<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> Here's something written by one of the, imho, sharper attorneys in Ohio on corporate property tax abatement etc. There is considerable room for local control of local issues affecting education. Even if you're not running for the school board, you can still pledge not to use tax abatement to attract industry.The county or largest city/town govt negotiates to keep or attract a new corporation, throwing in as sweetener along with other incentives "abated" - foregone - property taxes for, say 10 years. Since 90%+ of the property tax goes for education, that directly impacts the funds for half a generation which will be available to the public school district where the abatement is to be granted. Although school boards have a veto power over whether a corporation can be granted tax abatement, the politics are usually such that they rubber stamp what the "leaders" of the county or the major town/city in the county have "negotiated." Then, the school boards turn around and try to persuade residential taxpayers to vote in higher and higher levies. This is precisely what has happened repeatedly in Toledo and many other places. And since board of ed positions are unpaid, they are often a springboard to higher public office, so they are filled with sycophants who don't have the chutzpah, sophistication or inclination to take on the bigger politicoes who're proposing the abatements.    A non-board of ed post can also be a bully pulpit about things taking place in the schools - as when boards sign multiyear contracts to have Coke machines in the cafeteria, or to have McDonald's or some other junker cater the school food. Or when the board of ed represses free speech in the schools, or circumvents what books are available in the school library (a very common and troubling phenomenon). Or Channel 1 and other corporatist brainwashing arrangements. Many local boards of ed are infiltrated with Christian rightists, so you can imagine what kinds of strange and reactionary stances the boards take, which often can and should be challenged by other political leaders.     Local governments also sometimes fund activities related to the schools - security on buses, drug programs, city park activities that involve school kids, playgrounds and athletic fields. There are issues related to such things that might be of concern, highly politicized. -33- Tom Lehman       Max Sawicky wrote: <blockquote TYPE=CITE>Not as interesting as some other threads here on LBO, my favorite list, but in re: property taxes . . . Leo asks: " . . .  but is it not the case that the problem here extends far beyond different valuations of single family dwellings, to the issue that multiple dwellings (i.e., apartment houses), predominant in urban settings, bring in a lot less revenue than single family dwellings, predominant in suburban settings? Not necessarily.  Urban space is more scarce and more built up, so property tax revenues could be higher rather than lower; a mitigating factor could be concessions of one type or another granted to commercial property.  Landlords and developers seem to have an outsize role in urban politics, in contrast to suburban bedroom communities. Leo again, regarding rainy day funds: "But do we know of any locality which, under pressure from the Repugs to lower taxes, actually does that? This is one of the reasons why public education advocates are cautious about changing education revenue streams to the more 'volatile' taxes." States do it.  I'm not sure about localities. I do know that localities use bond finance, which is a different way of coping with cyclical variations in revenues, since it makes expenditures financed by own-source revenues less 'lumpy' with respect to time. Leo: " . . .  My point was more along the lines that public education advocates and equity advocates are going to be reluctant to invest a lot of very limited political capital in simply having the state become responsible for the education revenues, if it is as likely that some of the very same problems would reappear in a completely state based system. And even if the state based system worked perfectly in terms of intrastate equity, they would still not address the problems of interstate equity. Heaven help the children of Mississippi!" mbs: There are few guarantees all the way round. Regarding your final comment, intrastate variation is much greater than inter-state.  So state to local policy, or lack thereof, is more eventful than Federal policy, except where the latter affects state-to-local policy. Leo: " . . . IMHO, if we are talking about questions of how to build such multi-racial, multi-class popular coalitions . . . mbs: I agree that gimmicks do not fix the fundamental problem of what people think and how they are organized. mbs</blockquote> </html>