How NJ's School Funding System Disincentivizes Family Housing Construction

New Jersey, by any analysis, has one of the ten highest costs of housing in the United States.

Conservatives and liberals disagree on what the solutions to New Jersey's housing crisis should be, but all credible economists agree that the fundamental cause of high housing costs is insufficient supply relative to demand.  

Background to the Housing Crunch

Despite our slow-growing economy and population, NJ's housing crisis remains acute because we are running out of buildable land, so construction of single-family detached homes has fallen.

Whereas in the 1990s and early 2000s New Jersey would build 20,000-25,000 single-family homes a year.  Now, despite continuing acute demand, we only build 10,000-11,000.

Source:
http://www.northjersey.com/counties/single-family-homes-stay-in-the-game-1.1677967

How bad has NJ's housing shortage gotten?  As was reported in October 2016:

On a year-to-date basis (January-September) home purchase demand in New Jersey increased by 14%. This increase has however been largely concentrated in lower priced homes as first-time ‘Millennial’ buyers begin to transition from rentership to homeownership. By comparison, the number of luxury home sales priced at $2,500,000 and above declined by 4% this year. Reasons for this trend include a greater number of younger-age first home buyers, trade-down purchases by older-age empty-nesters, and relaxed mortgage lending standards which have reduced minimum down-payment amounts. 

Shifting to the supply side of the equation, the supply of homes being offered for sale remains constricted, which is limiting choices for home buyers. The number of homes being offered for sale today in New Jersey has declined by nearly 6,000 (-11%) compared to one year ago. This is also about 25,000 (-34%) fewer homes on the market compared to the cyclical high in 2011. Today’s unsold inventory equates to 5.4 months of sales (non-seasonally adjusted), which is lower than one year ago when it was 6.7 months. 

Currently, the majority (81%) of New Jersey’s 21 counties have less than 8.0 months of supply, which is a balance point for home prices. Hudson County is presently experiencing the strongest market conditions in the state with just 3.2 months of supply, followed by Union, Essex, Morris, Middlesex and Somerset Counties, which all have fewer than 4.5 months of supply.

The only effective solution to this housing and land shortage is to accept greater density and allow more apartments to be built, but this is illegal due to municipal zoning regimes and other forms of discouragement.

Yes, New Jersey is seeing a surge in apartment construction, but almost none of the new units are designed for families. The minuscule number of three-bedrooms that are built are almost always as part of COAH (COAH = Supreme Court-required affordable housing) requirements, so there are vanishingly few three-bedrooms available for middle-class and even affluent families.

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A Spectre is Haunting New Jersey, the Spectre of NIMSSism

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There is a sub-form of NIMBYist anti-development activism that I am going to call NIMSSism - "Not In My School System"ism.

Unlike NIMBYism, which has come to mean opposition to any housing within a given area, NIMSSism is selective in what it opposes.  NIMSSies accept the construction of apartment buildings as long as the apartment buildings are going to have zero or very few public school children.

NIMSSies are ok with their towns
allowing apartments
for Empty Nesters.

I don't have comprehensive data on anti-family housing politics in New Jersey compared to other states, so I am going to look anecdotally at a few disparate NJ towns for which I could find articles about public school children in apartments - Millburn, South Orange-Maplewood, and Kearny - to make this point.

Millburn, South Orange-Maplewood, and Kearny have seen considerable student population growth in the last few years and have school systems that are above capacity. Millburn's student population has increased from 4,573 in 2005-06 to 4,903; South Orange-Maplewood's student population has increased from 6,209 to 6,872.  Kearny's has grown from 5,469 to 5,910.

Millburn is in the process of buying a new elementary school and South Orange-Maplewood is gearing up to build another fifty classrooms.   Kearny has already put on another 20 classrooms at its high school.

Since New Jersey's aid law - the School Funding Reform Act - is designed to give as little money as possible to suburbs - and New Jersey's aid distribution has been frozen anyway for years, Millburn, South Orange-Maplewood rely almost entirely on local taxpayers to fund their schools and even Kearny is mostly locally funded.

