Mayoral Control and Maintenance of Effort

City of Rochester Aid to Education

A White Paper on the legal and fiscal relationship between the City of Rochester and the Rochester City School District

January 16, 2007

Compiled by Commissioner Willa Powell

Executive Summary

The overall purpose of this paper is to demonstrate through an orderly progression from theory to practice, that the City should carefully consider its approach to the question of aid to education as the City develops its budget.

The first point, made in Section 1, is that the District is a separate legal entity, with its own governance for a reason. In 1917, The New York State legislature enacted a law to remove education from the direct control of the municipal governments, while retaining the capacity to require a local contribution from municipal governments to education funding. Both the control and the funding requirements have been tested in court, establishing a portfolio of case law that upholds and comments upon the progressive intent to de-politicize education.

Section 2 discusses the history of the relationship between the City and the District since 1972, where that relationship was first defined in the form of Fiscal Independence Agreements. Section 3 distinguishes between the theory of Fiscal Independence and the reality of fiscal dependence. Section 4 discusses the question of legal separation, in particular, in the face of the fiscal distress that the City has been in for the last several years, alternately applying and challenging lessons learned. Section 5 looks at aid to education from the City since 1993, to identify which entities are supporting the skyrocketing cost of education.

One lesson to be derived from the last section is that excessive efforts on the part of the City to control the finances of the District are not defensible. The second lesson is that if efforts of control are attempted, there are political consequences: answering to a constituency heretofore addressed by the School Board. A third lesson is that there are historical examples of thoughtful ways to achieve our mutual ends without politicizing aid to education. Finally, enumeration of the potential consequences to further reduction of aid to education, regardless of whether it is accomplished through discussion or negotiation with the District, in light of the CFE case and of Governor Spitzer’s position on State education aid.

Read the full white paper here: http://votewilla.com/mayoral-control-and-maintenance-of-effort/white-paper-read-only