Schoolchildren Victimized as State Feeds Off County Funds : Education: Budget process lets laws slip into existence without proper public hearings but with widespread effects that only a few realized.

The added financial problem that school districts in Orange County, as well as others throughout the state, now face goes back to the closing hours of the last legislative session. The rhetoric in the Assembly chamber in the final hours of the state budget debate was angry, frustrated, personal and very partisan. Public policy implications were for the most part lost, and the budget package was clearly a “get me through the night” document that few expect to hold up longer than six months.

Yet one statement made by Phil Isenberg (D-Sacramento), during the most rancorous exchanges, stood out as the best description of this budget and its disastrous effects on local government. Isenberg was addressing his Republican colleagues across the aisle when he said: “Face it, the 1980s are over. Your slogans don’t work anymore, and neither do ours.”

Those slogans, used on both sides of the aisle, have resulted in state budget gimmickry that makes a mockery out of funding local government and basic human services.

As a prime example of how badly the budget process has broken down, consider the passage of Senate Bill 2557 (Sen. Ken Maddy, R-Fresno). This new law pits underfunded county services against underfunded school services by authorizing county government to charge school districts for the collection of property taxes in lieu of the state fully funding state mandated services administered by counties.

In essence, the state has forced county government to put its hand into the school pocket if it is to have any semblance of a balanced budget.

As the weeks went on beyond the constitutional deadline for the Legislature to complete the state budget, the battle centered upon attempts to suspend the funding provisions for schools under Proposition 98, the 1988 constitutional amendment guaranteeing a minimum base level of funding for education.

When at last it became apparent that there were insufficient votes to balance the budget on the backs of our schoolchildren, the leadership of the Assembly and Senate and the governor stopped posturing and got down to dealing.

Out of their closed-door meetings, an agreement was finally reached. But the leadership package of revenues and program cuts required numerous pieces of legislation to be enacted.

Within hours, language was developed, bills were amended, analyses were written and the vote was taken. Buried in that package of bills that had been gutted, rewritten and never subject to public hearing was SB 2557.

The analysis of the bill (which is all that even the speediest of readers could have read in the crush of those last moments) mentioned nothing about public schools. In fact, one floor analysis’s only reference to the property tax collection fee was “and makes various allowances and requirements for counties to recover costs.” The major description of SB 2557 referenced an authorization for counties to charge booking fees to other local jurisdictions.

Most legislators could not know the full impact of SB 2557 on schools as they were acting in haste upon inaccurate information provided by the leaders who concocted the deal. But it was clear to the governor and to the legislative leadership what they were doing. While slashing support for California’s 58 counties to below the bone and taking that money for their own budget priorities, they were purposely making up the difference by forcing counties to take more than $100 million from schools statewide.

The schools can ill afford this back-door thievery.

While the Proposition 98 guarantee generated a 4.76% cost-of-living adjustment for education, the governor unilaterally hacked that amount down to 3%. When compared to the 5.2% cost-of-living adjustment needed just to stay even with prior year costs, schools suffered a 2.2% loss in the budget appropriations. The property tax collection fees further reduce the money for education locally by an additional 1.25% to 1.50%, leaving schools with about a 1.5% increase to stretch against 5.2% in costs. And that is without a pay raise for anyone.

In Orange County, these fees mean real reductions of dollars to school budgets.

Ranging from $11 to $46 per student, the total reduction in education funding in the county for our K-12 districts amounts to more than $7 million. As a sampling: Garden Grove Unified School District’s bill for property tax collection fees will exceed $400,000; Santa Ana Unified School District will pay $560,000; Capistrano Unified School District will need to pony up more than $680,000 and Newport-Mesa Unified School District will be hit with a tab of more than $670,000. With an approximate average cost of $50,000 to operate one classroom for one year, the $7 million translates into 140 classrooms--or the cost of educating 4,200 students.

Worse than the monetary bottom lines for both counties and schools is the incredible and unsound budget precedent set by the state. Without public review of any kind, the state took money from one local government entity in order to avoid dealing with its own conspicuous consumption, yet it left in place the state mandates to provide the services that those dollars were meant to fund.

While the state fed off of the county funds, they told counties not to worry as counties were now authorized to feed off of school budgets in order to recover the money the state failed to supply. The problem for schools is that they are the end of the food chain. The ones who are fed off of ultimately are the children.

It is interesting to note that counties also collect property taxes for the state, yet no one authorized the counties to collect fees from the state for performing the same service that is now chargeable to school districts.

As budget crises continue throughout the year, it will be important for the public to know that schools are not to blame and counties are not to blame. In fact, this is not even an issue between schools and counties, though some will characterize it as such.

The blame for the feeding frenzy on local government budgets falls squarely on the Legislature and its fondness for passing laws without providing the needed resources. When counties and schools line up in bankruptcy court, which they are starting to do, the line will really begin and end on the steps of the Capitol. Until the slogans end and the policy discussions begin, California will continue to have a fatally flawed budget process that fails to address the real service needs of our state.