Last Updated: March 24, 2010

When No May Not Mean No –

Pending Education Law Could in Effect Remove Voters’ Input

• Adam Grohman
In the midst of a bleak financial outlook, school boards across New York State are digging in for a tough battle to determine their proposed budgets for the coming school year. With drastic statewide cuts in financial support and revenues, while requirements and mandates remain in effect, the costs of maintaining the status-quo and forecasting for costs for repairs, upkeep, and inflation, school boards are attempting to propose budgets that do not place a significant burden on taxpayers. As it currently stands, a school district’s board of education presents a proposed budget to voters and the voters cast their ballots. If the budget doesn’t “pass” the scrutiny of voters, the school board then proposes a secondary vote before the contingency budget takes effect. In recent years, the contingency budget, by New York State Law, was at a firm 0% which meant that taxpayers would not incur additional costs for their school district. But New York State Senators Suzi Oppenheimer (D, White Plains) and Craig Johnson (D, Nassau County) were successful on Friday, March 19th, in getting their education bill through the Senate, that, if enacted into law, may remove the public’s say in the matter. The bill, which was passed 56 to 2, will now be sponsored by Assemblywoman Amy Paulin at the Assembly level.
Buried at the end of the proposed legislation (A10030) is an interesting addition that would place a one-year moratorium on the practice of recent history regarding contingency or austerity budgets. The act, which “Establishes the Education Mandate Relief Act of 2010,” is summarized as “an act to amend the education law and the state finance law, in relation to increasing the transparency of the local impact of state policy-making.” According to the Education Mandate Relief Act of 2010, as it presently drafted, the following amendment would be added to Paragraph a of subdivision 4 of section 2023 of the current education law: “a. The contingency budget shall not result in a percentage increase in total spending over the district's total spending under the school district budget for the prior school year that exceeds the lesser of:(i) THE AVERAGE OF THE PREVIOUS FIVE YEARS OF the result obtained when one hundred twenty percent is multiplied by the percentage increase in the consumer price index, with the result rounded to two decimal places; or (ii) four percent.”
Current education law mandates that school districts, if their proposed budgets do not receive a passing vote from constituents on their proposed budgets, would be forced into a zero percent contingency budget. As previously reported a school district that is faced with a contingency or austerity budget would most likely be forced to make drastic cuts to personnel and services to remain financial solvent. If the Education Mandate Relief Act of 2010 passes the New York State Assembly and receives Governor Patterson’s signature, the law would permit school districts, even if their budgets receive a no-go from voters, to utilize a contingency budget which could result in a 4% increase. If passage of the Education Mandate Relief Act of 2010 becomes law, the current practice of a zero contingency budget as a last resort for voters, may be for the duration of the effect of the law (it would expire in May 2011), a thing of the past and will leave the voters, even if they vote “no” on proposed budgets, without a voice in the matter.

 

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