[Local-Maine-Schools] Education Committee considers accepting base level cost-sharing

[Brian Hubbell]

The Education Committee is continuing to move through their list of
individual legislator's bill requests regarding reorganization.

Minutes ago, they just considered Representative Eaton's request,
which was to allow "RSU 7" (which at one time covered the Union
92/Ellsworth/Union 96 region) to develop cost-sharing agreements that
would cover the under-EPS amounts as well as the over-EPS amounts (the
latter being the only portion of cost-sharing proposed by LD 1932).

The Committee's analyst presented this as being related to
Representative Pingree's LR from last fall which served to hold a
place for MDI to modify or replace its own cost-sharing formula.

Perhaps as a result, the Committee was initially somewhat confused
about whether Eaton was representing MDI or a different region.  But
the Commissioner explained that the need to cost-share the full budget
was specific to minimum receivers and that it allowed regions to
spread costs move evenly across gradients in valuation.

Through some brief questioning by Senator Mitchell, the consensus of
the Committee and Commissioner seemed to be that there was nothing
unreasonable about this request and that it did not run contrary to
any policy intent.  They suggested that this need could be remedied
most readily through Private and Special Law.  The Committee seemed
fully willing to put forth such an Act (presumably for either Eaton or
Pingree), if that were the recommendation.

The Commissioner did later clear up the misunderstanding for them
regarding the location of RSU 7, adding that Eaton's request made have
been overtaken by other events, as Union 96 is now headed east, while
Union 92 remains west.

But the general principle of cost-sharing the full cost of education
still seemed to have been considered and not opposed.