Luna’s Wrong on Easing Taxpayer Protections

I like Superintendent Tom Luna, but I think he’s absolutely got it wrong on his goal of lowering the bar for passing school bonds:

State Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna says he’s always been an advocate of lowering the supermajority to pass school bonds, while also reducing the number of possible dates when bond elections can be held. The successful legislation this year to consolidate elections, which will reduce school bond votes to only four dates starting in 2011, just did half of that – and would therefore, on its own, make it tougher for Idaho school districts to build new schools. “I think you’ve raised the bar considerably,” Luna told Eye on Boise. “And I don’t think that was necessarily the intent of all of those who supported election consolidation – it sure wasn’t my expectation that we would stop with just election consolidation.”

Luna, who will propose a constitutional amendment to lawmakers in January to lower the supermajority from two-thirds to 60 percent, said, “I think it’s still a high bar the districts need to get over in order to pass local bonds and levies.” Election consolidation means “you’re going to see a lot more people show up at the polls,” he said. “I’m not predicting that it will mean that districts will have an easier time. Quite frankly, with more, quite possibly with seven or eight times more people showing up at the polls, 60 percent is still going to be a high bar to get over.”

There’s a big problem with Luna’s argument that election consolidation is going to make it exponentially harder to pass School levies. Let’s take an average two year period. In that two years, under election consolidation, we will have a total of eight election dates available. Among those, eight dates, four will explicitly exist for school bond elections (March and August of both years.) These elections are not going to draw 7 or 8 times the number of voters as current bond elections, maybe twice as much, but when practically no one shows up for school bond elections, you’re talking about going from 3-4% turnout to 8%. In addition to these four low turnout elections, because there’s no actual primary in May of odd numbered years, that election will also get very little turnout.

The problem conceptually with what Luna is proposing is that we’re not talking about just easing the requirements for November elections, but for a lot of elections that are still going to have lower voter turnout.  And unless there is a real emergency, a school district would have to be very foolish to call for an election in November or in May of an even numbered year when they have other dates that will work far less turnout.

Beyond that, I feel very strongly that we should not be in the business of making it easier to take on debt and raise taxes. Anytime one of these bond issues comes up, the backers of the bond have a built in advantage. There’s an organized effort behind the bond and rarely is there an organized effort against it.  If we’re going to pass long term debt, we need to set a high bar to do that for the long-term good of our state. Voters are not hard-hearted, particularly in regards to schools, and if the need is legitimate, the school will get the bond, particularly if they use any of the five guaranteed low turnout dates that are available in a two year period.

For my part, any vote on easing taxpayer protections will go on the Idaho Conservative Scorecard.