Governor Dalrymple is asking the Senate Education Committee to restore the K-12 education funding formula bill back to its original version.
The bill makes more state money available to local schools. And its sponsors say it will provide significant property tax relief.
The House changed the original bill. It now requires local school districts to levy 70 mills. The original bill required a 50 mill local property tax effort. That will reduce the state’s funding by $120-million.
Dalrymple told the committee he doesn’t understand the House’s reasoning. He says this bill is the best way to provide substantial property tax relief.
"We are already footing the majority of the bill for higher education," Dalrymple told a joint hearing of the Senate Education and Finance and Taxation Committees. "We can, for the first time in state history, actually talk about a true limitation on local taxing authority. Never happened before."
Dalrymple also urged the Senate to remove amendments that hurt Native American reservation schools.
"When they did the formula in the House, the 11 tribal schools fell to the bottom of the scale," said Sen. Richard Marcellais (D-Belcourt). "I'm hoping to make an amendment to that, as well as a long term study, to make sure that doesn't happen again."
"That is fixable," said Dalrymple. "We've had a couple of meetings on it. I think everyone has a pretty good consensus on how to repair that."
The Education Committee has not yet taken action on the bill. It's HB 1319.
