Evers' plan to restore K-12 funding is a lot. But it's doable, if we choose

Over the weekend, we saw reports about how Democratic candidate for Governor Tony Evers would ask for a big boost in funding for K-12 education. The plan was formally presented today as Evers' day job- as the elected superintendent of the state's Department of Public Instruction.

Evers’ request for $15.4 billion in state support for K-12 schools in 2019-21, up 12.3 percent from the $13.7 billion distributed to school districts in the 2017-19 cycle, is similar to what the Legislature agreed to more than two decades ago, [DPI Spokesman Tom] McCarthy said.

“I think it’s been a long, long, long time coming,” McCarthy said. “You’re seeing it in referenda results around the state, people voting to raise their own taxes to support their schools. That should be a big wake-up for the state to say maybe it’s time for us to not only redesign how we fund our schools but also contribute enough money so local districts don’t have to pick up so much of the dime.”

We already knew that Evers would call for an additional $606 million in special education aids, which I discussed here. General special ed aids to K-12 schools have not been raised since 2011, and districts have had to increasingly use “regular” school aids to pay for these services in recent years, causing an extra budget crunch.

What the article also indicates is that Evers will have the bulk of the rest of the K-12 increases come from Wisconsin’s General School aids formula. That formula gives more resources to poorer districts than richer ones, and also adjust aids for certain high-needs students such as English Language Leaners.

It's a change from Governor Walker’s increases over the last 2 years, which came in the form of per-pupil aids based on enrollment in a district, giving an advantage to growing districts over those with stagnant or declining populations.

The rest of the $1.1 billion Evers proposes in increased aids is intriguing because it is geared toward putting money into the classroom over earmarking it toward property tax relief.

Evers is calling for an increase in total aid of more than $2.6 billion over the current biennium. His proposal also calls for, starting in the second year, eliminating property tax credits that total about $1 billion per year and shifting it to general aid.

The $1 billion removal of K-12-related property taxes are another interesting proposed reform, and ends a Walker Administration shell game that the have played for years. The GOP shell game is done by increasing the amount of General Fund tax dollars (which are paid for with income taxes, sales taxes, corporate taxes and other everyday taxes) that are then used to cut property taxes.

The largest of this is the School Levy credit (which is removed from property tax bills in proportion to the amount of taxes paid) and the First Dollar credit (which goes to all forms of improved property). This was already sizable when Walker took office, but the School Levy credit has been increased by more than $210 million in that time, while the First Dollar credit has been basically flat.

That also helps to answer attacks from Republicans like this one from the Number 2 GOP in the State Assembly.

Like prisons, the UW System, Medicaid, transportation, etc? No, there isn’t $1.4 billion laying around in any part of the state budget.

— Jim Steineke (@jimsteineke) September 16, 2018

Sorry little Jimmy, but the money is there, if we want it to be. Not only can those K-12 property tax credits be transferred into the classroom through higher General Aids, but it can also be used to reduce and/or limit the property taxes that are needed to operate schools. Unlike Walker and WisGOP, Evers allows for a higher revenue limit, giving flexibility to decide whether they want to put the extra money in the classroom, or for property tax cuts. Or both, in the case of some districts.

Evers’ proposal also raises the revenue limit by $200 per student in the first year and another $204 in the second year. Limits vary by district but on average are between $10,000 and $11,000 per student.

McCarthy called the overall proposal “property-tax neutral,” but said changes like those could cause districts with higher property wealth to see taxes go up while the opposite would play out in lower property wealth districts.

And while the School Levy and First Dollar credits are the largest part of the Walker/WisGOP shell game on property taxes, they are far from the only shell game played. There’s also a $406 million payment every year that drastically lowered the property tax for the state’s Technical Colleges, money that also never goes into the classroom. And there were items in the 2017-19 budget to remove the state’s Forestry property tax, and lower the personal property tax for businesses, and give $48 million to lottery retailers so there would be more money to cut property taxes with those games.

As you can see in that chart, state taxpayers are shelling out nearly twice as much for these property tax gimmicks in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, and more than $800 million a year more than we did in 2014.

Let’s also recognize another way we can afford Evers’ proposed increase in K-12 aids – by taking the Medicaid expansion that is part of the Affordable Care Act. The savings by doing so was estimated at $203 million for this year, and that figure seems likely to grow, based on the new budget request from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. That request shows state taxpayers are projected to pay an additional $496 million for Medicaid under the current system, and a big reason why is that the type of individuals going on Medicaid increasingly have higher costs per patient, particularly as lower-cost families are pushed onto the ACA exchanges under Walker-Care .

So taking the expanded Medicaid funding, even at the reduced 90% that we’d see in 2019, would still allow Wisconsin to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year. In addition to saving money, expanding Medicaid would cover childless adults that make just enough to not be in poverty, but are still very low-income and close to going over the edge. And 1 in 4 Wisconsinites are in these types of perilous situations, as shown by the recent ALICE survey by United Way, and that amount increased by 3% between 2012 and 2016.

Given this reality, it is clear that the messed up priorities of Governor Dropout and his Koched-up GOP lackeys in the Legislature can start to be reversed with a new Governor and new legislators that actually care about the state’s future and uses tax dollars for investments rather than giving kickbacks to rich and corporate donors. And Evers’ running mate summed it up well

The money is there, it's just being spent wrong. We gotta make government less goofy. Putting more money into schools is a fantastic start.

— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) September 16, 2018