Rapid response, radical reform: The story of school finance litigation in Vermont

Journal of Law and Education, Apr 2002 by Rebell, Michael A, Metzler, Jeffrey

III. THE RAPID REMEDIAL RESPONSE

The Brigham decision hit the legislature like an "atom bomb."" Two days after the trial, plaintiffs' counsel Robert Gensburg appeared before the House Democratic Caucus and received a standing ovation for breaking the political gridlock.83 Within four months of the decision, the governor signed Act 60 into law.

familiar with the concepts, the problems and the possibilities. As Paul Cillo, the House Majority leader at the time, put it:

We had been studying [fiscal equity reform] since 1991 and the principles used by the Court were the exact principles that we were using in the design of our plans. We were ready .... It did not take us long to put together a plan that would survive the political climate and satisfy the Brigham decision."

A second reason was that as a result of the 1996 election, the Democrats now controlled both houses of the legislature and were in a position to enact the bill on their own and overcome the political impasses of past sessions. Despite their domination of the entire legislature, the Democrats had not acted forcefully at the beginning of the session on fiscal equity reform, which had been a major issue in the election. Why, despite their control of the Statehouse and both houses of the legislature, were the Democrats seemingly incapable of moving rapidly on the reform issue without a judicial mandate? The reason apparently was that although Democrats were eager for reform, there were serious intraparty differences on the form it should take. According to John Freiden, Vice-- Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee at the time, both the Governor and the Democratically-controlled Senate were influenced by real estate interests and were opposed to the extensive reforms favored by the House.84

The new law significantly equalized education spending around the state by replacing local property taxes with a statewide property tax, and by establishing an "equalized yield provision" ensuring that all towns that choose to levy additional taxes to increase educational expenditures will have the same additional per-pupil funds, regardless of the district's actual property wealth. The law does this by giving primary responsibility for education funding to the state,87 and by providing for a flat-rate statewide property tax of $1.10 per $100 of property value.88 Each school receives a per-pupil allocation called the general state support amount ($5,010 in 1998).89 Local districts that choose to impose a local property tax to permit spending above the basic state allocation must turn a percentage of the additional revenue over to a state education fund (the "sharing pool"), where it is redistributed to other districts. The percentage of funds going into the education fund and the percentage going directly to the local schools is determined by the commissioner of education based on the value of the property in the district.90 The higher the average property value, the greater the percentage of additional revenue that goes into the state education fund.