|
RIPR is a (paper) newsletter that looks at local, state and federal policy issues that affect life here in the Ocean State. Each issue focuses on particular policy areas of interest. Future issues will examine controversial aspects of environmental policy, health care, state tax reform, and education spending. The intention is to look at action rather than talk. RIPR also issues a weekly column about public policy, carried by ten of Rhode Island's finer newspapers. See here for an archive of recent columns. If you'd like to help, please contribute an item, suggest an issue topic, or buy a subscription. If you can, buy two or three (subscribe here). Search this siteAvailable Back Issues:
Subscription information:
Contact:For those of you who can read english and understand it, the following is an email address you are welcome to use. If you are a web bot, we hope you can't understand it, and that's the point of writing it this way. editor at whatcheer dot net Archive:
Links:Links pageRSSRIPR is primarily a print publication (yikes! how 20th century!), and the work it represents is supported by its subscribers. Feel free to use this link to an RSS feed for the blog, but the real meat is in the newsletter, so come back and subscribe when you have a chance. Responsibility: Tom Sgouros
|
Fri, 07 Sep 2007
Paying for war with your school budget
[Appeared this past week in the Woonsocket Call, Pawtucket Times, and several other papers in the RIMG group.]
Over the last several years, the cost of educating our children has been the major driver of the rise in property taxes in Rhode Island. The biggest part of the rise -- by far -- has been the cost of special education. According to state department of education numbers, general education costs rose an average of 48% between 1998 and 2006, while special ed costs went up 83%. As of the 2005-2006 school year (the latest year published on the Education Department web site), we spend $444 million to educate these children out of nearly $2 billion for all the state's' public schools.
In 1975, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was the landmark legislation that established that the policy of our public schools would be to teach children with special needs in the same classrooms as everyone else, wherever possible. Where it isn't possible, the policy is to teach them in the same buildings as everyone else, and where that isn't possible, it's the school district's problem to pay for that child's education somewhere else.
It's a noble goal, but the problem is paying for it. In the past, children with serious education problems were shipped off to institutions like the state-run Ladd School. The current policy is a great step forward, but one can't help but notice that when the Ladd School closed, the savings in the state budget was not redirected to local school districts.
The state is an offender in this regard, but it is only a penny-ante player compared to the federal government. When IDEA was created, it established the laws that now rule special education. It was quite clear that the laws would create big financial burdens on states and local school districts, and the only way that it got through Congress was by including a promise to fund 40% of the costs of the new special ed rules and programs. All fine and good, of course, until you realize that now, 32 years after the law was passed, the federal government only funds 17% of the costs of this law.
Gerald Ford signed the bill into law, and the first year, the federal government paid 5% of the costs. The level climbed to about 12% by the time Jimmy Carter left office. Under Reagan, it slipped back to 8%, where it stayed, more or less, until 1993. During the Clinton administration, the level advanced to 14%. Progress continued after George Bush rode into town, until we started the Iraq war, when it stalled at 18%, and has backslid since.
This all seems a little abstract, so let's talk dollars. If we now fund 17% of special ed costs, and the goal is 40%, then what is that amount really? It's $13 billion, which seems like a lot of money, but is equivalent to about 41 days of what we are currently spending in Iraq. Rhode Island's share would be about $46 million, or about three and a half hours or Iraq spending. This week, Bush intends to ask Congress for another $50 billion to fund the war. That's a supplemental request, to go on top of the $147 billion he already requested, but hasn't been approved yet. To date, we've spent over $447 billion. (Check out the ticker to the right for more.)
So there you have it. Next time you're moaning about your property tax bill, remember that the fastest-growing part of the expenses it pays for are expenses that the Federal government was supposed to pay for, but doesn't, because of the war and the Bush tax cuts. (And we haven't even mentioned the costs of No Child Left Behind.) The added expense would be a drop in the federal budget bucket, but it's a major burden for your town.
But it's all tax money, you say. Who cares if it comes from federal taxes, state taxes, or property taxes? You do, and the reason is who pays those taxes. Income taxes are higher on wealthy people than on poor ones, and property taxes are exactly the reverse, with poor and middle-class people paying a much higher percentage of their incomes on property taxes than the rich. According to the Tax Policy Center in DC, the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest half percent of our citizens were worth over $100,000 in 2007. When he refused to increase the funding for IDEA, he made your property taxes higher, because federal law still requires those special ed programs. That's the way it works these days, at the federal, state and local levels: the interests of the poor and the middle are routinely sacrificed for the interests of the wealthy. This sounds like rabble-rousing, but it's right there in the numbers if anyone cares to argue about it.
In 21st Century America, the military is not drawn from a cross-section of our world. Lots of people don't even know anyone who's been in combat. But the war still affects all of us, and one place you can see it is in your property tax bill.
Ads and the like:
