Neal Kurk’s Assault on the Truth - Granite Grok

Neal Kurk’s Assault on the Truth

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To understand why Representative Kurk is #FullofSchiff, we need to understand how SB 193 works.  From a prior post:

The bill provides that an “eligible student” can receive a grant from the State equal to 95 percent of the per-pupil funding the State provides to municipalities to pay for the cost of an “adequate education” (currently $3,636.00) in order to fund an “education freedom savings account.” The account must be opened through an approved scholarship organization and the funding can be used to pay only for “qualifying educational expenses.”

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From New Hampshire Public Radio, following the House vote:

School choice has long been a priority for conservatives. But despite the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the chamber voted 170-159 to send the bill to interim study, effectively ending the bill’s chances for this session.

Republicans who joined Democrats in voting against the bill seemed mostly concerned with the potential impact on local property taxes.

Republican House Finance Chairman Neal Kurk said while he supports school choice in general, he couldn’t support SB 193 because of the way he says it would have downshifted costs to local property taxpayers.

“Local property taxpayers are going to have to raise additional tax dollars to offset the loss of state revenue,” said Kurk. “Do we really want to make things worse for local property taxpayers? I think not.”

But we have been told since the Legislature passed its first post-Claremont education funding formula in 1999 that the “cost of an adequate education” in a school district is directly related to the number of students attending public school in the district.

If that is true, then the “cost of an adequate education” would go down every time a student leaves the public schools via SB 193.  And what’s more the school district still receives five percent of the cost of an adequate education for the departed student, so there is actually a windfall to the school district.

So based on the rationale the legislature uses to calculate how much State funding is to be provided to school districts, there is no downshifting.  The school district actually ends up with surplus funding that it could use to cut local property taxes.

To cut to the chase, either Neal Kurk has been #FullofSchiff in claiming since 1999 that the “cost of an adequate education” depends precisely upon the number of students attending public school in the district or Captain Kurk is #FullofSchiff now when he claims that the “cost of an adequate education” for a school district does NOT go down when a student leaves the public schools.

What’s more, even if we assume that the “cost of an adequate education” for a school district does NOT go down when a student leaves the public schools (that is, if we assume that the legislature’s education funding formula is a chimera, which it is), Captain Kurk is still #FullofSchiff in claiming that SB 193 will require local property taxes to go up.

According to the New Hampshire Department of Education, we spent all told approximately $3 BILLION on public education in 2016-2017.  The version of SB 193 passed by the State Senate is projected to cost $141 million over eleven years, or about an average of $13 million a year.

The average cost of $13 million a year is .004 of the total spent on public education.  That is a rounding error.

Put another way, the property tax base per the Department of Education is approximately $173 billion.  To raise $13 million to offset the loss of funding through SB 193 would mean raising the average tax rate by .00007514.   That is a rounding error on a rounding error.

Of course, there is no need to raise local taxes at all to offset funding lost through SB 193.  Even the most mediocre administrator would be able to get by with 99.996 percent.

In sum, Captain Kurk’s claim that SB 193 would “downshift” costs to local taxpayers is thoroughly bogus.  He undeniably is using “downshifting” as a pretext to oppose school choice.

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