Surcharge To Fund Education

[dan d]

DOE is not going to get smaller unless the voters make it so. The premise of the bill is to tax the investmant realty owners from outside our area. Such as the 60 % of condo owners in Maui that live somewhere besides hawaii and pay low property taxes compared to other states that charge more percent taxes to cover the Dept of education ie schools. Hawaii does not charge a tax from property specifically for schools. The general fund pays that.

At least thats how I read it lol
Aloha

Dan D
HPP

[VancouverIslander]

As someone who has worked in Education my whole career, I can agree wholeheartedly with anyone who is in favour of reducing any bloated administration. It doesn't always exist, but when it does it's as much of a cancerous growth as anything you can find in government or business. It can't always be cured from the inside, but if someone from the outside were to be sent in to trim the bureaucracy it might help. All you have to ask yourself is how any of these positions improve class room learning more than spending on something else like learning resources or teaching staff. I'm all for providing teachers with the means to do a good job (although I confess to a bit of bias on the matter having done the job for almost 30 years). I also believe you need a certain amount of mentoring and supervision from school based administration. I've rarely seen any of the senior administration (above the school level) have any effect at all on class room learning. You do need a few bodies at this level to supervise principals, allocate funding and resources and set policy direction. Some times you will have a specialist in technology or other area that is good to provide training and guidance for class room teachers. However, a lot of it is just cronyism - creating jobs for people who are tired of working in the class room, and a lot of it is empire building. A board hires an HR manager, who then 'needs' to hire more people to create an HR department, which justifies a raise because they are now supervising a staff. This further justifies those above the HR manager to want a raise because they have more employees to supervise. In the mean time, the system had functioned quite well before any of these people had been brought on board.

I once had the spouse of a superintendent tell me that the superintendent couldn't do a lot of the HR and other duties because they spent all of their time responding to complaints from parents. I replied that when I started teaching, the policy was to send those with complaints to the source - back to the school or the teacher - before moving up the chain. Since most complaints are misunderstandings in the first place, they are better resolved by discussing them directly. The superintendent's secretary could literally filter 98% of the work by checking to see if the chain of command had been followed. As a class room teacher I'm appalled that anyone wouldn't talk to me first since I'm in the best position to respond to any questions about what happens in my classroom.

Now with all of that said, I have no problems paying more for property taxes IF IT ACTUALLY IMPROVES THE EDUCATION SYSTEM rather than merely create a further bloated bureaucracy. Property taxes likely isn't the best solution for raising money. Income tax is probably a better bet. We all benefit from a better educated populace, but I'd only embrace higher taxes if better educated students was a guaranteed result.



Me ka ha`aha`a,
Mike

[Chunkster]

The teachers' union sugar coated the proposal by using the term "investment property." As noted upstream by EightFingers, the tax will be passed on to the tenants (often low income) of those investment properties through higher rents. Trying to make it look like greedy outsiders will be paying the full bill is disingenuous at best, and actually dishonest. Hawaii currently does not use real estate taxes to fund public education, being a rarity in that regard by funding it through the General Fund mostly via income, GET, and transient accommodation taxes. Once the door is open to a whole new category, the politicians will not wait to long to take it even farther.

[KeaauRich]

So if Education is funded by Income tax, GET and TAT, we're getting Education money directly and indirectly from people who don't live here and don't have kids in our schools. And we're discouraging vacation rentals because....???

[kalakoa]

Everyone seems to be missing the point.

The ballot measure amends the State Constutition so that future Legislatures have the power to tax "investment property" as a way to "fund education", but does not actually define the terms nor set any rates or limits.

It's safe to assume that the initial definition of "investment property" will be something everyone can agree on, such as "a second home worth $1M". The surcharge will be small enough that nobody complains.

Once the tax is established, the Legislature is free to adjust the definitions and surcharges as often as they can get away with it. Second homes worth $500K. Then "any property you don't live on" (commercial or ag property is still "investment real property", the proposed amendment doesn't say anything about zoning or land-use).

State is also allowing people to assume that this "new" education funding will be "in addition" to current funding, because more funding is obviously required. Instead, they will simply redirect existing funding, so that the new tax revenue is given to education "instead of" existing funding. Anyone who doubts this should look at education funding in any state with a lottery.

This is before we even get to the obvious "State eating into County's biggest source of revenue" -- the Counties will be unable to create their own "high-value property tax surcharge" as a way to balance their budgets.

Also unanswered: who pays for the assessment and collection of these taxes? Remember the GET surcharge: State keeps 10% as a "handling fee". Will the Counties be responsible for collecting the State real estate tax surcharge, and if so, will they get a cut of the money? More likely, State will create a new department, which will need several full-time staff (with salaries, benefits package, pension), a supervisor, office space, computers, etc. Now how much does it cost?

Nor do I believe that any additional revenue will be evenly distributed. Oahu schools will somehow get more of the money.

[BillyB]

The point people are missing is that somebody's ox is going to get gored.

It is not a zero sum game. The money is going to be raised. It is not like if they don't get this source of money that is the end of it. No matter what arguments abound about the running of the schools the money will have to come from somewhere. Our choice is this tax or another; perhaps an increase in the GET, they don't need your permission to do that. Would you rather have a 1% "education GET surcharge? How about raise the income tax rates?

As for shenanigans at the legislature: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." H. L. Mencken. It's our legislature we asked to be treated this way, or at least the 26% of eligible voters who actually bother have.


Thumbing through a real estate magazine of luxury homes the cheapest was more than a million dollars, most were 5, 10 even more than 20, and there were hundreds of them, and that is just the Big Island. These houses are the border wall to the beach.

Fifty years ago we could hike in and fish or camp, no Kapu sighs no walls. The ranches or plantation didn't care. Those days are gone and our children are poorer for it, so if some guy wants a 20 million dollar trophy house in Hawaii, I am inclined to let him help educate the native children, rather than taxing the wages of his gardener, or the pencils of his child.

[kalakoa]

Would you rather have a 1% "education GET surcharge? How about raise the income tax rates?

Either of these options would be codified as a specific amount. The proposed "surcharge" is an open-ended carte-blanche for future legislatures to adjust as they see fit. All real property is an "investment", even if you're living in it.

I'm not saying "the money isn't necessary", nor do I believe they won't "find something to tax", I simply want the amount to be discussed and agreed upon up front.

[terracore]

If they refuse to create efficiencies to free up revenue there are other options to increase revenue, like legalizing a bunch of activities that people are already doing anyway. A couple of resort casinos similar to what Atlantic City did would allow tourists to leave a lot more money here. Then there is hemp, cannabis, etc. This state could be swimming in "free money" if it was managed correctly. Atlantic City failed because all the municipalities around it saw the cash cow and legalized their own gambling establishments, so people in the area no longer had any incentive to go there (its kind of in the middle of nowhere), and it's not a global vacation destination like Hawaii.

[kalakoa]

Atlantic City failed because all the municipalities around it saw the cash cow and legalized their own gambling establishments

Recreational marijuana is already legal on the entire West Coast, which includes such attractions as Disneyland, the Wine Country, Crater Lake, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, etc. etc.

With no volcano and (soon, maybe) no vacation rentals... how do we compete?

[terracore]

Maui Wowie and slot machines. Our biggest spending tourists are from Asian countries, just like the biggest gamblers in Vegas. If Hawaii managed these "resources" correctly, and didn't immediately divert it to waste and fraud, they could lower other taxes improving everybody's lives.

How's our rail project going? The rail project in Las Vegas didn't use any public money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas_Monorail