Proposed amendment would make it easier for schools to pass property-tax levies

OLYMPIA — Voters will decide in November whether to dump a school levy law that's been on the books since the Great Depression and make it easier for districts to pass property-tax measures.

Senate Democrats pulled together just enough votes Thursday to send a measure to the ballot that would allow school levies to be approved by a simple majority of voters, instead of the 60 percent supermajority now required.

The measure, which needed a two-thirds vote to pass in the Senate, was approved 33-16. The House passed the bill earlier.

Supporters have complained for years that the supermajority requirement allows a minority of voters to block money for schools.

"The most painful part is when you have 58 to 59 percent supporting a measure. The minority is deciding for the majority," said Madeline Herzog, the co-chair of two levy campaigns in the Edmonds School District.

In the past eight years, 170 school operating levies in Washington won more than 50 percent of the vote but failed to reach the supermajority required to pass, according to the Washington Association of School Administrators.

Local property-tax levies are a major source of money for public schools, helping pay for everything from teacher salaries to textbooks to utility bills.

The proposed constitutional amendment wouldn't change the requirement that school bond issues, often used for construction projects, must get at least 60 percent of the vote to pass.

Opponents of the levy bill say the supermajority requirement ensures that schools make the case to voters why the money is needed. Eliminating it would lower the bar, they said, and result in property-tax increases.

"It's an out-and-out property-tax increase," said Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver. "You're making it really easy to raise people's property taxes."

The bill's passage came as welcome news to the Snohomish School District, where it took two tries to pass a $70 million operations levy and a $2.85 million transportation levy to buy 28 new school buses last year.

After the first attempt failed with 57 percent approval, the district identified almost 100 employees for layoffs, as well as cuts to transportation, athletics and textbook acquisitions.

"We have to prepare as if the ... levy won't pass, because we don't know," said Karen Riddle, finance director for the Snohomish district.

In the Highline School District, three operations levies failed from 1996 to 2003. All passed on the second try.

But each time the district holds a special election, it must reimburse the county as much as $200,000, said district spokeswoman Catherine Carbone Rogers.

"It puts school elections on equal footing with other elections, and I think that's only fair," Rogers said of the bill. "And ultimately that means that more of the funding that we get will be able to go directly into education instead of running elections."

The bond includes $110 million to fund construction of a second high school for the district which has seen student enrollment skyrocket in recent years. Enrollment has increased by 6 percent to 7 percent each year during the past two school years, a sharp spike from the 1 percent to 3 percent growth the district had seen in years past.

The supermajority requirement dates to 1932 — one of the worst years of the Great Depression — when voters enacted the restriction through Initiative 64. It was added as an amendment to the state Constitution in 1944.

Democrats have tried since 1993 to repeal the supermajority requirement without success. Although it fared well in the House, Senate Republicans always blocked the bill.

This year was different because Senate Democrats won a 32-17 majority in the 2006 election — the largest for either party since 1965.

That allowed Democrats, with only minimal Republican help, to get the 33 votes needed to send the amendment to the ballot. Three Republicans voted for the measure. Two Democrats voted against it.

"This is a long time in coming," Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way, said during Thursday's debate. She was a key player in getting the bill passed. "I believe with all my heart that this is the day. The time has come. ... I trust the people of Washington state to make this decision."

Opponents pushed for a provision that would allow simple-majority school levies only during November elections, when voter turnout typically is higher than in other elections. They failed to get enough votes to change the bill.

Greg Aff, a Marysville School District parent, said that with districts using levy dollars to supplement teacher pay, the simple majority rule would "provide an easier way for local unions to raise teacher salaries."

Aff was part of a group that opposed a $72 million operations levy in Marysville last year, arguing that too much of the money would go to teacher salaries and not enough to classroom support. The levy passed by just 24 votes.

Records kept by the Washington Association of School Administrators show that, since 2002, about 86 percent of school districts have succeeded in getting operating levies passed in their first election.

But levies have failed twice in more than a dozen districts in the state during that same time period.

Staff reporter Judy Chia Hui Hsu contributed to this story.

Andrew Garber: 360-943-9882

or agarber@seattletimes.com