This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Almost eight years after voters split Jordan School District, we're still dealing with the fallout. A Salt Lake County-wide system to equalize spending after the breakup is ending, and that is producing new fallout of its own.
While the five school districts in the county hash out a solution, two points have become apparent:
1) The way to ease the pain of shifting funds is to give everyone a raise. By lifting all boats, the shifts are easier to absorb.
2) Utahns have to be more honest with themselves about how government pays for things. Specifically, too many Utah leaders encourage the idea that no government entity needs more money. As a result, school boards are more willing to cut their services — and limit our children — than ask their constituents for more tax money.
To the first point, the Utah Legislature had a solution last session in Senate Bill 255, which would have allowed school districts to "freeze" their property tax rates so they bring in more money as property values rise. Currently, the districts have to hold "truth in taxation" hearings if they don't cut tax rates to keep total tax revenue constant, and few districts are willing to do that.
SB255 failed even though it was essentially an acknowledgment that Utahns aren't ready to accept the second point. Rather than make districts face a transparent process to make sure taxpayers know what to expect, the bill would have changed the law to allow tax revenue to grow without a truth-in-taxation process.
Back to that county-wide equalization. It was created to help Jordan School District cope with the loss of its better-funded eastern half, which became Canyons School District. The other districts had to send money to Jordan. But that extra money meant that Jordan had to cut its own tax rates to keep from triggering a truth-in-taxation process.
In other words, the other districts weren't sending more money to Jordan's schools. They were giving Jordan's property owners a tax cut because the Jordan School Board didn't want to hold hearings to keep taxes at the same rate.
To be sure, any proposal to increase tax revenue — at any level of government — will be met with complaints. But if elected representatives do their job in explaining why a legitimate increase is needed, the complainers won't be a majority. After years of a starve-the-beast approach to public school funding, Utahns recognize where they sit. Polls show they are willing to spend more on schools if they're convinced they'll get more in return.
For reasons that have nothing to do with equalization, this tax-increase talk is not going away. The Our Schools Now people plan on using those poll numbers to gather signatures on a petition to force a November 2018 vote on a $750 million income tax increase for schools. Legislators can't just stand pat on no tax increases in the 2018 legislative session as they have in the past. They can't just spout their anti-tax rhetoric, or they'll lose control of the process.
We need more money for our schools, and we need to be adults about how we'll pay for it.