Volinsky back in court

Relax, he's not filing to overturn the state's school funding system again. At least not today. In between the usual must-read nuggets for political junkies, John DiStaso reports in his Granite Status column in the Union Leader that the lead lawyer in the Claremont Lawsuit is taking the case of a Dartmouth Trustee recently shown the door by his colleagues.

Manchester attorney and liberal Democrat Andru Volinsky is once again heading to court in New Hampshire on an education case.

But this one's much different than the famous Claremont education lawsuit he prominently participated in during the 1990s.

He's representing a conservative Dartmouth alumni trustee Prof. Todd J. Zywicki, who was booted off the board after a secret meeting of his peers.

Conflict disclosure: This will take a while. I'm a Dartmouth alum, and represent my class on the Alumni Council. I voted for Todd Zyxicki as a Trustee and had hoped he would serve another term. Eugene Van Loan, who is on the team representing Dartmouth in the case, is the Chairman of the Board Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, which is kind enough to pay me to write this blog, among other things.

I sympathize greatly with Zywicki's plight. Re-election to the Board of Trustees is a pro-forma step. The majority of the Board used outlandish tactics and a ridiculous excuses to boot Zywicki off because they don't like that he has continued to challenge a Dartmouth Administration that had shown no willingness to listen to alumni concerns about the direction of the College. Much like the legal battle and proposed state legislation surrounding the plan to pack the Board of Trustees in order to dilute alumni involvement in college governance, this is a matter internal to Dartmouth College. I don't see how the New Hampshire courts are involved.

I hope that Todd Zywicki and his allies prevail, and that the plan to destroy over a century of balance on the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees fails. However, if you I were the judge in this case, which would be inexplicable and alarming for any number of reasons, I would likely throw the case out of court.

DiStaso also links to the Hanover Institute*, which is waging to legal battle to overturn the Board Packing plan, and to Zywicki's Amicus Brief.

*Corrected thanks to Scott's comment.

Eugene Van Loan III: Donor towns are coming back

The Union Leader picks up Josiah Bartlett Center President Eugene Van Loan's column on the secret return of donor towns.

Donor towns are municipalities that collect more money from the statewide property tax than it costs them to provide an adequate education to their own students. The state requires such towns and cities to send the "surplus"to Concord to be redistributed to other municipalities. This, of course, is a classic rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul scheme, and the governor rightly opposed it.

As things turned out, the Legislature did pass a bill in the 2008 session -- SB 539 -- that requires the state to fully fund the cost of "adequacy,"and the governor did not veto it. (On the other hand, he also did not sign it because he still favored a constitutional amendment to restore New Hampshire's tradition of local control over education policy and funding. The governor, to his credit, simply let the time expire within which he could veto SB 539, and the bill became law without his express approval.)

So, that should mean that there will be no donor towns, right? Wrong!

State's dirty secret: 'Donor towns' are making a return

Josiah Bartlett Center Chairman Eugene Van Loan writes in the Concord Monitor that donor towns are making a comeback.

So, that should mean that there will be no donor towns, right? Wrong! SB 539 did create donor towns. However, in a separate piece of legislation (SB 530) - presumably designed to prevent a gubernatorial veto of SB 539 - the obligation of donor towns to send their excess tax collections to Concord was suspended so long as they used the money to pay for the education of their own students (i.e., for costs beyond adequacy). So, all is well, right? Wrong again! The suspension lasts for only two years and then it self-destructs. In other words, there are no donor towns today - but there will be tomorrow.

No one in Concord is talking about this dirty little secret.

Have you seen any list of prospective donor towns? Not likely.

Stop education-funding foolishness

Josiah Bartlett Center Chairman Eugene Van Loan has his column on education funding published today in the Nashua Telegraph:

We have already robbed from multiple Peters to pay poor Paul. For example, we have stolen $110 million from New Hampshire's hospitals and doctors who naively thought that the surplus they had built up in the so-called Joint Underwriting Association due to their overpayment of malpractice insurance premiums was their money.

Also, as Charlie Arlinghaus of the Josiah Bartlett Center recently pointed out in one of his columns, we are probably going to steal millions more from the payers of turnpike tolls to finance repairs to roads driven by people who don't have to pay tolls.

And then there is the state's theft from our own towns and cities of some $50 million in revenue sharing monies. And finally, our friends in Washington are sending us approximately $160 million in one-time "stimulus" funds, which they have stolen from the next generation of federal taxpayers (our children). And on, and on, and on.

