Finding $15 Million
As you may have read in the paper, $15M additional has been backfilled into public education. It was announced by the republican leadership in our caucus today that “we had $15M more than we thought coming from a structural balance.” To be honest, I’m still not clear where that money was found (we joked it was under some sofa cushions in the Capitol), but I do know it lowers the total hit to public ed (we are only talking FY09 here) to just over 3%, down from the original cut of 7.8%, with the original 3.5% backfill and now the $15M new backfill. That should help schools avoid some of the drastic cuts at least for this FY. We begin looking at FY10 next week.
Several bills were discussed in the Education committee this morning. One was a bill, sponsored by Rep. Laura Black, that would allow school districts to determine birthday cutoff for enrolling a child in kindergarten. This was intended to help year round schools who begin in July and with a September 1st deadline often have children coming in under age 5. After much discussion, it was defeated in committee, with a tie vote of 5-5. In the case of a tie a bill is defeated. Since I voted for the bill (I liked the control it gave to individual school districts) I thought the tie should go to the runner and it should move on, but baseball rules do not apply here.
The second bill in Education was presented by Rep. Lorie Fowlke. It was a bill that allowed credit transfers for teachers when moving between school districts. The intent of the bill is good, but economics of individual school districts may make it very difficult for more experienced teachers to transfer when a district may prefer to hire a first year teacher over a highly qualified, seasoned teacher because of cost. After a lot of discussion we tabled this bill and it will come before the committee again next week.
The last bill discussed was presented by Rep. Wayne Harper. It is a bill that restructures the tax base that public ed draws from and includes sales tax in the mix along with property tax. This bill got no further than Rep. Harper’s opening remarks and then we had to adjourn for floor time. This is a very complex bill and when it is heard next week is sure to be very controversial. The volatility of sales and property taxes will need to be looked at as well as other impacts this would have.
Davis County legislators had lunch with many of our County officials; Commissioners Louenda Downs and Bret Milburn, County Assessor Jim Ivie, and County Treasurer Mark Altom. We discussed the burden state cuts will place on counties, specifically in the area of health and human services where counties provide about 80% of those services. We also discussed their take on Rep. Harper’s education/tax reform bill.
It was a great day and the end of the first week. Five and half more and LOTS of work left to do. I’ll send out my legislative update tomorrow and catch up on some research on bills for next week.