Meeting
Beaty, Diane
Meeting On the bridge, he sips her breath, seals her back, is of her shape what she is not. ! am already that which they abhor--my unintentioned place in their sun, intrusive. If those waters...
...To facilitate the adjustment, those residents have recently received a transitional "prebate," a one-time check from the state to help pay next year's higher taxes...
...If wealthier towns---called "gold" towns--want to spend extra money on their schools (say another $2,000 per pupil) they must also raise extra money for poorer towns...
...This tax, currently gauged at $1.10 per hundred dollars of assessed property value, is meant to cover only a bare-bones education (roughly $5,000 per pupil...
...Towns with the lowest property value-per-child, on the other hand, will get a return of $4.50 or $6.00 for every extra dollar they remit...
...In fact, an income tax element was part of the original bill the Vermont House passed, before a conference committee changed it...
...Certainly laudable in the abstract, equalizing school spending is much trickier in the details, especially when it deprives voters of their traditional control over local taxes and school budgets...
...Another well-off village, Dorset, is due for fifty cents per extra dollar...
...Privatizing public schools is one startling solution afoot in two towns...
...In California, for example, voters have notoriously refused to increase taxes, not without effect on a once exemplary public school system...
...An underlying assumption of Act 60 was that wealthier towns would continue to fund education at previous levels...
...representative, is the lone self-described Socialist in Congress...
...To match their before-Act 60 spending, gold towns face doubling and tripling tax bills...
...According to the Vermont Supreme Court's Brigham decision in early 1997, some school districts routinely spent twice as much per student as other districts...
...They will also contribute proportionately to additional town education taxes...
...Yet were he governor, Sanders has said, he would have tied school spending more to a progressive income tax rather than to property taxes...
...As it happens, Bernie Sanders, Vermont's sole U.S...
...But as other legislative snafus from Washington on down have demonstrated, such assumptions are by no means a certainty...
...While income tax went out, a degree of "income sensitivity" was incorporated into Act 60...
...Not surprisingly, opposition to Act 60 soon became a firestorm, with opponents designing numerous creative end runs around the new law...
...To achieve equity, the General Assembly passed Act 60, which replaces the local school tax traditionally paid to the town with a state education tax...
...Half a step beyond, I am tempted by their love to try again...
...In short, taxes for school spending, once jealously controlled at the local level, will soon be collected on a statewide basis and redistributed according to an esoteric formula that determines "need...
...According to one estimate, for every additional dollar wealthy Stratton (a ski resort) sends to the state, it will get back four cents...
...Under Act 60, individual towns may vote to increase their taxes to enhance the quality of local schools beyond the state's bare-bones funding...
...The court concluded that the funding system had "fallen short of providing every school-age child in Vermont with an equal educational opportunity...
...Diane Beaty ing across school district lines places poor children at a disadvantage and is an unconstitutional denial of equal opportunity...
...Still, nothing seems straightforward when fine-tuning the tax system, and applying for the prebate turned into a timeconsuming headache for accountants and an even bigger chore for the lay tax preparer...
...Vermonters with household income under $75,000 a year and a homestead with no more than two acres of land, will not pay more than 2 percent of their income toward the basic state school tax...
...However much justice requires comparable school spending, any scheme that deprives successful schools of previous funding would seem destined to face widespread resistance from parents...
...Despite Act 60's income-sensitivity provision, all lowerincome owners of more than two acres of land will slip Commonweal | 0 August 14, 1998...
...Perhaps the most far-reaching "equalization" court ruling is now being fitfully implemented in Vermont...
...They notice me--and part...
...If those waters could keep their gaze, I'd slip into shadow, retrace my own false steps, turn up elsewhere--though when I first began, this path was mine...
...Among epithets directed at Act 60, one often hears "Socialist...
...Successfully suing in state courts, equal-spending advocates have forced states from California to New Jersey to reconfigure school funding...
...Taxpayer revolts of several kinds are also taking shape...
...However, the law further requires that a portion of all monies raised above the basic tax rate go to the state for redistribution...
Vol. 125 • August 1998 • No. 14
