Editor’s note: Earlier this month, The Times Argus asked all the members of the Washington County delegation to offer insights into the upcoming session, which begins next week. Here are the responses we received. (Some have been edited for length.
) What are your priorities for the upcoming session? Just to upend the headliner conversation: addressing property tax increases should not be our highest priority. Framed that way, it is a deceptive goal that would allow for a narrow solution and fail to address any real problem — in fact, could make it worse. That is because property taxes can be reduced by simply shifting education costs into a different revenue source, like income tax.
Those taxes, instead, could shoot up. Lack of affordability is then unchanged; it only shuffles the deck. The real problem goes to the entire failed funding system and, at its heart, to the ever-increasing costs of education and the need to find out the multiple reasons, and which can be addressed.
We have a confluence of deeply intertwined crises of affordability and access in education, housing, workforce and health care. One of the biggest underlying drivers — and least able to be changed by local school boards — is the cost of health care. Health care costs and access are a greater crisis with a far worse current trajectory than education.
Yet, if connected to education spending, the impact there is clear. ..
. My highest priority is new health reform actions, integrated into the entire.