"POLITICS AND OTHER MISTAKES"
School was my hustle
By Al Diamon
What a relief to discover that solving the problem of high property taxes in Maine isn't complicated. Thanks to Gov. John Baldacci, we now know it only requires the elimination of 126 high-paying jobsThat's right. Just fire most of the state's school superintendents, and property taxes will drop faster than SAT scores.
According to Baldacci, many Maine school districts aren't abiding by a voluntary spending cap (a cap that would have been mandatory if the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, which Baldacci opposed, had passed). His solution: Consolidate the state's schools from 152 districts to just 26 over the next three years, saving $241 million.
That comes to roughly $635,000 per displaced super per year. I want one of those jobs.
Actually, the savings aren't all from superintendents' salaries. Figures supplied by the state Department of Education (motto: Supplying Figures Is Mostly What We Do) show the bulk of it - $124 million - will come from cutting central-office space and staff. Assuming every super gets an annual salary-and-benefits package totaling $130,000 (most receive substantially less), that amounts to about $200,000 for rent, lights, paperclips and flunkies.
That could be the case in wealthy towns (Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth) and wacky cities (Portland, Lewiston), but probably not in places where school board members have an aversion to forcible applications of tar and feathers.
The rest of the savings, approximately $117 million, is dependent on what accountants refer to as steaming piles of bull doody.
According to the education department, schools would save over $17 million a year on toilet paper and related supplies, because the newly consolidated districts would get bulk discounts. Discounts which, for some reason, the old districts can't get. Even though they use tons of TP.
Special education costs would decline by $21 million a year, because districts would no longer contract with therapists at an hourly rate. Instead, they'd hire therapists and pay them salaries and benefits. Which everybody knows is cheaper.
Transportation would cost $8 million a year less, because … well, just because.
Best of all, state officials predict teachers' salaries, particularly in small towns, would go up as new contracts are negotiated, thereby reducing costs by … er, never mind.
Not all of the quarter billion dollars in savings would go to lowering property taxes. Under the governor's plan, some of it would be spent hiring new principals, so every school has one. Every school would need one, because somebody has to do all the administrative work superintendents used to do. Also, if there's any money left over, Baldacci intends to buy laptops for high school students, because providing laptops for middle school students has done wonders for their test scores. If by "wonders" you mean "made them lower."
Time for a dose of reality.
Property taxes are not too high because the state has too many school superintendents. Property taxes are too high because property owners are forced to pay for too many things that have nothing to do with owning a house, such as schools, social services, county government and a host of state-imposed mandates on municipalities. Until the
governor and the Legislature manage to grasp that fact, whatever they propose in the guise of property tax relief amounts to squat.
There's also the issue of local control. Consolidation means there won't be any. Decisions on which schools will stay open and which will close will be made by regional education authorities. How much influence do you think voters in small towns, where school closings are most likely to occur, will have on these uber-boards? If you answered slightly less influence than I had on the New England Patriots' chances of winning the Super Bowl by wearing my lucky red-white-and-blue socks on game days, you are correct.
If Baldacci was serious about cutting administrative costs and reducing property taxes, he'd steal an idea advanced by one of his opponents in last year's election. Since he isn't, I'll steal it, instead.
During the campaign, independent Barbara Merrill suggested in her book "Setting The Maine Course" that the state revamp its school funding formula to pay for all classroom instruction, 90 percent of transportation costs, half of construction expenses and provide special payments to towns with low property valuations and lots of students. As for superintendents and the like: "All administrative costs and the costs of non-teaching personnel would be paid completely by local taxpayers," Merrill wrote. "This would provide the maximum incentive for local taxpayers to control these costs and would leave no valid reason for state government to concern itself with these local decisions."
Hey, maybe Baldacci is right. Solving the problem of high property taxes isn't complicated. It's so simple a voter could do it.
Contacting me is so simple a newspaper reader could do it. Just e-mail aldiamon@herniahill.net.
