Amy and I took a few days of vacation to be with our grandchildren in Denver so this post is a bit limited although this will be an eventful week in the course of the Rand school funding litigation.
First, now that it is much better, we figured out what was plaguing the Denver TSA system causing hours of delay at security.
We’re pretty sure it was this fella.
A spring storm crimped our plans to bicycle…
…but we made it to the Denver Zoo on Saturday.
The 26 Coalition Communities appealed Judge Ruoff’s SWEPT ruling that the tax is unconstitutional because it gives these communities a preferential tax rate. They demand their special treatment continue through the appeal and moved to stay Ruoff’s order even though the order doesn’t affect anyone’s tax rates until the December 2024 tax bills. (Property tax years begin on April 1st. July bills are calculated at half the preceding bill. True-ups don’t happen until the December bills.) For us, the motion to stay Judge Ruoff’s order is our first opportunity to begin to educate the justices about the issues in the case. No pun intended.
NH has 221 towns and 13 cities. We objected to the stay pointing out that the vast majority of the the taxpayers in these cities and towns pay the full SWEPT and don’t get automatic rebates (or “kickbacks”). The state’s ten largest cities and towns are not part of the Coalition. One might wonder why legislators from non-Coalition towns accept campaign contributions from the Coalition but that’s fodder for another post.
Tax rates must be uniform across the state and it is the effective tax rates that determine uniformity; that is, after any across-the-board rebates. Governor Shaheen’s ABC plan was found unconstitutional in 1998 because it gave automatic rebates to taxpayers in many of these same towns.
None of the Coalition Communities are school districts or SAUs and the four affidavits submitted by the Coalition Communities are all from town administrators who don’t oversee school budgets. Their complaint is that applying the rules will cause havoc with their projects to improve sewers, roads and bridges. Not one of their “disrupted” projects is part of a school budget. That’s right, according to their affidavits, the members of the Coalition Communities divert excess school adequacy money to pay for municipal needs, something the overwhelming majority of communities in the state cannot do.
We also moved to excuse two Justices from hearing our appeal.
Associate Justice Donovan was part of the Attorney General’s team that defended the state against us in the Claremont case and then, as a private lawyer, came back a few years later to defend the Speaker and Senate President in the Londonderry school funding case. Chief Justice MacDonald was the Attorney General during the first few years of the ConVal case which has significant overlapping issues with ours and I was a part of the Executive Council that rejected his first nomination to the Supreme Court.
Finally, in Superior Court, we have asked Judge Ruoff to apply the ConVal ruling that $4100 is insufficient to pay for adequacy to our case. The hearing on that motion is March 22nd. We assume the state will appeal the ruling and the Supreme Court will hear this issue in one appeal involving the ConVal and Rand parties.
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This should infuriate everyone who is either on the side of justice or who isn't a beneficiary of these unfair school funding schemes. At the same time, I suspect more of my neighbors worry about a British Royal's malignancy than worry about the unequal and unjust funding of schools. While the legal fight is how this will change in the short to medium term, it's culture and narrative that needs to change in the long term. How does one explain to ordinary people that they're getting screwed, but even worse, their progeny are as well.
Enjoy your vacation and your growing family. I love keeping touch with you this way.
love to all,
Fran and Fred