[Local-Maine-Schools] Gloria Gaynor and 'Ding an Sich' (Education Committee hearing on "Bucket Bills" )

[Brian Hubbell]

Maybe it was the snowstorm, maybe it was the overshadowing drama of LD 1932,
and maybe it's just weariness and confusion taking their predictable toll --
but, whatever the cause, attendance was sparse at Tuesday's public hearing
on the Education Committee's bills to patch the school reorganization law.

Showing praiseworthy perseverance if nothing else, the Education Committee
presses on with its task of consolidating the vast collection of often
mismatched requests provided by fellow legislators at the beginning of this
session and reconciling them within one or two additional committee bills in
the hopes of making workable a machine that's become virtually too
complicated for any single authority to represent.

With a quick Google search from the bleacher seats confirming the artistic
source as Gloria Gaynor, Senator Bowman boldly headed the process diagram on
the Committee's white board with the statement: "We will survive".

Appropriately then, endurance, if not blind stubbornness, was the one sure
ticket to the afternoon's hearing and work session.

So, regarding the two Committee vehicles, the presumably easier "Bucket A" LR
3490 <http://mdischools.net/20080209_LR3490.htm>  and the presumably
slightly more controversial "Bucket B" of LR
3491<http://mdischools.net/20080209_LR3491.htm>,
the Committee received the following testimony:

Geoff Herman from MMA recommended adding an emergency preamble, pointing out
that if these changes aren't enacted immediately, they'll do little to
effect improvements to the present state of things.

Herman proposed two alternatives to the Committee for language ensuring
that, in the event that a budget referendum fails, municipalities could
still commit their taxes based on either the last "submitted" budget or the
last "approved" budget.

Herman also reminded the Committee that the ten week period of extension of
the final reorganization deadline from November 2008 until January 2009 had
already been exceeded by the current delay for legislative reconsideration
and so that "the regulated community" would not consider that as having
provided any substantial relief.

Last, Herman recommended moving the provision for making the penalties for
non-compliance more specifically calculable from its present place in LR
3491 to LR 3490 under the assumption that the latter is significantly more
likely to pass than the former.

Representing the Maine Association of Independent Schools, Robert Howe
testified in favor of the sections regarding tuition.

Jim Rier, looking at least as weary as anyone else in the room, testified in
agreement with many of Herman's points, most specifically about adding an
emergency preamble for any Committee bill.

Steve Bowen brought a bit of pepper to the hearing, strongly opposing the
sections that allow charter municipalities and districts whose budgets are
only moderately over EPS to forgo budget validating referenda.  Bowen
suggests that this potentially disenfranchises over a third of the state's
voters.  He also hypothesized that budget referenda could be used by voters
as a tool to increase budgets in districts where overly-miserly boards
under-spend EPS -- a suggestion that raised a few eyebrows.

Representing the Maine School Boards Association, Kristin Malin asked the
Committee to consider using the bill to create a task force to review
options and to critique information more objectively than the Department of
Education.  Malin also asked the Committee to support more reorganization
options "such as provided by the Damon amendment."

In both the hearing and immediately subsequent work session, Representative
Finch was concerned about whether or not larger,  non-reorganized SADs with
alternative plans, such as those in his district, could still operate as
SADs without having to go through legally reconstituting themselves,
repainting their buses, ordering new stationary, and re-naming their sports
teams.

This interested Representative Makas too, albeit in a more epistemological
way.  Is there any essential difference between municipal schools and other
combinations of reorganized districts that requires referring to each
specifically under the law, she wondered, or can we just call them all
'districts' as we previously have and have them all implicitly subject to
the same general provisions of law?

Several sets of eyes turned hopefully to Rier to answer this.  But Rier
didn't seem inclined to tackle that one.

In straw votes in the work session, the Committee:

   - Agreed to include an emergency preamble
   - Adopted MMA's suggestion for clarifying the language about the
   14-day period between budget approval and validation
   - Extended the deadline for reorganization referendum from January 15,
   2009 to January 30, 2009.
   - Took no action on creating a special task force to examine problems
   in the law.
   - Conveyed to their policy analyst that it was the Committee's
   intention to have provisions of the law apply to all school administrative
   units, not just the new form of RSUs.
   - Adopted MMA's suggestion for language allowing municipalities where
   validation failed to commit taxes based upon the last approved budget.
   - Moved the language containing the specific terms of penalties for
   non-compliance from LR 1931 to LD 1930.

Then the discussion returned to Representative Finch's concern about whether
large SADs had to legally reconstitute as RSUs, whether they could be
considered as RSUs that were just named -- say -- SAD 49, or whether they
could just plain remain in operation as SAD 49.

I'm afraid I had to leave at this point, but the Committee is scheduled to
resume in work session on these items today, even though the Legislature's
House and Senate sessions are canceled on account of the weather.
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