, who probably pays more in taxes in any year than the entire editorial board of the Rutland Herald, as Marie Antoinette...

...In spite of the vaunted tax revolt of the eighties, Americans pay more and more and feel increasingly impotent...

...So, as part of Act 6o, certain other taxes were raised to make up "shortfalls" resulting from the $i.io-per-hundred rate...

...There is another Vermont, however, of people whose ancestors were born in the state, who generally work with their hands, and who carry in their genes the spirit of individualism and fierce yeomanry of their patron saint, Ethan Allen...

...If the public school doesn't measure up, they will take out home-improvement loans to pay for private schools...

...4..1 Those who say you can't improve education by throwing money at it claim that lower budgets mean second-rate education...

...He didn't do it on the backs of peasants...

...of Ben and Jerry's, Bennington College, and high-mileage Saabs bearing faded bumper stickers that read, "One Nuclear Bomb Can Ruin Your Whole Day...

...Parents who go this route, paying tuition as well as taxes, provide an alternative and a standard against which the public schools can be judged...

...They were willing to go into debt and do the hard work of clearing and building on it...

...Act 6o has brought the issue of class out into the open, to the extent that the governor was obliged to say that he didn't think the controversy represented a kind of class warfare...

...But Act 6o has plainly set him off...

...These Marxists couldn't explain the labor theory of value (or why it is flawed) at the point of a gun...

...Some towns will have to send in $4 to get back $1...

...22 up to the big land owners and their agents in what were the first skirmishes in the American Revolution...

...Middle class people in Rutland stand to gain under Act 6o, though the mayor of the city is an opponent...

...This tactic is merely a stall...

...However, the fact that Vermont was not getting its money's worth from the schools was not seen as an urgent problem...

...People in poor towns who are moderately well-off will see their property taxes go down modestly...

...They also take money and talent out of the public schools, which get their block grants on a per-pupil basis...

...GEOFFREY NORMAN T he small state of Vermont (just under 600,000) rates only a single member in the U.S...

...Act 60 supporters argue that poor schools need extra money, but that cutting budgets at the rich ones won't harm the students there...

...Over half of the money they pay in the form of property taxes will go to schools other than the one their children attend, including the one they fled because it was such a failure...

...Rivers further demonstrated her feeling that the "numbers" are really irrelevant when she compared living with Act 6o to driving a car with automatic transmission: "You don't know how it works...

...If you vote additional taxes on yourselves, the money still has to go to Montpelier where it will go into a pool—which has come to be called "the shark pool," a term that supporters of Act 6o like about as much as its detractors like "Gold Town...

...House of Representatives...

...People in favor of Act 6o argue that extra money for the poor schools is critical, but that cutting budgets at the rich ones will not harm the students there...

...Also, every effort to make taxes fair eventually makes them higher...

...Spending on schools in these towns was lavish...

...It hit people right in their schools...

...These parents are atypical only in the degree of their commitment...

...The results include poisoned relations among social classes, a regime of mediocrity for all in its schools—and a budding tax rebellion...

...The schools in the "Gold Towns" were not the envy of their neighbors because of what the state had made them...

...Under the provisions of Act 6o, all property in the state is taxed at the same rate...

...You might see your taxes drop from $6,000 to $2,800...

...Meanwhile, according to an article in the Rutland Herald, "the number of private schools created in Vermont rose sharply in the last several years...

...I have tried not to dwell on the numbers too much," she responded...

...Predictably, somebody sued...

...Education bureaucrats will inevitably instruct the towns in exactly how that money is to be spent...

...You could also make a nuisance of yourself at school-board meetings to make sure your money was being spent prudently...

...The issue was debated and some schemes for aiding poorer towns with state revenues were put in place...

...The people will dance in the streets, wearing flowers in their hair...

...But they do know, with absolute certainty, that some people have too much money, and it makes them feel righteous when they can prevent those people from spending it the way they choose...

...The fight is about schools and how to pay for them...

...There are other provisions of Act 6o worth mentioning...

...Several of these foundations are already at work and a large charitable trust in Vermont has indicated that it might supply matching funds...

...You do not get back what you put in...