But NIMSSies Oppose
Family-Sized Apartments,
SO Families
Must Buy Houses

Millburn's budget is 95% from local money.  South Orange-Maplewood, a more middle-class town than Millburn, has a budget that is 94% from local money.  Kearny is more working class, but it still pays for 61% of its costs with local money.

Millburn's per pupil spending is $16,136, which is high, but not extraordinary.  South Orange-Maplewood's spending, on the other hand, is only $14,667 per student, which is slightly below average.  Kearny's is only $12,590 per student, which is quite inadequate.

With the schools being crowded in all three districts is it any wonder that residents of the towns oppose new construction that might bring in more children?

Here are Millburn residents protesting the construction of 200 units on what was a parking lot near the Short Hills Mall.

...residents maintained the apartment complex could bring an additional 200-plus students to the school district and repeatedly challenged [the Planning Board attorney's] assertion that he and municipal Business Administrator Timothy Gordon had alerted then-school superintendent James Crisfield and Jeffrey Waters, school board president at the time, that the application for the hotel/apartment complex was on the way.

On a Change.org there is a Millburn anti-housing petition that has gotten over 1300 signatures, the Millburn residents warned the development might have 300-400 students.  

The 300-400 student estimate is delusional.  The whole complex will have only six three-bedrooms.  However, Millburn's delusion is a symptom of anger about genuine crowding problems and thus shows the strength of anti-public school children incentives.

You might attribute the NIMSSism to Millburn being so rich, but the same tendency exists in working class towns too.

Here are officials in Kearny also assuring their residents that there are almost no public school children living in some controversial apartment buildings there too.  (the Kearny complex under discussion, Vermella Crossing - has zero three bedrooms)

While the residential portion of Vermella Crossing's first phase was under construction, Kearny residents raised concerns that the development would bring too many new students into the local public school system. 

Those fears appear to be unfounded, according to rental statistics recently released by Russo Development, the Carlstadt-based firm building the complex. 

With a little less than half of the complex's 150 units leased, just four children have moved in, Lisa Kaplan, vice president for leasing/marketing, reported in a written statement. 

Demographics so far skew toward young adults occupying the new units. The average age of renters is 29, with nearly 88 percent of occupants between ages 18 and 35. More than 60 percent of the residents are single. 

That's good news to local officials, who view Vermella Crossing as a litmus test for two additional developments Russo is planning in Kearny -- a 458-unit complex along the Passaic River in Kearny and a mixed-use development on Bergen Avenue across the street from Vermella Crossing. 

"This is very consistent with the numbers that Mr. Russo advised the (Town) Council and planning board of," Mayor Al Santos said. "We were concerned it would create a burden on the school system, but it has turned out not to be the case.

For South Orange-Maplewood please read this article where the mayors of South Orange and Maplewood argue that new apartment buildings in the two towns have almost no children living in them.  (this is by design since South Orange-Maplewood prohibits family-sized apartments.)

“Developments such as Gateway, Avenue, Mews, Gaslight, Ridgewood Commons are bringing in kids at a 1 per 30 unit to 40 unit ratio,” said [South Orange Village President Sheena] Collum in an email to Village Green. She added that this was “de minimis from a numbers standpoint.” 

Collum further explained that “a 100-unit development may bring 3 kids or less… That’s just our consistent statistics. In fact, our vision plan noted 1 per 38 units.” She added, “And many of those kids were once already in the district and, through separations (etc.) and existing parents, went into a rental.”....

Maplewood's Mayor said:

Based on the record of [other] occupied buildings, the ratio is less than 1/10 of a student per unit.”

Would the mayors of South Orange and Maplewood make this argument if fears of public school children living in apartments were not pervasive?

The mayors are correct that very few public school children from the new apartments since the new apartment buildings are 99% studios, one-bedrooms, and two-bedrooms, with the few three-bedrooms also required as part of judicial affordable housing obligations.

