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TODAY!!! Senate Education will hear two really nasty bills, SB 297 and SB 298. The bills do the same thing, but 298 is a referendum that the governor cannot veto. There is a lot of that going at this legislature.
So what do these two bad bills do? They require school district mill levies and bond issues to be approved by at least 50% of registered voters. This would be an almost insurmountable barrier . . . sort of like the end of days thing. 50% registered voter turnouts nearly never happen.
I am taking the liberty to copy you an email I received today from Lance Melton, executive director at the Montana School Boards Association. We work closely with MTSBA at the legislature. Note the detailed school funding stuff Lance has to say about SBs 297 and 298.
Then, please email or call the Senate Education Committee. Urge them to table both SBs 297 and 298.
406 444 4800
https://leg.mt.gov/web-messaging/
Finally, thank you for helping us push though both HB 159 and HB 175. I do not remember another time in this union’s history when bills to fund both k-12 schools and the state and university employee pay plan have passed so easily so early.
ef
From: Lance Melton
To: MTSBA
Subject: 2019 Legislative Session - Two Bad Late-Introduced Bills - YOUR HELP IMMEDIATELY NEEDED
It's that time of the session. The deadline for introducing general bills is this Saturday, February 23, and the transmittal deadline for those bills is a week later on Saturday March 2. A flurry of activity is on the way between now and next week's transmittal deadline. It's the first "last call" of the session, both for good bills and for bad bills.
An example of a couple of bad bills popping at the last minute, on which we need your immediate help to defeatare a pair of identical bills by Senator Dee Brown that are intended to preempt passage of school levies and bond issues. These bills are both up for hearing in Senate Education tomorrow at 3 pm.
Senate Bill 297 (a bill, which is subject to the Governor's veto power) and Senate Bill 298 (a legislative referendum, which is not subject to the Governor's veto power and which will be placed on the ballot in the November 2020 general election if it passes), both make passage of all school levies contingent upon a 50% or better turnout. From what we know of school elections, this level of turnout is unlikely in most cases, so the bills are intended to effectively preempt passage of future voted school levies.
Key problems with this concept include:
Please take these bills seriously. They could both gain legs if we do not come out in immediate, strong opposition. You can do your part by sending a message to the members of the Senate Education Committee urging that they table both of these bills. Send the message now, as the hearings are up tomorrow at 3 pm and there is no time to waste.
Thanks
Lance Melton
Executive Director
Montana School Boards Association
So what do these two bad bills do? They require school district mill levies and bond issues to be approved by at least 50% of registered voters. This would be an almost insurmountable barrier . . . sort of like the end of days thing. 50% registered voter turnouts nearly never happen.
I am taking the liberty to copy you an email I received today from Lance Melton, executive director at the Montana School Boards Association. We work closely with MTSBA at the legislature. Note the detailed school funding stuff Lance has to say about SBs 297 and 298.
Then, please email or call the Senate Education Committee. Urge them to table both SBs 297 and 298.
406 444 4800
https://leg.mt.gov/web-messaging/
Finally, thank you for helping us push though both HB 159 and HB 175. I do not remember another time in this union’s history when bills to fund both k-12 schools and the state and university employee pay plan have passed so easily so early.
ef
From: Lance Melton
To: MTSBA
Subject: 2019 Legislative Session - Two Bad Late-Introduced Bills - YOUR HELP IMMEDIATELY NEEDED
It's that time of the session. The deadline for introducing general bills is this Saturday, February 23, and the transmittal deadline for those bills is a week later on Saturday March 2. A flurry of activity is on the way between now and next week's transmittal deadline. It's the first "last call" of the session, both for good bills and for bad bills.
An example of a couple of bad bills popping at the last minute, on which we need your immediate help to defeatare a pair of identical bills by Senator Dee Brown that are intended to preempt passage of school levies and bond issues. These bills are both up for hearing in Senate Education tomorrow at 3 pm.
Senate Bill 297 (a bill, which is subject to the Governor's veto power) and Senate Bill 298 (a legislative referendum, which is not subject to the Governor's veto power and which will be placed on the ballot in the November 2020 general election if it passes), both make passage of all school levies contingent upon a 50% or better turnout. From what we know of school elections, this level of turnout is unlikely in most cases, so the bills are intended to effectively preempt passage of future voted school levies.
Key problems with this concept include:
- The bills single out school elections for disadvantage, without any comparable turnout requirement for any other election, including county and city elections or even legislative primaries. If this same requirement were imposed for primary legislative races, we would have been without an elected legislature every year since 1992, the last time a primary election turnout exceeded 50%.
- The bill proposes to substitute the judgment of the legislature for the judgment of individual voters, by assuming that all those who do not vote in a school election are opposed to passage. This assumption flatly contradicts voter sentiment, which is strongly in favor of Montana's public schools and supportive of the kind of well-rounded education that can only be funded under our current formula with a combination of state and voter authorized funds. To put this in context, imagine what your district could do if it's budget were frozen at BASE levels. On a statewide basis, that would mean cuts of approximately $200 million per year, which would be our present reality (or close to it) if every past successful levy had been subject to a 50% turnout requirement.
- The bill incentivizes disengagement from participatory democracy and gives an unfair advantage to voters who are opposed to school levies, who can effectively cast their "no" vote by failing to participate, over those who support school levies, who will have to mobilize to prevail with not just a majority of those participating in the election but with a prerequisite majority of all eligible voters including those who stay home.
- The bill is anti-majoritarian, allowing 50% of the population (less than a majority) to defeat every future school election by simple inaction. If even half of those opposed to passage of school levies stay home, the bill effectively requires 2/3 passage of any future school election.
- Voted elections are an integrated and necessary part of the funding formula and the increased failure rate of such elections under a 50% turnout threshold will undoubtedly create future constittuional problems for the Legislature with adequacy. Unless the state is planning to up its game and provide inflation on the entire formula, all the way to MAX, instead of only at BASE, this bill will send the state into another constitutional tailspin over their obligation to provide a basic system of free quality schools as defined in 20-9-309, MCA.
Please take these bills seriously. They could both gain legs if we do not come out in immediate, strong opposition. You can do your part by sending a message to the members of the Senate Education Committee urging that they table both of these bills. Send the message now, as the hearings are up tomorrow at 3 pm and there is no time to waste.
Thanks
Lance Melton
Executive Director
Montana School Boards Association
