Governor Still Considering School Funding Freeze
Veronica Garabelli
Capital News Service
Last week, McDonnell's press secretary, Stacey Johnson, told Capital News Service that the governor planned to uphold the funding-formula freeze proposed in December by then-Gov. Tim Kaine.
"The Governor plans to keep the current freeze," Johnson stated in an e-mail on Friday (Jan. 22). "We will put out more specific direction to agency heads next week."
However, on Tuesday, Johnson backed away from that statement. She said the decision to maintain the freeze was not finalized when asked by Rosalind Helderman, a Washington Post reporter who writes the newspaper's Virginia Politics blog. Johnson sent the same statement to Capital News Service.
"We are evaluating all of the components of the current budget and will be working with House and Senate budget conferees to gather their input on existing spending reductions as well as potential new cost savings strategies," Johnson said in the statement Tuesday.
"No final decisions have been made regarding the composite index freeze by the legislators or the Governor's finance team."
At issue is the Local Composite Index, a formula that determines how much school funding a county or city will get from the state government.
The LCI assigns each school division a score, such as ".75" or ".51," based on the locality's adjusted gross income, taxable retail sales and property tax base. The lower its score, the more money the locality gets from the state government for basic education - and vice versa.
The LCI scores for Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties were about to drop - meaning those school divisions would get more state funding. However, Kaine decided to freeze the LCI scores at last year's levels.
The result: Fairfax County stands to lose $61 million; Prince William County, $22 million dollars; and Loudoun County, $34 million.
Jeff McKay, a member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said the sooner school districts know the fate of the school funding formula, the better because they will be able to plan their budgets.
McKay, who represents the Lee District in Fairfax County, said he wants to educate Fairfax County citizens about the LCI freeze. He said that the issue originally was seen as "inside baseball" and that the anger coming out of Northern Virginia was underestimated.
"Clearly what we're doing is starting to work," McKay said. "Every taxpayer in this county has to keep the pressure on this."
Sen. Chap Petersen, a Democrat from Fairfax, has spoken on the Virginia House floor about the school funding formula. He said he doesn't think McDonnell's administration is focused on the issue.
"I'm not quite sure if they understand it," Petersen said. "I don't think they've made a commitment one way or the other."
Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, and Scott K. York, chairman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, said they are also working to spread the word about the LCI freeze.
"I really am not prone to making exaggerations," Stewart said "But it would seriously damage the educational systems in Northern Virginia."
Kaine proposed freezing the LCI to protect 97 school divisions that would lose money if the formula were re-calculated.
Web link
For discussion of this issue on the Washington Post's Virginia Politics blog, see: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/01/mcdonnell_no_decisions_yet_on.html
McDonnell's original statements were posted to the Scott County Virginia Star website yesterday (http://www.virginiastar.net/index.php/news/article/mcdonnell_freezes_school_funding_formula/)