ANDOVER – It never comes up at Town Meeting, or even at School budget meetings. Our best shot at controlling increases in local property taxes happens at the ballot box! It’s really important for voters to know where their legislative candidates stand on school funding, and then vote!

Today, the main driver of local property taxes is having to provide education under the state’s unconstitutional scheme. For example, Andover’s school budget is about 65% of the total budget. (If you think Andover’s school budget for the largest public workforce and the largest public building in town is out of line, please write to The Beacon to explain!)

It can be shown that our local tax problems stem from the fact that our state covers barely a quarter of the New Hampshire Constitution’s requirement for the state to fully cover the cost of “an adequate education,” making it necessary for each town to raise the remaining lion’s share from each of us to pay to educate the children of our towns. (In contrast, VT provides 90% of their schools’ revenue, but with more different taxes.) Not every New Hampshire town has an equal amount of tax base resources per-student to accomplish this, so the tax burden is uneven and unfair because those least able to pay are hit hardest.

Incredibly, during the past four years our elected folks in the New Hampshire House and Senate made it even more difficult for regular taxpayers, by diverting a rapidly growing portion of public money raised by towns to pay for non-public education, via the unpopular “Education Freedom Accounts” or “voucher” system. It is not merely my opinion that this is an incorrect use of taxpayer money, because as enacted, it specifically contradicts the New Hampshire Constitution’s Article 83: “…no money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination…”

About thirty years ago, in the two so-called “Claremont Decisions”, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that the unfair and unequal way New Hampshire funds its schools through local property taxes is unconstitutional. To be clear, “fair and proportional” taxation required by the Constitution would demand that $1000 of property be taxed at the same flat % rate, no matter what town the property is in. But that is not the case today. For more than thirty years, the New Hampshire legislature (including members of both parties) has failed to change this unfair system!

Why is it so difficult to make the changes that would be fairer for taxpayers in our rural part of the state and more beneficial to the students who live among us? It is because more prosperous towns don’t want their senators and representatives to share revenue from their towns’ strong tax base to educate any but their own students! So the New Hampshire legislature determined a policy long ago that underfunds every public school across the state. Moreover, they created an unnecessarily complex labyrinth of tax payments and reimbursements, short-changing communities and creating unspent state education “surpluses” that hide the simple fact that the legislature has accomplished nothing to remedy the Claremont decision thirty years ago. That condemnation of the school funding system continues today in ongoing court decisions, such as that reported by Ethan Dewitt in New Hampshire Bulletin on March 13, 2024.

In most other states, the costs of public K-12 education, community college and the public university system are typically supported by a state-wide pool of money I’ll call the “Educational Trust Fund” or ETF. The ETF is funded by state revenues pooled from a broad variety of enterprises, such as taxes and revenues from lotteries, liquor sales, rooms & meals, business taxes, taxes on private investment interest and dividends, etc. In my opinion, at the very least, New Hampshire’s existing “State-Wide Education Property Tax” (SWEPT) should be collected at a flat percentage rate of assessed property value across the state, pooled and then distributed equally across the state on a per-student basis, not just kicked back to the town that raised it.

For years, New Hampshire has shifted more than $2 billion of its constitutional obligation to pay for “an adequate education” onto one narrow source – local property taxes – while reducing the proportion paid by business profits tax and by wealthy investors. (To put this $2 billion for education in perspective, note that New Hampshire’s annual GDP is $82 billion.) Many of those tax-cut beneficiaries are politically active and help support political campaigns, which is their right. But don’t you agree that “lots of votes,” not “lots of dollars” should determine the outcome of local elections? If we want this problem fixed, we voters need to elect a majority of legislators who will promise to fix it.

Candidates, please write to The Beacon to explain your views on the topic of fair school funding. Voters, write your representative and demand that this unconstitutional system be replaced. Let Beacon readers know how they replied! Be sure to ask for every candidate’s views on how schools should be funded, and then get out and vote!