The History of the Claremont Lawsuit

Yesterday, Josiah Bartlett Center Chairman Eugene Van Loan told how a flawed education funding formula has fueled our current budget crisis in his article, The New Hampshire Disadvantage.

He referenced a lecture by Andru Volilnsky, the lead lawyer for the Claremont Lawsuit Coalition, on the history of Education Funding in New Hampshire. Happily, Bedford Community Television has it archived. It's a little under an hour, and provides a great perspective on how we got to where we are now.

The New Hampshire Disadvantage

The following op-ed ran in this morning's print edition of the Union Leader

THE NEW HAMPSHIRE DISADVANTAGE

By EUGENE VAN LOAN III

Oh, gosh, another crisis in Concord. The Governor says we need to steal another $150 Million to plug the hole in the budget. Otherwise, we will have to plug it with gambling (the Senate’s preference) or a capital gains tax (the House’s preference). What are we to do?

We have already robbed from multiple Peters to pay poor Paul. For example, we have stolen $110 Million from New Hampshire’s hospitals and doctors who naively thought that the surplus they had built up in the so-called Joint Underwriting Association due to their overpayment of malpractice insurance premiums was their money. Also, as Charlie Arlinghaus of the Josiah Bartlett Center recently pointed out in one of his columns, we are probably going to steal millions more from the payers of turnpike tolls to finance repairs to roads driven by people who don’t have to pay tolls. And then there is the State’s theft from our own towns and cities of some $ 50 Million in revenue sharing monies. And finally, our friends in Washington are sending us approximately $160 Million in one-time “stimulus” funds which they have stolen from the next generation of federal taxpayers (our children). And on, and on, and on.

But, as T.S. Eliot said, “Everyone steals; it’s what you do with what you steal that counts.” So, what are we doing with all this loot? Are we at least spending it wisely?

Unfortunately, posing such a question in the halls of the Statehouse – particularly to Democrats - would be an exercise in futility. For the conventional wisdom in Concord is that there is no such thing as a spending problem; the only problem we have is a revenue problem.

Nevertheless, let me suggest that there is a place where the budget could be cut which would solve the Governor’s $150 Million revenue problem. It just so happens that the spread between what the Legislature determined in its last session to be the cost of a so-called “adequate” education and what the State is presently spending on education is $123 Million for the biennium. The current budget proposes to spend this additional money.

But what if the State doesn’t spend it? (It is not quite the $150 Million the Governor needs, but what’s a few million or so among friends.) To begin with, it does nothing to improve education; it simply represents money that the State will pay that local school districts will not have to pay. In other words, all that this expenditure accomplishes is to shift the burden of paying for education from one group of taxpayers to another group of taxpayers (both of whom, by the way, happen to be us) – with no net gain to the students who are the supposed beneficiaries of this ponzi scheme.

More important, spending this money will not even bring about the result that its advocates claim it will – ending the Claremont litigation. Legislators have been told that if they spend this money and finally comply with the Supreme Court’s Claremont mandates to define, cost out, and fund 100% of the cost of an “adequate” education, that will be the end of school funding litigation in New Hampshire.

The Legislature has been sold a bill of goods. Last week, I happened to tune into Bedford’s local community television station, BCTV. A program entitled “The New Hampshire School Funding Dispute” was airing. (You can find it yourself on the Internet.) It turned out to be a lecture delivered on March 26, 2009 at the Greek Orthodox Church in Manchester by Andru Volinsky, lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the Claremont lawsuit. After crowing about how his legal team had outfoxed the Attorney General’s Office and the Supreme Court, Attorney Volinsky couldn’t resist giving his audience a glimpse of the future. After noting that the Legislature was proposing this session to fully fund what it had determined to be the cost of an adequate education, Attorney Volinsky commented that the Legislature’s definition of adequate was simply not adequate. And then he let the cat out of the bag: “This scenario probably gets us back to court in September/October.” In other words, suckers, $123 Million is just the beginning.

I say we put a stop to this nonsense. The Claremont case has become the New Hampshire Disadvantage. It is the tail wagging the budgetary dog. I say take the completely unnecessary $123 Million expenditure out of the budget, send the gamblers back to Las Vegas and nix the capital gains tax. And if the Claremont plaintiffs want to go back to court, let’s have at it.

Eugene M. Van Loan III, a practicing attorney in Manchester and Chairman of the Board of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy