Education Legal Alliance marshals strong defense of Prop. 98 in San Francisco hearing
‘Disappointing’ tentative ruling may not be final; judge may decide within 30 days
Published: April 3, 2012
Attorneys for CSBA’s Education Legal Alliance and other public school advocates met in San Francisco County Superior Court March 28 to convince what one observer called “a skeptical judge” that California lawmakers illegally diverted billions of dollars that should have gone to public schools.
The issue is at the heart of a lawsuit filed against the state by the Alliance, the Association of California School Administrators and three school districts. They contend the state’s 2011-12 budget-balancing strategy violated Proposition 98, the 1988 voter-approved constitutional amendment that guarantees K-14 schools a percentage of general fund revenues.
Attorney Deborah Caplan, who represented the Alliance at last week’s hearing, was playing to a tough audience. Just the day before, Judge Harold Kahn had issued a tentative ruling that sided with the state. Nothing in the wording of Proposition 98 or in the ballot materials that supported the measure “precludes” the Legislature from diverting general fund revenues into special accounts, Kahn wrote, and nothing requires the state to recalculate funding formulas to compensate schools when funds are diverted from the general fund.
That’s essentially what the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown did—effectively reducing the pot of money from which schools get a roughly 40 percent share—when they shifted $5 billion from the state’s general fund to a separate account to reimburse counties for responsibilities they took on under Brown’s government realignment plan.
Still, Kahn gave the Alliance’s oral argument serious consideration at the hearing, delaying the lunch recess to give Caplan 90 minutes to convince him to amend or reverse his tentative ruling.
“I appreciate the fact that the judge gave the case the amount of time he did and allowed us to make our case, and we hope we convinced him that the state’s actions here are not permitted by Proposition 98,” CSBA General Counsel Keith Bray, who directs the Alliance, said after the hearing. “I think he understood the importance of the case and the implications for Prop 98 if the state’s actions are allowed to stand.”
The attorneys declined to speculate about the eventual outcome of the case but said they hoped decision could be forthcoming within 30 days of the March 28 hearing.
Funding formulas manipulated
The Alliance and its allies say that shifting the realignment money out of the general fund cost schools $2 billion by improperly manipulating the complicated funding formulas that determine minimum school funding levels under Proposition 98. They agreed that the state has the authority to create a special account, but they argued that voters’ intention in enacting Proposition 98 guarantee was to require the state to “rebench” funding formulas so schools would not be penalized by the diminished general fund.
“There will be no such thing as a minimum guarantee if the state can manipulate it for political purposes,” Caplan told the judge.
It would be unrealistic to expect the authors of Proposition 98 to anticipate every fiscal machination that state lawmakers might devise to balance future budgets, Caplan elaborated; voters obviously intended the proposition’s funding guarantee to be broad enough to protect school funding.
The very term “minimum funding guarantee” is “inconsistent with allowing the state to manipulate it at will,” Caplan said.
Caplan argued that if the Legislature is allowed to thwart voters’ will by diverting sales and other tax revenues from the general fund—money that has always been included in the formula used to determine minimum funding levels under Proposition 98 in the past—there would be nothing to stop lawmakers from continuing to engineer similar schemes in the future. She said it was clear that voters intended to protect schools from such manipulations when they voted for Proposition 98, which was supposed to take the politics out of school funding.
Wynns: ‘Protect schools’
In a letter to CSBA’s Executive Committee and Board of Directors, association President Jill Wynns said she is extremely proud of CSBA’s attorneys and staff “despite a disappointing preliminary ruling.”
“We went to the hearing … and heard a strong and principled case on behalf of California schools and children. You should know that our lawyers were sincere and eloquent in defending the constitutional guarantee and explaining the need to protect schools from the political vagaries of Sacramento that are the core of the intent of Proposition 98.”
Easy link:
- Background on this case, including the Alliance petition, YouTube highlights from the press conference announcing the suit and previous coverage, are available on CSBA’s Proposition 98 Lawsuit Web page.