LGC 2.5 School selection and regionalization act (passed)

[Former President tack50]

Well, this bill is pretty much a single issue bill, intended to kill off the very harmful link between property taxes and other local taxes; and school funding, by pooling all education funding at the regional or state level and explicitly specifying that property tax cannot be used to fund schools.

Point 3 also gives a very small amount of flexibility to parents, so that they can send their kids to schools near their workplace instead of at their school district, just in case the school district is bad in some way.

[Former President tack50]

Wouldn't this result in a free rider problem such that towns lower their property taxes to send less money elsewhere?

The point of this bill precisely is that there is no relation between property tax and school funding!

Although I am not opposed to an amendment to further reform the way property tax works if that is what is needed

[Former President tack50]

Wouldn't this result in a free rider problem such that towns lower their property taxes to send less money elsewhere?

The point of this bill precisely is that there is no relation between property tax and school funding!

Although I am not opposed to an amendment to further reform the way property tax works if that is what is needed

In that case, wouldn't there be less funding for schools across the board?

Not really I think. The ideal way for this bill to work would be that property tax gets pooled at the state or regional level (I think the Lincoln budget already has a section for property tax but Lincoln's finances are a complete disaster and should be redone from scratch at some point). Assuming we don't raise or lower taxes either way, the income from property tax would be the same.

So instead of rich schools in rich neighbourhoods and poor schools in poor neighbourhoods schools get roughly equal levels of funding.

I will say I am open to a better way of doing this, perhaps this bill is a bit too vague

[Former President tack50]

Wouldn't this result in a free rider problem such that towns lower their property taxes to send less money elsewhere?

The point of this bill precisely is that there is no relation between property tax and school funding!

Although I am not opposed to an amendment to further reform the way property tax works if that is what is needed

In that case, wouldn't there be less funding for schools across the board?

Not really I think. The ideal way for this bill to work would be that property tax gets pooled at the state or regional level (I think the Lincoln budget already has a section for property tax but Lincoln's finances are a complete disaster and should be redone from scratch at some point). Assuming we don't raise or lower taxes either way, the income from property tax would be the same.

So instead of rich schools in rich neighbourhoods and poor schools in poor neighbourhoods schools get roughly equal levels of funding.

I will say I am open to a better way of doing this, perhaps this bill is a bit too vague

So there would be a free rider problem unless there is some provision that prevents localities from lowering their property taxes.

I mean fair enough, we could centralize property tax at the regional level to fix this issue, though I am not sure if it is an optimal solution (the housing market in NYC has little to do with the housing market in rural Maine for example)

[Former President tack50]

Aye