...Irving's comments (originally published in Time) were red meat for the paper's unsigned editorialist who wrote that Irving reflected "a Marie Antoinette-like detachment from real life and a sense of persecution a lot of Vermonters probably find both amusing and bizarre...

...In a state where schools did not have to cope with inner city pathologies, where educators did not have to spend money on metal detectors and security guards, this represented a strong commitment to education...

...In the 1960's, Vermont became attractive to second-home owners, especially around the ski resort towns such as Stowe and Manchester...

...Vermont's is composed of five political appointees who are basically government men, so the decision, while radical, was not unexpected...

...The traditional robust town meeting will become an anemic forum where a few resolute citizens debate how much to spend on salt for the roads and what to pay the dog catcher...

...But the wealthiertowns were still able to spend as much as $11,000 per pupil and tax property at less than a dollar per hundred, while others were spending a third of that and taxing property at a rate twice as high...

...Small businesses in rich towns will take a very hard hit...

...By denying it, of course, he validated the charge...

...You can inject some life into any conversation by merely mentioning the name...

...These block grants are figured on a per-pupil basis...

...Let's get it on...

...His spirit, though attenuated, still lives in the Green Mountains...

...Allen was as much of a kook, in his time, as Sanders is in his...

...is "best for the children" lie elements of class warfare and the usual lusts for power...

...Citizens can give to the foundations and take their donations as charitable deductions...

...While the property taxes citizens pay might double, or even quadruple, the money from the block grant will cover less than half of the school budget...

...26 August 1998 • The American Spectator...

...But in a twist typical of Act 6o, a pupil is not quite a pupil...

...Yuppies, second home owners, writers, artists, consultants, cyber-citizens, and retirees who have left the cities and suburbs of New York, New Jersey, and New England for Vermont's small towns or the little boutique city of Burlington...

...Fortunately the resistance has begun, in three promising forms...

...But other communities—called "Gold Towns" by believers in redistributive metaphysics —will send two or even three times as much to the state as they get back...

...a way to get the whole issue back in the courts...

...in several other towns threatening not to comply with the law and withhold funds from the state...

...Meanwhile, other towns—especially those where the mills had closed and the jobs were gone—taxed at high rates to produce meager revenues and threadbare schools...

...The state paid $300,000 to a public relations firm to explain and sell Act 6o to the voters...

...But this gets to the matter of class, which is not a topic of polite conversation in Vermont...

...This is the Vermont of aging flower children and macrame moguls...

...Still, it is resistance and it is invigorating...

...All American citizens are accustomed to tax increases...

...Rich people in poor towns will do very nicely under Act 6o...

...The state's towns are pitted against one another in a struggle over who pays and how much, who gets gouged and who gets a pass...

...Debating the bill in Dorset recently, Act 6o supporter Senator Peter Shumlin (who sends his two children to private school) made a sniggering little reference to his opponent's magnificent house...

...The performance of Vermont students, as measured by the usual standardized tests, was in the average range...

...You had a voice...

...In comments that have been widely reported, Irving has described the bill as "Marxism" and "vindictive...

...They will spend —when the final tally is taken —years of their lives commuting from the house in the suburbs to the office in the city so that the kids can go to a good public school...

...Beneath the angry rhetoric and familiar pieties about "fairness" and what 23 Some towns will have to spend $4 to get back $1...

...The Rutland Herald, one of the state's better newspapers, is fierce and unflagging in its editorial support of Act 6o...

...When Act 6o was still a formless idea, slowly coalescing into its final shape, people in the "Gold Towns" heard this and assumed that, well, they would do what was necessary...

...By the time the provisions of Act 6o are fully implemented, the boost in their taxes could be as much as 6o percent for the same reduced level of services...

...I know a couple who left one Vermont town and its second-rate school to move to Dorset, where The American Spectator • August 1998 I live, where the school is much better...

...It would be a hardship, but not unendurable...

...The correlation between money and performance is widely debated, and in this case, the same people routinely come down on both sides...

...If your house and property were worth one hundred thousand, you paid one thousand dollars...

...There hasn't been this much passion aroused by any political issue here since the early 1980's, when the legislature voted to allow deer hunters to kill does...

...Bernie Sanders happily characterizes himself as a socialist, and there is no question that he faithfully represents a large Vermont constituency or that he is in harmony with its Zeitgeist...

...E ducation is sacred in America...

...No class war here, eh, governor...

...They raised the gas tax, phone taxes, room and meal taxes, and the purchase-and-use tax on vehicles...

...If you make less than $75,000 and own less than two acres, your taxes are capped...

...Some will go to the extreme of educating their kids at home...

...John Irving is right...

...Eventually, every town will be spending about the same dollar figure per pupil in the schools...

...0 ne Vermont resident who has been willing to speak plainly on this subject is John Irving, the author of The World According to Garp and other novels, who unsurprisingly describes himself as a liberal Democrat...

...In the Gold Towns, voters reacted to Act 6o with stunned disbelief...

...All of which raises the stakes and makes it plain that this is not a fight over fairness or equality but about power and money: in short, about taxes, which is property as Ethan Allen understood it...

...The state will send back about $5,000 per pupil...

...It makes no difference if you live in a Gold Town and your house is worth half a million and is paid for...

...The American Spectator • August 1998 These three factions are currently at war...

...They will move to the suburbs even if they hate grass and trees, they will take second jobs or change careers, so that they can live not necessarily in a better, more prestigious neighborhood, but in a better school district...

...One of the largely undiscussed questions raised by Act 6o is whether the poorer schools will get better with more funding...

...And, bless him, he has not been willing 25 to roll over and mew egalitarian platitudes to appease newspaper editors in what is daintily referred to as a "receiving town...

...A retired school superintendent, teaching a graduate course in school finance at Johnson State College which included a discussion of Act 6o, told a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, "Don't ask me to explain it to you...

...State Senator Cheryl Rivers tirelessly supports the bill she helped to create by accusing opponents of trying to "protect non-resident property owners and property-wealthy towns at the expense of the majority of Vermont's children and taxpayers...

...The incentives, obviously, are for poor towns to increase educational spending and for rich towns to cut...

...The age of equality will have arrived...

...This one is even bigger and angrier than that (which, if you live in Vermont, is hard to imagine...

...to pay taxes on two houses (until they could sell the first one) so that they could give their sons a good education...

...After the Supreme Court decision, lawmakers could be creative and say, "The judges made me do it...

...Supporters of Act 6o take a dim view of this sort of thing—people spending their own money, in their own towns, on their own kids—and there are mutterings about making this sort of subversive conduct illegal...

...Of course, no tax bill ever achieves fairness, especially when it is based on naked class considerations...

...He is responsible for starting a new, private school and, meanwhile, he says he is avoiding the local press, "because I don't want to make my child a target of trailer-park envy...

...The state then sends the money (minus the administrative vigorish, which is $5 million in the first year) back to the towns in the form of block grants...

...The incentives, obviously, are for poor towns to increase educational spending and for rich towns to cut...

...During the first year of the reign of Act 6o, the tax rate will be $1.10 per hundred...

...It is easy to say that you cannot have it both ways—but perhaps not true...

...August 1998 • The American Spectator CLASS ACT v 1 % 0 g Finally there are Vermonters of convenience...

...When Rivers deigned to appear at a meeting of concerned taxpayers in one of the "contributing towns," she was asked to explain what the dollar impacts of the bill would be...

...The background, in a nutshell, is this: For years, local communities have paid for their schools through property taxes...

...Old Ethan didn't much like people in distant places exercising power over him, his money, or his land...

...Poor24 August 1998 • The American Spectator er towns, on the other hand, by voting to tax themselves a little extra can send in $i and get back $2 and still be paying lower property taxes than under the old, pre-Act 6o regime...

...The legislature lacked the courage to go higher, or to raise the sales tax directly, so it nibbled around the edges, hoping nobody would notice...

...Towns collect the money, as before, but now they send it to the education bureaucracy in the capital, Montpelier...

...Then there is the John Irving solution: start your own school...

...In the name of fairness, naturally...

...But he stood GEOFFREY NORMAN is editor at large for Forbes FYI...

...On the other hand, if you own a $ioo,000 house, make $3o,000, and own a few acres of land which have been in your family for years, your taxes will go up...

