Act 46 was crafted last year to address the realities of
increasing education costs due to declining enrollment and a 130 year-old
structure of governance. In many parts of Vermont implementation has been an
overwhelming success. But for some it was clear that the cost containment
threshold provisions weren’t working as intended. A bipartisan group of
lawmakers worked together to craft a solution in time for Town Meeting.
After four weeks of hammering out House and Senate responses
to the outcry by school boards, the end seemed to be in sight. Senate bill
S.233 would have repealed the spending thresholds altogether. The House voted to amend the bill by adjusting
the threshold for per-pupil spending increases upward by 0.9%, reducing the
penalty from $1 to $.25/dollar of excess spending, and giving school districts
the option of which Agency of Education calculation to use. The Agency’s original calculation was
modified mid-January and changed the effect on tax rates for many
districts. The House decided to let each
school district choose the calculation that provided the better benefit.
After considerable debate and a number of further amendments
which were defeated last Wednesday, the House approved by a wide bi-partisan
margin the amendment and sent it back to the Senate. The Senate accepted most of the changes but
further modified it on Thursday evening and sent it back to the House. It
looked like the bill would get to the Governor’s desk by Friday afternoon just
barely in time for many school districts to finalize their budgets by the
Sunday deadline for Town Meeting agendas.
The additional changes the Senate made included bumping up
the excess spending penalty to $.40/dollar, exempting from penalty those districts
whose per-pupil spending remained below the statewide average despite
year-to-year increases that exceeded the threshold, and eliminating the
spending threshold entirely for the 2018 budgets. To get a final vote in the House, however,
required a suspension of the rules since one legislative day is required for a
bill to appear on the House Calendar before a vote can be taken. This is where
it got sticky. Despite assurances by both the Education and Ways & Means
Committees that the 2018 budget provisions would be reviewed later this
session, the Republican minority refused to suspend the rules. This set up a situation where the bill could
not be passed in time for those remaining school budgets to be finalized and
meet the 30-day notice requirement for Town Meeting.
After repeated conferences of the party leaders with Speaker
Shap Smith failed to resolve the impasse, the Democrats and Progressives agreed
to adjourn for the day and reconvene at one minute past midnight. That would officially be the next legislative
day and allow us to take up the bill and vote on it. When we reconvened at 12:01 AM, another
amendment was offered that would have prevented the bill’s passage until
Tuesday at the earliest. After an hour of debate including two roll-call votes,
the bill was passed as amended by the Senate and sent to Governor Shumlin who
signed it hours later with the following statement: “Act 46 is working better
than I had imagined. Over half of all students in this state now live in
communities that are moving forward with or having serious conversations about
how to work together to improve educational quality and provide relief to
taxpayers. That is happening because of Act 46 and it is how we will right size
our education system to reflect the fact that there are 20,000 fewer students
today than in 1998. The spending caps had become the enemy of that important
work, and I am pleased the Legislature acted quickly to make this change.”