Apartment buildings are technically called "multifamily housing," but that's a misnomer, since very few "families" live in them.

Due to the lack of family-sized apartments, parents who have two or more children in Millburn, South Orange-Maplewood, Kearny, and many other towns would either have to squeeze into a two-bedroom unit or buy a conventional, single-family detached house.

There are middle-class families out there who would like to live in a suburb, but still live in an apartment to avoid the hassles of maintaining a large house and yard, but the construction of three-bedroom apartments is unlawful and since public school children are so expensive for a town to educate, there is no prospect of zoning being liberalized without state aid reform since towns have a strong incentive against allowing family-sized apartments.  

If New Jersey gave more school aid to suburbs and state aid were not frozen, the municipal incentive to oppose family-size apartments would decrease.

NIMSSism is just a word I invented, but even the concept is rarely discussed.  But it's is a major driver of zoning laws that hinder the creation of enough housing for New Jersey's growing population or PILOT deals that discourage 3-4 bedrooms.

However, the state is going to have to address the incentives that create NIMSSism since we are running out of buildable land.

While multifamily [sic] construction has rebounded from the worst housing crash since the Depression, annual construction of single-family homes has lingered in the 10,000 to 11,000 range, down from more than 20,000 a year through most of the 1990s. Single-family construction has been led by activity in Monmouth and Ocean counties.

Through August of this year, builders have started about 6,500 single-family homes in the state, about 36 percent of the total number of housing units started.

The main reason for this shift away from single-family: There’s just not enough space, especially in North Jersey. The state is already largely developed, and regulations bar further development in environmentally sensitive areas, such as the Highlands. As a result, land in the state has just become too scarce and too expensive to support a mass of single-family homes — particularly homes affordable to middle-income families....

"You just will never see again the type of single-family building we had in the past, because there just simply is not the land for it," said Billy Procida of Procida Funding & Advisors in Englewood Cliffs, which lends money for real estate development. "If you can find a deal with five lots, you’re lucky. You tell me where in New Jersey you’re going to find space to build 100 houses."

Lakewood is the Exception That Proves the Rule:
Lakewood always greenlights new development because
new housing in Lakewood is occupied by children
who do not attend public schools.

I assume that if booming Lakewood
were factored out of the calculation, the number of housing units under construction would be substantially lower.

In the future, towns are going to have to allow family-sized apartments because there is no way we can accommodate our growing population otherwise.

The days when every middle-class family could have a detached house and a yard are over.

And if NJ wants towns to allow enough housing to stabilize (or even reduce) prices, it is going to have to change how public schools are financed and/or change the law so that towns are forced to accept family-sized apartment buildings.

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See Also these studies on how few children live in apartment buildings:

UPDATE:  "School Aged Children in Rental Units in New Jersey"

http://bloustein.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/NJDM.pdf

http://www.nj.gov/state/planning/publications/177-who-lives-quick-guide.pdf

Vincent Prieto Proposal for SFRA II

For years, the loudest silence on state aid has been from Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto.

Aside from vocational education, Prieto leaves education legislation to other people.  His references to state aid fairness have been nonexistent.

Although most of the legislature, frankly, ignores state aid, Prieto's indifference to state aid is hard to accept because his own District 32 in Hudson and Bergen counties is savagely underaided.

Red indicates Abbott.

So Vincent Prieto's entry into the state aid battle is welcome after years of neglect, but that doesn't mean that Prieto's ideas actually are good ones.

As Prieto wrote with Assemblywoman Marlene Caride in the Star-Ledger on October 24th:

We also recognize New Jersey has not properly funded its schools. It's a longstanding problem that should have been resolved years ago, but remains festering due to economic struggles and political ideology. 

The status quo is unacceptable, but the ideas proposed by Gov. Chris Christie and another approved by the Senate are unacceptable options. 

That brings us to the Joint Legislative Committee on Public School Funding Reform, our proposal to fairly fund schools in our state free of politics and ideology.

