http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/11/29/arkansas-supreme-court-strikes-blow-to-equitable-school-funding Comments On: Ark. Supreme Court strikes blow to equitable school funding by Lindsey Millar en-us Copyright 2013 Arkansas Times. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, Arkansas Times readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact Arkansas Times. robert@arktimes.com (Arkansas Times Webmaster) Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:01 -0500 Thu, 23 May 2013 13:15:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Posted by Goof]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 10:07:20 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Verla Sweere]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 01:58:28 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Goof]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:50:33 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by plainjim]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 16:05:21 -0600 Arkansas Times
That is not a mandate to the General Assembly to change the law. The majority is expressly stating it is up to the General Assembly on whether to make a change. Lakeview does not require it per the majority.
Posted by Sailing76]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:16:45 -0600 Arkansas Times
"ADE argues that such an interpretation would violate the constraints of our decisions
in the Lake View cases, but it is again mistaken. ADE claims that permitting the school
districts from which the excess revenues came to retain those revenues would result in wealth enhanced districts in violation of our Lake View decisions. But ADE sorely misconstrues our holdings in the Lake View line of cases."
* * *
"Indeed, allowing the School Districts to retain any URT revenues in excess of the
foundation-funding amount will result in some variations, but variations were clearly
contemplated and are explicitly permitted under the plain language of art. 14, § 3."
* * *
"And further, contrary to ADE’s claims, this court has made it abundantly clear that it is not concerned solely with whether revenues are doled out equally to the districts"
Posted by Sailing76]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:57:34 -0600 Arkansas Times
The fact that it may be difficult to simply change subsection (c), does not change the fact that it must be done. Neither I nor the ruling ignores the long history, but it's the law, not history that they were ruling on.

Legislators from the districts that benefit will be under no more pressure to block the fix, than they would already be under to remove the authority, if it had existed.

You are incorrect to say "there is no gun to force the general assembly to act." Lakeview still exists. So if they don't add the authorization to distribute money to "other schools," the money will have to come from the general revenue. That's a sizable gun if you ask me.
Posted by Kurt Sims]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:17:04 -0600 Arkansas Times
Arkansas Code
26-80-101 (b)(1)(B)
No portion of the revenues from the uniform rate of tax shall be retained by the state but shall be distributed back to the school district from which the revenues were received or to other school districts pursuant to subsection (c) of this section.
Posted by Kurt Sims]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:04:38 -0600 Arkansas Times
That's the part the majority ignored. Or other school district is the basis for the redistribution required to ensure equity.

The Court did not follow the law at all the portended the collection at state level was meaningless because they just return the exact amount of funds collected back to same district.

They don't that's why it's collected by state treasurer so total amount of funds can be distributed in a way to ensure adequacy and equity.
Posted by Hattie Caraway]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 12:19:32 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Verla Sweere]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:37:08 -0600 Arkansas Times
It will not be simple. The legislators who have school districts in their legislative district that benefit from this ruling will be under strong pressure to resist any change. Look back at the Lakeview history. The General Assembly only acted when the Supremes basically put a gun to their head. It is not popular to vote for tax redistribution and it is a hard sell to the folks back home for a legislator. Unlike the Lakeview scenario, there is now no gun to force the General Assembly to act.
Posted by Sailing76]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:02:52 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by I_AM_THE_NRA]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 07:52:31 -0600 Arkansas Times
The following is from the state constitution:

"The uniform rate of tax shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as other school property taxes, but the net revenues from the uniform rate of tax shall be remitted to the State Treasurer and distributed by the state to the school districts as provided by law."

And here's the law....

Arkansas Code
26-80-101 (b)(1)(B)
No portion of the revenues from the uniform rate of tax shall be retained by the state but shall be distributed back to the school district from which the revenues were received or to other school districts pursuant to subsection (c) of this section.

* * *

(c) For each school year, each county treasurer shall remit the net revenues from the uniform rate of tax to each local school district from which the revenues were derived.

---------------------------
While I don't like it, the SC is correct in their ruling. The state currently has no legal authority under subsection (c) to distribute the money to other school districts. While section (B) mentions an option to send the money to other schools, subsection (c) only states that revenues are to be remitted to the school districts from which they derived. It fails to authorize the distribution of the money to other schools. Somebody messed up big time when they wrote this part of the law.

This ruling does not undo the Lakeview case which requires Arkansas to provide an adequate education to all students, but NOT an equal one, unfortunately. Despite the ruling, the state must still provide poorer districts with additional funding to provide an adequate education, but until subsection (c) is changed, it is not authorized to get the funds from wealthier school districts. It would have to make up the difference entirely with general revenue.

I wonder though if the law is changed to allow the distribution of funds to other districts, if it might be challenged on constitutional grounds somehow. That might explain the strong reaction of the Chief Justice and other dissenters. As long as it would be constitutional, it would be very simple to change the law during the next session.
Posted by Kurt Sims]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 05:37:41 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by mrprincipal07]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:57:15 -0600 Arkansas Times
So in order for this 4-3 ruling to be reversed at least one of the four majority justices would have to admit they f**ked up today. I don't see much chance of that happening, but I hope I'm wrong.
Posted by Sound Policy]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:47:47 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Yellowdogdaughter]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:54:57 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by plainjim]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:54:25 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by plainjim]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:52:55 -0600 Arkansas Times




















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Posted by ozarkrazo]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:20:33 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Yellowdogdaughter]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:53:48 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by sleeping beauty]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:30:53 -0600 Arkansas Times
BUT even more devastating in the stupidity of the legal reasoning espoused by Danielson and the majority.

Brown's dissent covers it perfectly.

Danielson and the other clowns pretend to only address the "excess" in funding. But in the ruling they reject the idea that the mill is a state tax at all and reject any authority of the state to collect any of it much less to redistribute the funds to achieve the mandated EQUITY in Lake View.

They remove the basic tools that were reformed to reach adequacy and equity but say yeah lets keep the adequacy and equity stuff but we have no right to withhold any property taxes...

SO we go right back to the haves and have not system that created the Lake View crisis.

And they fail to recognize that any school district already has the constitutional authority to pass local taxes or ordinances to raise additional funds to supplement their school districts in addition to the the minimum standard IT JUST CANT BE from within the mandated 25 millage.

Its idiotic.

And wildly encourages future fuzzy math from individual school districts.

And a flood of legal challenges now that they have stripped the fundamental authority of the state agency to collect the tax.
Posted by Hattie Caraway]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:09:46 -0600 Arkansas Times I suspected Henry-Goodson was a Republican-in-waiting all along. I knew Baker was.

I'm still reading the decision. ..
Posted by eLwood]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:01:07 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by CenArkObserver]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:45:45 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by FullThrottle]]> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:38:57 -0600 Arkansas Times