Bills may cut levy threshold

OLYMPIA – After years of trying, Democratic lawmakers are leading a full-court press in the Statehouse to knock down a 75-year-old hurdle for school districts seeking property tax dollars.

“This is the year that we have got to address this,” Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way, said Monday.

“This” is the constitutional requirement that school districts, which today rely on local property taxes for large slices of their operating and construction budgets, must win approval from a 60 percent “supermajority” of voters in order to collect those extra taxes.

That’s absurd, education advocates and many lawmakers say, in a state where voters can OK the building of a jail or stadium with just a simple majority vote.

So Eide and a long list of mostly Democratic lawmakers are proposing a change. Under their plan, only a simple majority – 50 percent plus 1 vote – would be required for school districts to raise money through levies or bonds.

Schools generally enjoy solid support from voters. According to the League of Education Voters, for example, 49 school districts asked voters last March to approve levies or bonds. Of those, 41 passed, many with landslide votes of more than 70 percent.

In the eight that failed – including proposals by the Mead, Central Valley, Nine Mile Falls, Colville and West Valley school districts – “yes” votes comprised more than 50 percent of the total. Under the new law, all those levies and bonds would have passed.

Changing the state constitution, however, isn’t easy. Two-thirds of the state Legislature must vote yes. Then the matter would go to a statewide simple-majority vote in November, with voters having final say.

“We think it’s time to let the voters actually have this decision,” said Dan Steele, executive director of the state school directors’ association. So does Gov. Chris Gregoire, who’d like to see levies easier to pass. Of the three bills proposed to address the issue, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, is a co-sponsor on one, and freshman Sen. Chris Marr, also D-Spokane, is a co-sponsor on all three.

Some Republican lawmakers, however, are balking at any changes. The vast majority of school levies eventually pass, they point out, even if it takes two or three attempts. Some, like Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt, want all the elections held in November, to avoid “stealth elections” dominated by advocates. Democrats argue that stealth elections are virtually impossible now that most Washingtonians are mailed a ballot for every election.

“Bottom line: my perspective is this is basically a property tax increase,” said Sen. Janea Holmquist, R-Moses Lake.

At a hearing Monday, Seattle resident Paul W. Locke said that taxes are already far too high. Lawmakers shouldn’t reduce the number of votes needed to raise them, he said.

“It would be another disaster,” said Locke. “The fewer people that have to show up for the vote, the more we’re going to run into the hole.”

If the proposals pass, legislative budget staff estimate, taxes for school construction bonds would increase about $600 million more per year. Taxes for capital, maintenance and operation levies would likely rise a total of another $40 million a year.

As things stand now, school districts say, losing a vote can cripple their budgets. West Valley School District’s three-year maintenance and operations levy – which failed in March but passed in May – brings in about $7 million a year in taxes. That’s 20 percent of the district’s budget. And since the state hands out “levy equalization” cash to property-poor districts, losing the levy would have cost an additional $900,000 in state dollars.

West Valley’s levy pays for things the state doesn’t, including the salaries of maintenance workers, cooks, secretaries, teaching staff, education assistants and technology staff. Athletics and intramural sports are paid for with levy funds, as are band, music, art, drama, and after-school programs. It helps pay for bus rides for students who live less than a mile from school.

In Battleground, a city near Vancouver, Jason Perrins is the principal at Prairie High School. His district, he said, just saw its levy fail for the second time. The yes vote was 59.8 percent, he said. The district has a long history of difficult levies.

As a result, he said, the social studies curriculum hasn’t been updated in 17 years. Drama, some advanced-placement courses, music and art have all suffered, and staff has been cut. Eight empty classrooms are now used for storage.

In Yakima, school board member John Vornbrock said, two 1998 levy failures meant that teachers were laid off. Sports participants were asked to pay user fees. The soccer team’s schedule was changed so it had almost no away games, because the district couldn’t afford the buses. The district’s financial reserves were drained to nearly zero, Vornbrock said.

Since then, he said – in 1999, 2001 and 2004 – the district has passed its levies. Barely.