Doing the job right?
In addition to reducing the amount districts with higher costs-of-living would receive under the new school formula, Missouri legislators defeated an amendment to the state school funding formula. The amendment would have required the state study the assessment practices used around the state.
Given that the assessments will play a large role in determining how much state aid a district will receive, a careful review of assessment practices should be the first step in implementing any new funding formula. The St. Louis Metropolitan area alone has seen a great deal of controversy over unfair or inaccurate assessment practices.
The Public Policy Research Center of UMSL has an analysis of the role assessments play in the new funding formula.
Actually Metro St. Louis is pretty good. The City still has problems due to the flux of property between city owned and privately owned. The County is close to being good, but has dispersion numbers that are reasonable and St. Charles does an excellent job assessing property.
Where the wild dispersion numbers come are from rural counties that make the 95% standard of the state tax commission, but do so with dispersion numbers that are up to +/- 75% or more in the most egregious cases.
Posted by ArchPundit on Thu., Apr 28, 2005 at 9:50 AMThe Metro Area has done a good job and has been able to address many property owners concerns.
However, assessment practices have a direct effect on people and it is likely to be a source of controversy as this bill makes its way through the legislature.
It will be interesting to see how the legislature decides to address the issue of assessment. No one wants to be unfairly evaluated and while the leg may have passed on the amendment, they will still have to address the issue.
Posted by Matthew on Thu., Apr 28, 2005 at 12:07 PM
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