Final Plank of Compromised Blue Ribbon Plan Headed for Governor; Time for Tax Reform?

The final component of the Governor’s Blue Ribbon teacher pay raise plan is on the way to his desk. The Senate yesterday concurred with the House amendments to Senate Bill 131, the new K-12 funding formula that is supposed to translate the new half-penny sales tax that kicks in June 1 into competitive teacher salaries.

Concerns that the House amendments pare those pay raises down below the minimum that the Blue Ribbon K-12 panel recommended forged a brief coalition of education-boosting Democrats and plan-hating Republicans on the Senate floor yesterday. Senate Minority Leader Billie Sutton (D-21/Burke), who served on the Blue Ribbon panel last year, noted that the House amendments were not among the Blue Ribbon panel’s recommendations and needed review by a conference committee. Senator Sutton’s motion to send SB 131 to conference committee drew votes from the eight Senate Democrats—Bradford, Buhl O’Donnell Frerichs, Heinert, Hunhoff, Parsley, Peterson, and Sutton—as well as seven red-clawed Republican resistors—Greenfield, Haggar, Holien, Jensen, Olson, Omdahl, and Van Gerpen—plus David Novstrup for some squishy middle flavor. But 19 midway Republicans quashed Sutton’s motion and cleared the way for 25–10 concurrence with the House amendments.

Imperfect funding formula SB 131 joins imperfect funding mechanism HB 1182 on the Governor’s desk. I don’t like SB 131’s failure to fully fund the Blue Ribbon recommendations any more than I like the Governor’s uncreative reliance on regressive taxes for that compromised funding. But my arch-conservative neighbor and fellow public thinker Art Marmorstein writes that, for all its flaws, that funding bill is better than nothing:

Short term, HB 1182 does more good than harm. It makes our tax system only very slightly more regressive and, in many ways, it’s the poorest South Dakotans who will benefit most from the school improvement that enhanced teacher salaries will probably bring [Dr. Art Marmorstein, “SD Missed Opportunity for Tax Reform,” Aberdeen American News, 2016.03.10].

Like me, Marmorstein wishes the Legislature had reached for a bigger pie, though his pie in the sky is not fiscal, but political:

But we just missed a great opportunity. In addition to better teacher salaries, we might have had comprehensive tax reform. We might have eliminated the sales tax on food, a particularly regressive tax. And, just maybe, we could have eliminated forever the myth that we can’t fund education adequately without video lottery. It’s the most regressive and immoral of all state taxes and a tax that, in view of its social costs, turns out to be a horribly inefficient way of funding government [Marmorstein, 2016.03.10].

Get rid of the food tax and video lottery? Those sound like noble goals toward progressive taxation. Alas, our current Republican-dominated Legislature lacks the vision and guts to take on more than one great challenge at a time… and even concentrating its attention this Session on the one great challenge of paying our teachers what they are worth, our Legislators have fallen short.

But I am encouraged to find that I can find common ground with a conservative like Marmorstein. This year’s debate on teacher pay has emphasized the fact that South Dakota needs tax reform. And to get tax reform, we’re going to need a new crop of Legislators who can see their way to bolder action than has come from the 2016 Session.