Free from politics and ideology?  Excuse me?  How is that possible? There isn't a single person in the edusphere who isn't ideological and the subject of state aid is no exception to that tendency.  Some people worry more about taxes than others; some people worry more about inequity; some people want teachers to be much higher paid.  Everyone with an opinion on state aid is ideological to some degree.  

Anyway, here is the proposal for "SFRA II"

This commission would be modeled after the [PJP - Professional Judgment Panel] 2006 committee that devised the current school funding formula, the first school funding plan deemed constitutional by the New Jersey Supreme Court in nearly 30 years.

The main problem has been the state's failure to fund it. The provisions have been ignored and overridden.

We believe this is still the model, but it's been 10 years, so we can now take a look back at what was right and wrong with that formula....

The committee will review the School Funding Reform Act of 2008 and formulate proposals that address problems and issues that have arisen since the enactment of the law, including issues associated with changes in the demographics and fiscal conditions of districts that have impacted the ability of local communities to support the education of their students.

The 2006 committee availed itself of the expertise of numerous stakeholders. We would expect this committee to do no less. The legislation would create a public school funding reform working group comprised of 12 members from expert education organizations across the state. This working group would serve in an advisory capacity and as a resource for committee deliberations.

No part of the school funding formula or the processes associated with the formula would be off limits. We expect the committee to look at all problems and issues that have arisen in the past 10 years, as well as demographic changes and changes in the fiscal conditions of school districts.

We want a realistic proposal that can be fairly funded annually.

One particular area that we hope will get special attention is preschool opportunities — a proven indicator of future educational success. We also hope the committee will focus attention on funding for special education.

Ok. I'm not enamored of the SFRA PJP committee>legislative amendment process.  According to Chris Cerf, the legislature arbitrarily increased the Professional Judgment Panels' recommendation for weights for at-risk students and created "Adjustment Aid" out of nowhere.

Although Prieto doesn't rule out cutting or eliminating Adjustment Aid, any formula that Prieto's "Joint Legislative Committee on Public School Funding Reform" comes up with will primarily rely on new money for K-12 education and if the next governor decides to prioritize things other than K-12 education or there is a recession, Prieto's "SFRA II" will fail just like the original SFRA did.

Prieto's suggestion that the state put more money into Pre-K education may or may not have merit, but budgeting is a zero-sum game and putting more money into Pre-K would subtract from money for K-12, higher ed, pensions, senior tax rebates etc etc etc.  If Pre-K is provided by public schools themselves, in the long run, Pre-K even increases the state's pension liabilities since Pre-K teachers are pension-eligible public employees.

Pre-K itself is incredibly expensive, around $13,500 per student.  To provide Pre-K to the 50,000 students who are statutorily eligible for it under SFRA would cost nearly $700 million.

Source:
http://bit.ly/2eCFTWE

Although Vincent Prieto has said he would "love a millionaire's tax," increasing rates on high incomes is enough. In 2014, raising the 8.97% top rate to 10.75% on income over $1 million would only have brought in $565 million.  A 2015 version that would also have raised business taxes by 15% would only have brought in $1.1 billion.

$565 million isn't enough.  $1.1 billion would be a good deal more helpful, but it would make our corporate taxes the country's second highest (after Iowa's 12% top rate).  Since New Jersey's other taxes are the highest in the country or among the highest, making our corporate taxes #2 is insane.

The state's debt and pension payments alone increase by nearly $1 billion a year, in some years increasing faster than the state's revenue growth, so the hope we might "grow our way" out of the budget mess is far-fetched.

Prieto is also wrong about why Congress hasn't reopened the base closing process.  Congress hasn't reopened that because it doesn't like the idea of an empowered committee, it hasn't reopened that because it doesn't want to close any more based. Period.

Anyway, I'm glad that Prieto is finally talking about state aid and not ruling out redistribution, but I wish it were something that put redistribution front and center and addressing other problems, such as the state aid growth limits and PILOTing.

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See Also:

• Will Vincent Prieto Put Hudson County First?

Biggest Real Estate Gains, Losses, in NJ

This post looks at what towns in New Jersey have seen the biggest gains and losses in their real estate markets in the past four years.

