Snyder Misusing Education Funds
One of the architects of the 1994 Proposal A school finance reform has come out strongly against the changes to school funding that Governor Rick Snyder has proposed, saying the proposal is a misuse of school funds and probably illegal.
Former Rep. Glenn Oxender, who was a Republican representative from Sturgis for 16 years in the 1980s and 1990s, also said the proposal will wreck Michigan's higher education and community college system along with K-12 schools because it will make those schools dependent on the School Aid Fund.
There was no question that the School Aid Fund was to be used solely for K-12 education when the Proposal A school funding changes were made in 1994, Mr. Oxender said.
Mr. Oxender made that point in a guest column that has appeared in the Detroit Free Press, the Traverse City Record-Eagle and other papers across the state. He reiterated it strongly in an interview with Gongwer News Service.
Mr. Snyder proposed, and so far the Legislature is acting on that proposal, to combine K-12, higher education and community colleges all into one budget using School Aid Fund revenue as a basis for all three educational institutions. In so doing, he has also called for significant cuts to K-12 and higher education. He did not call for cuts to the community college system, but both the Senate and House have so far made cuts to those schools.
In his column, Mr. Oxender wrote: "Michigan's Proposal A was a national model for K-12 funding. The governor's proposal will ruin the fund's ability to stabilize K-12 funding in economic downturns. If this Legislature passes the proposal, then the promise and precedent of Proposal A will be broken forever. Lawmakers who consent to such a change would be misappropriating the fund's public money, which may be an infraction of the public trust we place in them as elected officeholders."
He also said the school aid bill passed in 1994 and in years since has included a formula for determining the next year's pupil foundation. Including that formula makes no sense if the School Aid Fund was not intended to be used just for K-12.
"I don't think anybody who worked on Proposal A thought the School Aid Fund should go to higher education," Mr. Oxender said.
"The cut to schools is illegal," Mr. Oxender said. "I think the governor is using these funds inappropriately."
And while Mr. Oxender agreed changes needed to be made to the Michigan Business Tax, he did not support eliminating the tax. Doing so creates too large a revenue gap for the state to make up, and he did not think any job growth from eliminating the tax would make up for the revenue loss.
Mr. Oxender, who served as president of Glen Oaks Community College after leaving the Legislature, said he had made a number of these points in writing to Mr. Snyder, but has not heard back from him. "His mind is made up. He doesn't need the facts," he said.
But he has also talked with a number of members of the Legislature about Mr. Snyder's proposal and expressed his opposition.
The state's first priority is to provide a good education through high school, Mr. Oxender said. Its second priority is to provide good university and community college education, the reason those schools need general funds to help keep tuition rates affordable, he said.
Mr. Snyder has said schools could make up for the cut by making some changes to their management, especially having school employees pay a greater share of health care benefits.
Mr. Oxender said that would not really take care of the cut to schools, and ignores the fact that under Proposal A, those school cuts should not made at all.
A spokesperson for Mr. Snyder could not be reached.
While he disagreed with eliminating the MBT, saying he leaves far too big a revenue hole, Mr. Oxender said there would be ways to make up that revenue loss.
Among those would be a sales tax on services. Sales taxes do not hurt business development, he said, and the fact the public has been opposed to such a tax at this point simply points to the need to provide leadership to win its approval.
"If we don't educate and keep income up then the state will suffer," Mr. Oxender said.
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