LePage Refuses To Say Whether He'll Continue To Fully Fund Public Education

By Dan Neumann, Maine Beacon:

During Thursday’s gubernatorial debate, Republican Paul LePage refused to say if he would continue to fully fund the state’s share of public education.

The debate moderator asked the former governor if he would commit to honor the state’s obligation to fund 55% of the cost of local education. The threshold was first mandated by Maine voters in a 2004 referendum to ease the burden on local property taxpayers. It passed again in a 2016 referendum.

Gov. Janet Mills was the first governor to meet the voter-mandated threshold in the 2021 budget.

LePage did not give a clear commitment, but instead equivocated and questioned how school administrators determine the cost of essential programs and services.

“Who sets up the 55% is what I don’t understand? Because in the eight years I was governor, that’s a moving target all the time. The state has no say in how it gets established,” he said.

The voter-mandated 55% state funding threshold was designed to increase tax fairness by shifting some of the cost of education from property taxpayers to state resources.

Property taxes are incredibly regressive, meaning they fall more heavily on the poor than on the rich. State funding, on the other hand, comes from a more progressive set of funding sources, including the income tax which can apply higher rates to the wealthy.

But during LePage’s two terms, local property taxes went up in Maine. This was in part owed to the fact that the former governor underfunded Maine’s share of the school budget by $1.3 billion over eight years, according to the Maine Center for Economic Policy.

Property taxes also went up because of LePage’s income tax cuts for the wealthy, which made it harder for the state to meet its fiscal obligations to communities.

By statute, the state is also required to share 5% of its tax revenue with towns and cities to help them provide services such as libraries, parks, public safety and road maintenance. The statute is designed to prevent towns from over-relying on regressive property taxes for those services.

But cuts to revenue sharing began in 2009 under former Democratic Gov. John Baldacci under a budget crunch during the economic recession and were further entrenched by LePage. Revenue sharing wasn’t fully restored until last year under Mills.

“We got revenue sharing back to 5%. He had taken it down to 2% and wanted to go to zero,” Mills said during the debate Thursday.

Mills closed the debate by hitting LePage on his financial management of the state. The Democrat referenced several statistics, such as that Maine had one of the slowest economic recoveries in New England after the Great Recession and that sales tax went up from 5% to 5.5% in 2013.

“Higher sales tax, higher property taxes, slow economic growth, denial of healthcare and underfunded schools. Do you want to go back?” she asked.

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