7/29/08

Columbus Dispatch Editorial

Ohio legislators should reject the Department of Education’s request for a law that would ban efforts to repeal new school-tax levies.

The idea, included in a “legislative wish list” from the State Board of Education, would be to protect levies from repeal for a yet-unspecified period of time after they’re passed.

It addresses a nonexistent problem and would infringe on a basic right of voters.

Approving or denying school taxes is the single most powerful tool voters have for holding school districts accountable. The ability to repeal them at the ballot box is an element of that power.

School boards and administrators around the state have complained to the Education Department that even the rumor of an effort to repeal a school levy can disrupt a school district’s budgeting efforts. School-board members don’t want to establish programs and make spending promises that rely on funding that could disappear after the next election.

Recent history suggests, though, that rumors of repeal rarely amount to much.

Of 19 proposed school-level repeals on ballots across the state in November 2005, only two were efforts to undo a tax.

The other 17 were pre-emptive moves by the school districts employing a state law that says that once a permanent school levy has been approved by voters, only one repeal petition may be filed in a five-year period. Lately, school boards that fear a repeal movement have beaten their opponents to the punch, putting on the ballot measures to repeal an insignificant fraction of the levy’s millage. Whether or not this sham repeal is approved, the levy is inoculated from any other repeal effort for five years.

While such ballot gamesmanship isn’t ideal, stripping voters of all repeal rights, even temporarily, is worse.