It is time for the Robin Hood school finance system to go. It takes over $1 billion in property taxes from some school districts and redistributes them to so-called property poor districts. It is an extraordinarily complicated and manifestly unfair way to provide additional funding to poorer districts. Moreover, it is a statewide property tax which is prohibited by the Texas Constitution. In his ruling on public school finance, Judge Dietz may have overreached on some issues. But, he is clearly correct when he ruled that it imposes a defacto state property tax. A better way to address the problems facing property-poor districts would be to dedicate a modest increase in the state sales tax to funding for those districts instead of double taxation on property taxes on certain school districts. The current top elected officials in Texas (Rick Perry, David Dewhurst, and Greg Abbott) opposed Robin Hood when Gov. Ann Richards sought to impose it through a constitutional amendment. (We defeated it by a 2 to 1 margin). So, she did it legislatively. But our elected officials have left that flawed system in place for too long. Lets get all of the affected parties together and come up with a common sense approach to funding public education in Texas.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 12:51:36 +0000
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