Education bonds: Tax or no tax?

"No tax increase"  is one of the first things you'll hear from supporters of the bonds for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Central Piedmont Community College.

But when you see a ballot, you'll find this wording:

“SHALL the order authorizing $290,000,000 of bonds secured by a pledge of the faith and credit of the County of Mecklenburg to pay capital costs of providing school facilities, including the acquisition and construction of new school facilities, the improvement and expansion of existing school facilities and the acquisition and installation of furnishings and equipment and the acquisition of interests in real property required therefor, and a tax to be levied for the payment thereof, be approved?”

“SHALL the order authorizing $210,000,000 of bonds secured by a pledge of the faith and credit of the County of Mecklenburg to pay capital costs of providing community college facilities, including the acquisition and construction of new community college facilities, the improvement and expansion of existing community college facilities and the acquisition and installation of furnishings and equipment and the acquisition of interests in real property required therefor, and a tax to be levied for the payment thereof, be approved?”

If you plow through that dense prose  (the first item is CMS bonds, the second is for CPCC), the part about approving  "a tax to be levied for the payment thereof"  may sound like you're being asked to OK a tax hike.

That's not the case. Tax revenue will be used to repay the bonds, but that doesn't mean a tax increase.

Bonds are essentially a line of credit authorized by the voters.  As Mecklenburg County officials learned when the recession hit,  if you run up the tab on borrowing you face a painful choice:  Raise taxes and/or renege on promises made during bond campaigns.  The county slowed down on the CMS projects promised in 2007,  resulting in some that haven't been started as the 2013 campaign gears up.  They'll eventually get done  (read an update here),  but not as quickly as voters expected in 2007.

Grand Oak Elementary, a 2007 bond project, opened in August

County officials also rethought their borrowing strategy. They've calculated that they can pay back the $500 million in CMS and CPCC bonds with the revenue they've got, which means they won't have to raise property taxes to handle the debt.  The plan is to spread that borrowing over the next four years.

Here's how County Commissioner Bill James describes it:  "The question of whether a bond package causes a tax increase depends on whether the government issuing the bonds has an adequate bond fund. When I was first elected in 1996 the first item I pushed for was a bond fund. It took 15 years but we finally got one."

"The money to make the bond payments (on the bonds on the ballot) are included in the current tax rate. So, absent some sort of fiscal meltdown, these bonds should be able to be issued without any impact on existing taxes."

So, no tax hike.  The trade off is that the list of projects on the 2013 bonds for CMS is a lot shorter than district leaders would like.  Superintendent Heath Morrison, Associate Superintendent Guy Chamberlain and others are quick to note that $290 million for CMS is tiny compared with the $810 million that's on the ballot for Wake Public Schools in October or the $1.89 billion that Houston voters approved last fall.

School salaries: Why name names?

The annual posting of public salaries has become almost routine after six years,  but every time there are questions about why the Observer does it.

Salaries paid with tax dollars are public record under North Carolina law.  The Observer started requesting and publishing salaries from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,  the city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to get a handle on how public money is spent.

If you follow the spring budget discussions,  you know numbers can be slippery.  Jobs cut from one category can quietly pop up somewhere else.  Leaders always talk about reducing bureaucracy and cutting costs,  but sometimes a look at who's making what and how it changes over the years tells a different story.

I've used payroll data to analyze staffing cuts and increases,  gauge principal and teacher turnover and look at how CMS compares with other government bodies on executive salaries. Few argue with that kind of reporting.  But some wonder why we make the salaries of rank-and-file government workers available to anyone with a computer and curiosity.

For one thing,  public scrutiny increases the chance that questionable hiring arrangements will be revealed  (think former First Lady Mary Easley's lucrative job at N.C. State University).  It also allows people to do a reality check when false rumors circulate  (for instance,  the persistent buzz that former Superintendent Peter Gorman was giving his wife a CMS paycheck,  when she held a high-profile volunteer post with the district's Parent University).

The Observer isn't out to embarrass anyone,  or to argue that any group of public employees deserves a raise or a cut.  We do want to help readers make informed decisions about how their money is spent.  Time after time,  I've seen people who yawn at an abstract discussion of educator pay get intensely engaged when they realize how it affects individuals they know.

A low salary in public education reflects a fiscal and policy decision,  not an individual shortcoming.  Pay scales are based on credentials and experience,  not performance ratings.  While a bonus represents a judgment  --  or hope  --  that the recipient has done valuable work,  the absence of a bonus means nothing.  Bonuses come from a hodgepodge of incentive programs,  most of them temporary and targeting a limited number of schools. Many excellent educators aren't eligible.

The Observer's data center now includes salaries not only from CMS,  Charlotte and Mecklenburg,  but for state government,  the university system and counties surrounding Charlotte. Those lists get tens of thousands of views.  There's no way of knowing who's doing research and who's just being nosy,  but that's the nature of public information. And it's the nature of journalists to trust that shining a light on public business is ultimately a good thing.