...Not so fast, said the architects of Act 6o...

...If the town voted to spend a hundred thousand, and there was ten million worth of property on the grand list, the tax rate would be one dollar per hundred dollars of property...

...On the first Tuesday of March, according to the revered tradition of the town meeting, voters would assemble to discuss public issues and decide how much to spend on their school and other services...

...They soldier through the first half of any year to make enough to appease the tax collector, and if they don't like it, they don't really rebel, either...

...The expectation, of course, is that the rich towns won't cut all the way back to the $5,000 per pupil covered by the block grant...

...It's just money, after all, vital if you are a receiving town...

...Irving has paid his own way and more...

...In 1997 the State Supreme Court ruled that what was unfair was also unconstitutional, even though the Vermont Constitution barely mentions education and has nothing to say about how it should be paid for...

...It is like saying "Dreyfus" at a Paris dinner party in 1894...

...But the state can surely make them worse, and eventually all the schools in Vermont will be mediocre unless there is resistance to Act 6o...

...It has resulted in one town, so far, saying the hell with it and closing its public school...

...It is an interesting struggle, not least because, unlike almost everything else that happens in the state, this fight has national implications...

...You use it because you know that it does work...

...The Democrat-controlled legislature wrote legislation to create a new, statewide method for funding education: a 105-page monstrosity which the Democratic governor, Howard Dean, signed into law, and which is now known by all Vermonters as Act 6o...

...The same people who will say that you can't improve education by throwing money at it also claim that by cutting the budget of their school you are condemning their children to a second-rate education...

...First, some towns have said they will not send the taxes they collect to Montpelier...

...It is probably harder to make a bad school, in a poor town, better by spending some extra money than it is to make a good school in a rich town mediocre by cutting its budget...

...In many towns this means that tax rates will fall and school expenditures will go up...

...But this tax increase was different, because it profaned one of the fundamental values of our times...

...The inequities in funding were...

...The entire bill is so complex that the "corrections" to the original bill ran some 8o pages...

...People go to all sorts of extremes to make sure their kids go to good schools...

...I've read the bill, and I can't understand it...

...By the mid-9o's, spending per student in Vermont was sixth-highest in the nation...

...There are a number of people who live in the Gold Towns precisely because of the schools...

...He counts for more if, for instance, English is not his first language...

...The real issues here are taxes and education, and on those two fronts a fight is long overdue—and not just in Vermont...

...Advocates of the bill endlessly swear fealty to the principle of local control but where the money goes, so goes the power, and the money now goes through Montpelier...

...The total value of property in these towns was soon so high that even low tax rates produced a lot of revenue...

...Finally, there is the imaginative expedient of private foundations to raise money for schools in the Gold Towns...

...The obvious impetus of Act 6o is toward state control of education with a statewide teacher contract...

...a trifle if you are paying...

...Poor people in rich towns, if they happen to own some land, will be under pressure to sell land to pay their taxes...

...and in a call by a former candidate for governor that Vermonters arm themselves against the forces of tyranny...

...Poorer towns, by voting to tax themselves a little extra, can send in $1 and get back $2 and still be paying lower property taxes than under the old, pre-Act 60 regime...

...You could go to a town meeting, stamp your feet and argue that this was excessive and the school was being profligate...

...Under Act 6o, their taxes will go up at least one-third —probably more —while the budget for the school they have sacrificed so much to get their kids into will go down by almost zo percent...

...These foundations make up the deficit between the block grant and a school's budget, and save a town from having to tax itself to pour additional money into the Montpelier shark pool...

...Experts aren't sure why...

...This has led to much hand-wringing in such forums as the Rutland Herald...

...They could always vote some additional taxes on themselves to make up the shortfall...

...They bought a lot and built the house on it themselves...

...There are reasons to welcome this struggle, envenomed though it is by class...

...Supreme courts, however, are not deterred by such minor, technical considerations...

...Americans, Vermonters included, have needed a good, honest fight on this ground for a long time...

...This is Marxism, but of the denatured, visceral kind that millions of students picked up on campus during the 6o's...

...Of course there is class warfare in Vermont, and the architects of Act 6o did what they could to fuel it...