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Restore school funding before TABOR refunds?

Local school boards support resolution

The Ignacio and Bayfield School Boards have approved a resolution calling for the state to restore the money withheld from school districts over the past several years before giving any refunds of "excess" revenue under the Taxpayers Bill of Rights Amendment, known as TABOR.

The Ignacio board approved the resolution on Feb. 12, and the Bayfield board approved it on Feb. 24.

According to figures from the Colorado School Finance Project, three years of take-backs totalled $2.93 million from Ignacio, $4.74 million from Bayfield, and $16.36 million from Durango. Those are for the 2011-12 school year through 2013-14.

It's still happening. Bayfield District Finance Director Amy Lyons reported that the take-back this school year is expected to be $1.4 million. She has that set aside in the current budget. "We could be doing a lot with that money," she said.

For Ignacio, it's around $881,000 as of January, but the number from the state changes slightly each month, according to Marie Horn, the district's finance director.

Bayfield Superintendent Troy Zabel said the resolution was developed by the state superintendents' organization. The state TABOR Amendment is a big part of this, he said.

Voters passed the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights Amendment in 1992, requiring refunds of government revenue increases above a certain amount from year to year. The state could be in that situation this year or next.

But in 2000, voters passed Amendment 23, dictating increased school funding. It requires a base per-pupil funding plus yearly increases for growth plus inflation.

The resolution approved by the boards says Amendment 23 was passed by voters just as TABOR was, and must be complied with. But in the state's 2010-11 budget year, the resolution says the legislature added a "negative factor" to school funding that resulted in the $1 billion per year shortfall that districts want restored.

The negative factor violates the voter intent of passing Amendment 23, the resolution says.

With the expectation of TABOR refunds, the resolution urges legislators, the governor and state treasurer "to honor the intent and language of Amendment 23 by prioritizing the reduction of the Negative Factor ahead of any TABOR refunds and to leave decisions regarding how those funds returned to school districts are spent to locally elected school boards."

It's money the state owes to school districts, Ignacio board president Toby Roderick said.

One year ago, area school officials met in Durango to organize to get the state to repay that money. Presenter Paula Stephenson from the Colorado Rural Schools Caucus said, "Frustration is palpable in the state. The promise of the last four years (from the state) was when the economy starts to recover, you'll get some money back. The tide has been rising for two years, and the cuts are continuing. It's not sustainable. We aren't backing down. It's time to address this issue."

The cuts happened at the same time the legislature was imposing new unfunded reform mandates on schools, she and fellow presenter, attorney Kathy Gebhardt, said.

Gebhardt said Amendment 23 was a response to TABOR mandates to refund excess revenue at the same time that school funding was being cut. It was an attempt to get back to 1988 school funding levels, she said.

Stephenson said the state had a $1 billion budget surplus that could be used to pay down the negative factor, not counting taxes coming from new recreational marijuana sales.

Last year the districts wanted legislators to restore $275 million of funding take-backs on top of current funding, with no strings attached to how local districts could spend the money. There were concerns that districts would be required to use the money in ways that didn't make sense for them.

Last spring the legislature approved around $110 million of pay-down on the negative factor.

At last Saturday's Legislative Lowdown sponsored by the League of Women Voters, State Rep. J. Paul Brown reported that a bill to use state general fund surpluses to pay down the negative factor was killed in committee.