The measurement of real estate value used here is "Equalized Valuation." Equalized Valuation is simply the market value of all taxable real estate in a town.  Equalized Valuation is calculated annually and is used to apportion county taxes and regional school districts.  If one town has 15% of a county's total Equalized Valuation, it pays 15% of county taxes.  If one town has 60% of a regional district's total Equalized Valuation, it (usually) pays 60% of the school levy.

Equalized Valuation is supposed to be used to distribute state school aid, but New Jersey's school funding law (SFRA) is non-operating, so from the point of view of state aid, Equalized Valuation has no bearing.

Equalized Valuation is calculated by taking the average ratio of sales prices to properties' official, assessed price.  If, on average, properties sell for 15% above their assessments, the town's Equalized Valuation is 115% of its official aggregate assessment.  If, on average, properties sell for 90% of assessment, the town's Equalized Valuation is 90% of its aggregate, official assessment.

(In terms of county taxes and state aid, PILOTed properties are the same as tax exempt property because they don't contribute to Equalized Valuation.)

As usual, I've made the data (obtained via an OPRA request to the Treasury Department), available online.



Overall NJ Real Estate is a Stalled Asset

The total value NJ's real estate is barely moving.   In the last four years, the median town's market valuation has only increased by 2.1%.  This lags inflation, which was 3.64% from 2013 to 2016.

The weighted average, however, is an increase of 4.3%, as NJ's total Equalized Valuation increased from $1,159,890,947,281 to $1,209,186,432,406.  That is powered by the gains in the mega-Valuation cities of Jersey City and Hoboken, both of whom are in the top five for total Equalized Valuation and thus have "heavier" weights than 99% of other NJ towns.

South Jersey is Hurting

As always, the average masks great diversity.

Atlantic City and its environs have collapsed, pulling down the state's total. Atlantic County alone has lost $9 billion in Equalized Valuation, from falling from $45.1 billion to $34.9 billion.   Salem, Sussex, Sussex, Cumberland, and Gloucester have also lost Valuation.  Warren's growth has been trivial.

The towns that have lost the most are mostly in South Jersey, although Paterson, Irvington, East Orange and a few other northern cities also appear among the biggest losers.

Click to Enlarge

The Hudson River Shore is Booming

Click to Enlarge

On the other hand, Hudson County has boomed, from $57 billion to $71 billion.  Jersey City alone gained $7 billion, which is 15% of the state's total gain.  Jersey City's $25.7 billion in Equalized Valuation is almost equal to the total Equalized Valuations of Sussex and Warren counties.

Over 14% of NJ's Growth in Equalized Valuation ($7.1 billion
out of $49.3 billion) has been in
Jersey City alone.

The booms in Hoboken, Jersey City, and Weehawken are old news though.  What's interesting about this cycle is that North Bergen, West New York, Harrison, Guttenberg, and Union City have had extremely strong gains.  Would I call North Bergen, West New York, Harrison, Guttenberg, and Union City extensions of the "Gold Coast"?

No.  But they are getting there.   

Kearny and North Arlington did well too, although that could be from increases from non-residential property, such as logistics.

Atlantic City has lost $15 billion
in Equalized Valuation.

Bergen County also gained $9 billion, from $161 billion to $170 billion, with its southern section doing well, including Fairview. Monmouth has gained $7 billion.  

Implications for State Aid

The formula for Local Fair Share in NJ for 2016-17 is

(Equalized Valuation x 0.013156218 + Aggregate Income x 0.046185507)/2

So, for every $100 million in Equalized Valuation a district gains, its Local Fair Share would be increased by $657,810.  Since Equalized Valuation and Aggregate Income usually move in tandem, the actual increase to Local Fair Share would probably be greater than this.

Looking at the towns that have lost the most Equalized Valuation, it's easy to understand why state aid redistribution is so important to Senate President Steve Sweeney.

