I missed this story originally, but Marginal Revolution pointed me to the fact that Killington, Vermont residents recently voted to secede from Vermont and join New Hampshire. A little problematic, given that Killington is 25 miles from the VT/NH border.
Seriously, though, the reactions of Killingtonians (is that the right word?) is hardly surprising. In 1997, the Vermont Supreme Court ordered the state to change the way it funds schools, otherwise known as Shifting the Burden of Financing Schools to the Rich. Killington, a town with only 1,000 permanent residents, sends $20 million a year to Montpelier, and gets $1 million in return. Because most schools derive local funds from property taxes, places with lower property values extract less revenue from the locals than places with higher property values. In the name of “tax equalization,” a move is afoot to transfer wealth from places that have it to places that don’t. There are, of course, many problems with this. There’s absolutely no evidence that pumping cash into failing schools will make them anything other than failing schools with cash. Transferring wealth from one community to another does nothing to address the problem with financing education on the backs of property owners, punishing those who own private property. The whole scheme is a massive form of wealth extraction with very little benefit, and attempts at “reform” do little but make the problem worse.
