[Local-Maine-Schools] Friday, January 11: Education Committee amends LD 1932

[Brian Hubbell]

On Friday, the Education Committee devoted itself to reconsideration of LD 1932.

While the content of LD 1932 originated from the Department of
Education, it is now a vehicle with somewhat broader scope.
Significantly, under the sponsorship of Committee Chair Peter Bowman,
it is a Senate Bill and still retains its designation as emergency
legislation.

Emergency laws are implemented more quickly -- a key attribute, as the
intent here is to revise the stalled reorganization process -- but
enactment also requires a two-thirds vote in both House and Senate.

Through amendments in Friday's work session, the Committee separated
its earlier decisions regarding implementation of the new cost-center
budget formats from the proposed delay in requiring referenda to
validate the budgets that unreorganized existing districts are already
developing for 2008-09.

Now under the Committee's version of LD 1932, all budgets will use the
new format, but the requirement for additional district-wide votes is
postponed for a year so it will apply for the first time only to the
initial RSU budgets.

Although discussion clarifying this required some complicated turns,
this was essentially an expected outcome.  It preserves the
requirement for 'transparency' which is held to be broadly important
but it also recognizes that the current district are in turmoil and
can not responsibly be expected right now to overlay a brand new
budget approval process along with its extra expenses and
informational burden to the voters.

More significantly, the Committee, by a 7-4 vote, amended LD1932 to
include Senator Mills' draft which outlines the 'core functions'
reserved as authorities of regional boards exclusive of any
established local boards.  Here, Senator Mills is modeling his
approach after the 10th amendment to the Constitution which reserves
States' rights by making them entire, except for those explicitly
delegated to the Federal level.

While debate about this in the Committee was not prolonged, it was
forceful and the approach seemed convincingly to carry the central
swath of the Committee's will.

>From there, the Committee amended LD1932 to allow the possibility that
units finding themselves in 'doughnut holes' of fewer than 1200 may be
allowed to escape penalties by receiving waivers from the Department.
Under the current law, other than the island and tribal school
exceptions, the Commissioner may not allow RSUs of fewer than 1200
students.

There was also a house-keeping amendment that allows RSUs to take on
debt that existing districts incur in the interim after 2008 but
before the latest operation date of 2009

The last amendment agreed in principal to embody in the law the
language Drummond Woodsum has been suggesting that RPCs include in
their plans to cover a missing provision for the initial election of
RSU boards.

The final Committee vote on LD1932 as amended was 9-1 in favor.

The dissenting vote was Representative Edgecomb whose minority report
will include the entirety of the majority report but also add in the
option of Union School Associations.

The Committee will reconvene on Tuesday at 1:00PM to consider the
final language derived from the above amendments.