Sweeney's own District 3 is suffering.  Greenwich, Paulsboro, West Deptford, Penns Grove, and Carney's point are all represented by Sweeney and experiencing increases in their school tax rates caused by declining real estate value combined with increasing taxes.

Chris Christie has kept state aid frozen since 2013-14.  It's unclear what he is going to do in his last budget for FY2018, but regardless, New Jersey's next governor is going to have a lot of mess to clean up as our budgetary crisis and inflexible state aid meet the reality that many districts have gotten poorer and/or larger and need resources currently given to districts that have gotten richer and/or smaller.

Redistribution is Needed Now!!

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See Also 2016 Equalized Valuations Out

The Long Wait for Full Funding under Capped Aid

When SFRA was passed in January 2008 the designers of the law realized that they were essentially Abbottizing all poor and working class districts in New Jersey, and thus setting extremely ambitious targets for school funding that the State of New Jersey would not be able to reach in a single year.  

Thus, the framers of SFRA created "state aid growth limits," or "caps," for how much new aid a district could gain in a year.  The caps allowed the State to gradually ramp up aid for districts that were hitherto fiscally neglected.  The caps meant that SFRA could be sold to the public as something that could be paid for with new revenue and would not require a tax increase.

The legislative text describing the State Aid Growth Limits is below:

For the 2009-2010 school year and thereafter, total stabilized aid shall include Equalization aid, Special Education categorical aid, Security Aid, and Transportation aid.
d. For the purposes of this section, “State aid growth limit” means 10% in the case of a district spending above adequacy and 20% in the case of a district spending below adequacy.

SFRA also contains a section here ordering the Commissioner to "adjust" (ie, cut) a district's aid if it somehow exceeded the State Aid Growth Limit.

a. Notwithstanding any provision of this Act to the contrary, the total stabilized aid for each district shall not be increased by more than the district’s State aid growth limit. In the event that total stabilized aid exceeds the prebudget year total by a rate greater than the State aid growth limit, the commissioner shall adjust the components of total stabilized aid so that they total exactly the prebudget year total increased by the State aid growth limit.

The problem with the State Aid Growth Limits is twofold:

1.  The caps are set in terms of percentages, not dollars per student.

2.   Getting a 10% aid increase of a 20% aid increase is dependent on a district being above or below Adequacy, when spending relative to Adequacy is determined in part by local tax effort, not just state aid.

1.  The Percentage Problem

Since the caps are defined in terms of percentages and not dollars per student, a low-aid, severely underaided district would get less new aid than a high-aid, moderately underaided district.  In other words, if districts are getting 10% increases, a deeply underaided district already getting $1,000 per student would only gain is $100; whereas a slightly underaided district already getting $5,000 per student would gain $500 per student.

For instance, if SFRA were funded at its statutory level and the aid caps are followed, Newark's aid would jump by $116 million ($2,300 per student), to $858 million. By contrast Atlantic City, would only gain $2.5 million, or $370 per student.

Newark would get much more than Atlantic City because Newark already gets a lot of aid and Atlantic City gets very little ($19 million in regular aid).

That's not fair but that's SFRA.

2.  The Adequacy Budget Problem

This is SFRA's definition of Adequacy.

(1) For purposes of determining if a school district or county vocational school district is spending above or below adequacy and its applicable State aid growth limit, the district’s spending shall equal the sum for the prebudget year of its equalization aid calculated pursuant to section 11 of this act, special education categorical aid calculated pursuant to section 13 of this act, security categorical aid calculated pursuant to section 14 of this act, and general fund local levy.   [my emphasis]

Since the "general fund local levy" is included in the Adequacy Budget, a district that overtaxes itself and is thus above Adequacy is therefore penalized.

SFRA's caps were a problem in the first place, but since Christie cut aid in 2010 and has flat-funded districts since 2013, SFRA's aid caps even more unfair than they were back in 2007-2008 when they were devised, since districts are even deeper below their uncapped aid levels now than they were.

Let's look at two large, badly underaided, but above Adequacy suburbs, Cherry Hill and West Orange.

