School board law one step closer to vote -Daily Local News 04/07/2011

School board law one step closer to vote

Thursday, April 7, 2011

By Evan Brandt

Special to the Local News

A law sponsored by a local state senator and supported by another, which would prevent any school board from increasing property taxes without a two-thirds majority vote, has moved out of committee and is one step closer to a vote.

The bill’s prime sponsor is state Sen. John Rafferty, R-44th, of Collegeville.

Voting in support of moving the bill out of committee was state Sen. Andrew Dinniman, D-19th, of West Whiteland, the education committee’s minority chairman.

The proposed bill was one of 17 the committee moved forward earlier this week — all part of what the committee’s chairman, state Sen. Jeff Piccola, R-15th, is calling “mandate relief.”

Contacted Wednesday evening, Rafferty said the bill is the same one he proposed last year, but which did not get passed because “we ran out of time” and the Senate session expired before adoption could occur.

However, the bill’s speedy passage out of committee this week raised hopes it may make it to the floor, and then on to the House of Representatives and Gov. Tom Corbett’s desk.

“I think it’s got a pretty good shot, already being out of committee,” Rafferty said, adding that it will probably next be considered by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Currently, under a five-year old law named Act 1, school boards cannot raise taxes above a state-imposed index based on the rate of inflation unless approved by the voters, or unless the Pennsylvania Department of Education grants any of a series of “exemptions.”

The Pennsylvania Independent news website reported that in the first five years since Act 1 was enacted, only 12 of the 1,345 exemptions sought by school districts have been turned down by the Commonwealth.

A separate bill, which was approved in the Senate Finance Committee Monday, would eliminate those exemptions as well.

Nonetheless, Rafferty’s bill, known as Senate Bill 537, would require a two-thirds “super-majority” vote by a school board to raise taxes, even if the increase is within the state-imposed index.

“I look at it really as a taxpayer fairness bill,” said Rafferty.

“I’ve seen a lot of tax increases get passed with a lot of 5-4 votes,” said Rafferty, noting that he is a former school board member.

“I think this bill offers the taxpayers a dose of fairness,” added Rafferty, “especially when you consider that most of the taxpayers who pay the bills do not have kids in the school system.”

But state Sen. Daylin Leach, D-17th, voted against the bill saying it gives an unfair advantage to those opposing increases and is an affront to the foundational one-man, one-vote basis of democracy.

“A small majority of one-third can block the will of the majority,” Leach said, according to the Pennsylvania Independent news website.

Dinniman, who said he does not “understand people who vote against every single bill” as Leach did on each of the 17 bills endorsed by the education committee, said the two-thirds majority is necessary to protect taxpayers in difficult fiscal times.

He said the cuts Corbett has proposed to public education, some of which he hopes to reverse with the help of a bi-partisan coalition of legislators, are likely to lead to increases in property taxes to make up for the lost state funding.

“The resulting property tax increases will break the back of the taxpayers,” Dinniman said. “I think it’s appropriate. It’s rare that a school board passes a tax increase with less than a two-thirds majority anyway.”

When informed of Rafferty’s observation that he had seen many 5-4 votes on property tax hikes, Dinniman demurred, saying, “I don’t disagree with Sen. Rafferty that there may have been some 5-4 votes, but there were also many that were not.”

Both senators said they had received many letters from constituents supporting the bill.

Further, both Rafferty and Dinniman said they had heard little objection from school boards on the bill, although both said they had heard from some individual board members.

Neither could remember which school districts those members opposing the bill represented.

However, if they haven’t already, both senators may soon hear from Pottstown School Board member Michele Pargeon, whose opposition to the bill was expressed last week during a school board meeting.

The board member designated to report on education-related bills being discussed in Harrisburg, Pargeon said to include Rafferty’s bill in a package of proposed legislation called “mandate relief” is “absolutely ridiculous.”

“I don’t know how they can consider this mandate relief,” Pargeon said. “They cut funding from the state; then they want to tie our hands so we can’t raise property taxes, but they never want to talk about the way this Commonwealth funds education.”

Added Pargeon, “I don’t know how they can shovel this at us and call it ‘mandate relief.’” She urged school board members to tell citizens to “contact your state representatives and ask them not to vote for this.”

URL: http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2011/04/07/news/doc4d9e6faff092e845222153.prt

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