Date: Fri 25-Jun-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

Powell-school-aid-state

Full Text:

COMMENTARY: More Money Than Ever Was Available But Legislature Failed Schools

Again

By Chris Powell

Rolling in more extra money than it has seen in a decade, the General Assembly

voted the other day to wait another three years before appropriating fully for

state government's formula for aid to municipal school systems.

Manchester Mayor Stephen T. Cassano, whose town is among a dozen suing the

state because they have lost a lot of money from the state's failure to live

up to the school aid formula, calls the legislature's action "a major step

forward." In fact it is only a lot of empty posturing.

Yes, the legislation just passed would repeal the "cap" on the school aid

formula in three years, and thus can be said to give the cheated towns

something to look forward to. But then the legislature has written and

rewritten and capped the formula before to save money when keeping promises

proved inconvenient, and the legislature easily could put the cap back on

again.

The legislation just passed and its promise to appropriate fully for the

school aid formula would become the problem not of the current governor and

legislature but of the next governor and the legislature chosen two elections

hence. The people in office then will have power to reinstate the cap even as

many if not most of them will not even have participated in the posturing of

the promise made this year.

Of course the challenge in budgeting is always to find the money now , not to

say that someone else should find it later ; the latter is no challenge at

all. But in effect the legislature has just proclaimed that it knows the right

thing but lacks the courage to do it. Rather than prove its cowardice, the

legislature would have done better not to strike a pose on the subject.

The pose is especially empty since this is such a prosperous year for state

government and for Connecticut generally and since economic conditions, being

cyclical, are not likely to be as good in three years. Appropriating fully for

the school aid formula would have cost about $150 million this year. While the

legislature has increased local school aid in the new budget, state government

had a surplus from the expiring budget of more than $500 million, far more

than needed to fund the school aid formula fully. So if the legislature

couldn't summon the will to appropriate fully for the formula amid

unprecedented prosperity, how can it expect a future legislature to do so?

But the legislature's insincerity is matched by the insincerity of officials

of the very towns that have been cheated by the cap on school aid.

The cap is estimated to cost Manchester about $4 million per year, and the

town was shocked to discover the other day that the school expansion and

renovation program it has just begun could cost $179 million. But even as he

has been complaining about the cap on state aid to schools and helping to

bring a lawsuit against it, Manchester Mayor Cassano has been the foremost

suburban advocate first of state government's spending hundreds of millions of

dollars to subsidize a professional football team in Hartford and now to spend

almost $500 million on the "Adriaen's Landing" downtown Hartford redevelopment

project, to which $100 million of the state surplus has just been diverted.

East Hartford, where the idea of the lawsuit against the school aid cap

originated, is being cheated of about $8 million per year, and the problem

there is worsened by the hundreds of impoverished Hartford students who have

fled the city and enrolled in East Hartford schools in recent years. But East

Hartford Mayor Timothy Larson also has been a cheerleader for the downtown

Hartford project that is diverting so much money from East Hartford's schools.

Indeed, the whole Manchester and East Hartford delegations in the General

Assembly supported the extravagant spending on downtown Hartford in the

legislative session just concluded even as their local school systems are

becoming so much more burdensome.

Of course everything in budgeting is a matter of setting priorities and making

choices, and, amazingly, Mayor Cassano, Mayor Larson, and the Manchester and

East Hartford legislators have chosen rearranging downtown Hartford over their

own towns' schools and taxpayers.

While there is little evidence that the level of spending makes any difference

in educational results in the first place (the only financial variable that

correlates with educational results is family income), the level of state aid

is a matter of fairness and urgency to local property taxpayers. But when even

the mayors and legislative delegations from the towns most cheated by the cap

on the state school aid formula are providing political cover for the

distraction of redeveloping downtown Hartford, it's no wonder that the whole

legislature settles for mere posturing about more basic public needs.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of The Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)