A week before the election, the tax commissioner cherry-picked his numbers
The governor's tax commissioner used the state's website and five newspapers in the last week of the campaign to argue that Vermont's rich already pay their share and that the federal tax cut they got was not a cut. His own Department's tables, and the one published ranking that would support the phrase, say otherwise.
A week before Vermonters vote, the governor's tax commissioner published a commentary in five newspapers and on the Department of Taxes website.[^1] It opens "With election season here" and names no candidate. It does not need to. Its target is the plan at the center of the challenger's campaign: a surcharge on incomes over $250,000 and $500,000. She pitches it as asking the wealthy to give back the same amount they gained from the new federal tax cut.[^2] The governor who appointed the commissioner opposes it, and is running on tax cuts of his own.[^3]
Six days earlier, at the Vermont Public debate, the governor was asked about the challenger's surcharge. His answer: "we have the most progressive tax system in the country."[^20] The commentary makes two claims. The federal cut, it says, was not really a cut. And Vermont already has "one of the most progressive state tax systems in the country," and any new money would have to come from a new tax on Vermonters. The second claim rests on a cherry-picked measure. The first is a straw man. Both come from the office that publishes the numbers that would have told the whole story.
The commissioner's evidence that the system is progressive is who pays the income tax: the top earners pay a third of it, the top tenth about two-thirds, the bottom half under 3 percent.[^4] The figures are accurate. They answer the wrong question. A revenue share says how much of one tax comes from a group. It says nothing about what share of its own income the group hands over. That is the measure every study of tax fairness uses. The Department's own tables use it too, and on those tables the top 1 percent of filers paid about 7 cents of every dollar of income in state income tax in 2024.[^5] That is a progressive income tax: the share rises with income. Nobody disputes it.
The income tax is one tax. Vermonters also pay the education property tax, the municipal property tax, the sales tax and the excises. The one published ranking of state tax systems that would support the commissioner's phrase comes from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It counts all of those taxes, and it does put Vermont third from the top. It is a list of mostly regressive states. Its authors describe Vermont's system as one that "tilts slightly progressive" and is "regressive through the top part." Regressive means the share falls as income rises. They note that the top 5 percent pay slightly lower rates than upper-middle-income families.[^6] On ITEP's figures, the share of income paid rises from the middle to the upper-middle class and then falls. The top 1 percent pays within a tenth of a point of the middle 20 percent.
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Where does the excess money in WCUUSD's budget go?
Washington Central's net cost to run its schools is $2.3 million a year above the average of its four neighbors. Pay rates, special education and administration account for it. Closing two elementary schools would save about $1.5 million to $1.9 million a year.
Voters approve WCUUSD Articles of Agreement amendment, 1,711 to 1,365
District voters approved the amendment to Washington Central's Articles of Agreement by 346 votes, the district announced. School-closure questions are now settled district-wide.
What the housing market pays for in a school district
A claim circulating before the August 11 vote holds that closing a school would cost nearby homeowners. The research on schools and house prices points somewhere else.
Before August 11: What Washington Central Is Actually Deciding
As the August 11 vote nears, the case for letting the whole district — not any single town — settle a school closure: a decade-long slide in student results, and an elected board that cannot enact the fix it recommended.
The district's debt paid to renovate three schools. The heaviest bills per student are still ahead at the other two.
Washington Central owes $7.33 million, all of it for building renovations at East Montpelier, Rumney, and Berlin. The 2023 state assessment says the heaviest near-term needs per student now sit at the two schools that never borrowed — Calais and Doty — the same two schools Calais and Worcester voters kept open in February.
The Price of Average
Vermont pays two dollars for every national dollar of school administration, half again the nation's upkeep, and — its largest premium — nearly half again as many teachers per student. Not high pay: it staffs the extra teachers its many small schools require. About $2.2 billion above the cost-adjusted national rate over twelve years, while its results fell to the national average.