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School board opposes state sales tax proposal

By MONROE ROARK
mroark@TheCitizen.com

Some Georgia legislators are looking at a plan that would eliminate property tax funding for public education and replace it with a statewide sales tax, but it’s not a popular idea with the Fayette County Board of Education.

Superintendent John DeCotis informed the board at Monday night’s regular meeting that the Georgia School Boards Association is encouraging all local boards across the state to oppose the proposal, which he said would call for a 3-cent sales tax all over Georgia.

DeCotis listed a few positives and many negatives to the plan as far as Fayette County is concerned, with the two biggest negatives for him and the board being a potentially severe loss of funding and the absence of local control.

As board member Greg Powers pointed out, there would be little if any need for a local school board at all.

The only major advantage DeCotis mentioned concerning the proposal was that funding would be equal per pupil across the state. While that would help some counties, it would be a detriment to Fayette, which allots more money than most systems to operate its school system. “Fayette would be an exporter” of funding, as one official put it.

DeCotis stressed that Fayette spends more money than some other systems to make it attractive for teachers to work here and for parents to relocate here. “If we don’t have the revenue, then we can’t have the programs,” he said.

Several board members said that while their constituents want an exceptional school system and are willing to pay for it, leveling the playing field statewide would strip citizens of their ability to have any impact on their local school systems.

As far as funding goes, Fayette owes money on two separate bond issues, one of which is not retired until 2025. There has been no indication from proponents of the sales tax plan how those payments would be addressed.

“We are indebted to these financial institutions,” said board member Janet Smola. “If the state took that funding source away, would it even be legal for them to do that?”

While future bond programs could be altered or prohibited under the sales tax proposal, the board members agreed that it would also be more difficult to pass a special purpose local option sales tax (SPLOST) for specific capital projects.

Ironically, as this proposal is being discussed, Fayette is reeling from continued cuts in state funding, DeCotis said. The county now gets 48 percent of its money from the state, as opposed to 60 percent two years ago, while there is virtually no change in what the state mandates concerning the programs the county is required to offer. “If they want us to do it, they need to give us the funds,” he said.

While the new proposal stressed the elimination of property tax funding, there is little mention of the fact that only the school portion of one’s property tax bill would disappear, a detail that board Chairman Terri Smith said is not often pointed out.

There is also the matter of senior citizen taxpayers. Many counties in Georgia, including Fayette, do not require property owners over the age of 65 to pay the school portion of their property taxes, DeCotis said, but if it were funded exclusively by sales tax, that distinction would not be made.

Gov. Sonny Perdue has a task force now looking at education funding in general, so the sales tax proposal is premature, DeCotis said. State School Superintendent Kathy Cox, a former Fayette teacher, is against the sales tax proposal, he added, while Perdue has not yet stated his preference as he awaits the findings of his task force.