House Speaker Scott Saiki has introduced a bill calling for a constitutional amendment that would allow the state Board of Education to have concurrent real property tax authority to pay teacher salaries.
Concurrent means Hawaii’s four counties would retain their real property tax authority — along with new taxing powers granted to the BOE.
House Bill 2671 takes another approach to educators’ claims that public school salaries are too low to keep and recruit qualified teachers.
In a bitter battle in 2018, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled against a previous attempt by legislative leaders to pass a constitutional amendment that would have raised property taxes on second homes worth more than $1 million to raise money for public schools.
The question before voters was, “Shall the Legislature be authorized to establish, as provided by law, a surcharge on investment real property to be used to support public education?”
Before voters could weigh in, Supreme Court justices ruled unanimously that the wording on the ballot was not sufficiently clear. Their decision in October 2018 meant that all of the votes cast on pre-printed ballots for a statewide election the following month would be invalid.
In a statement Monday, Saiki said the new bill “addresses the question of how to fund increased teacher compensation. The general public and business community must weigh in on whether taxes should be raised to increase teacher salaries, and, if so, whether a real property tax is an appropriate source of revenue. If approved by the Legislature, HB 2671 will be placed on the 2020 general election ballot and voters will have the opportunity to ratify it.”
The amendment question would read:
“Shall the Constitution
of the State of Hawaii be amended by repealing the counties’ exclusive jurisdiction over real property taxation and providing instead that the taxation of real property shall be under the concurrent jurisdiction of both the board of education and counties, thereby allowing the board of education to levy real property taxes to fund teacher
compensation?”
A separate “short form bill,” House Bill 2662, also has been introduced to implement the constitutional amendment if it is ratified.
Corey Rosenlee, president of the 13,700-
member Hawaii State Teachers Association, said the proposed constitutional amendment follows similar funding approaches in
parts of the mainland.
“Giving the Board of Education authority over taxation is common practice across the United States, and it’s how many systems fund their schools,” Rosenlee said in a statement. “We appreciate legislators trying to adequately fund our schools and HSTA will have to research whether this proposal has enough popular support to be approved by voters.”
Saiki’s proposal has the potential to rally powerful forces on both sides of the debate over how to increase teacher pay.
During the 2018 run-up to the ballot initiative, political action committees formed by the HSTA and the Affordable Hawaii Coalition, which largely represented business interests, had separately raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to air television and radio ads advocating for their positions.
Saiki said he expects
“significant opposition” to his proposal.
But with increasing demands on the state’s general fund that pays teacher salaries, Saiki said, “if we
are serious about increasing teacher salaries … the
Legislature needs to get a sense of where the general public is at.”