For 2016-17 Cherry Hill will get $13,110,005 in state aid, but its uncapped aid is $39,946,051.

Necessitated by underaiding, Cherry Hill's Local Tax Levy exceeds its Local Fair Share by $34 million ($159 million versus $125 million.)

It's unclear to me what Cherry Hill's Capped Aid is. Data I got last February directly from the DOE gave it at $14.2 million, but newer data on the DOE's website in "Additional School Funding Scenarios" gives Cherry Hill's capped aid at $16.5 million, a figure that I believe is based on Cherry Hill's 2008-09 aid.

Let's use the higher $16.5 million amount.  

Again, Cherry Hill's taxes are so high that it actually is above Adequacy, so its increases would be only 10% per year.

10% of $16.5 million is $1.65 million.  That's not even 1% of Cherry Hill's $191 million Total Operating Budget.  Cherry Hill already increases its taxes by $4-$5 million per year, so increases in the $1.65 million ballpark are nice, but only small offsets of Cherry Hill's steadily increasing tax burden.

But what's significant is that assuming Cherry Hill raises its taxes enough to stay above Adequacy, it would take Cherry Hill 11 years to get to what its 2016-17 full funding should have been.

And since inflation will erode the value of money and Cherry Hill's Uncapped Aid target will rise, the wait for true, full funding will be even longer, perhaps 20 years.

But Cherry Hill does much better than West Orange, another overtaxed, yet badly underaided district who is nevertheless above Adequacy.  West Orange would have a 14 year wait to full funding (again neglecting inflation).

For a district that is below Adequacy the annual boosts would be 20%, but for some severely underaided districts such as Bayonne, Red Bank, and Clifton, the wait to full funding is still 6-7 years.

By contrast, a high-aid district that gets more than 80% of its uncapped aid, like Newark, would reach full funding in a single year since Newark would qualify for a 20% increase and 20% would be more than enough to bring Newark up to its full, uncapped aid.  At that point, Newark would be fully funded and theoretically flat-funded for several years.

According to the DOE's "Additional School Funding Scenarios," other already high-aid, but modestly underaided districts, would have the biggest gains. Paterson's aid would jump by $57 million ($2,050 per student), to $458 million in a single year. Trenton's aid would increase by $33 million in a single year ($2,350 per student).

As I mentioned before, even a district as underaided as Atlantic City would gain little under capped. Atlantic City would only gain $2.5 million, or $371 per student. Red Bank Boro would gain $538,000 or $380 per student.

Bound Brook, NJ's most underaided district in terms of its dollars per student deficit, would only gain $1.54 million for 1,744 students, or $883 per student.

Freehold Boro would gain $1.8 million, or $1,100 per student. Bayonne would also gain $1,100 per student. Manchester Regional would only get $1,300 per student.

Bayonne, Bound Brook, Atlantic City would get gradually larger boosts as 10% or 20% is calculated based on larger previous-year aid totals, but if New Jersey cannot escape its chronic fiscal problems, the larger aid boosts are doubtful.

Conclusion

Given New Jersey's chronic budgetary crisis, some aid growth caps are necessary, but it would make

Steve Sweeney Understands
The Problem Here

more sense if the caps were a flat amount in dollars per student and not based on what the previous year's aid was.

If there has to be some prioritization and some districts are given bigger increases than others, let the prioritization be based on the severity of underaiding, not being above or below Adequacy, since spending relative to Adequacy depends on local tax effort, not just state aid.

As depressing as the state's dire fiscal situation is and the aid caps are, Steve Sweeney's state aid reform commission bill always included a clause on evaluating the fairness of the state aid growth caps.  As long as there is one powerful legislator who understands the unfairness of the growth caps there is some hope, but those of us who care about aid fairness have to speak up and support.

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See Also:

• Adjustment Aid Has No Statutory Sunset
• How Overaided Districts Would GAIN Money if SFRA Isn't Changed

2016 Equalized Valuations Out

The Division of Taxation has come out with new Equalized Valuations for all towns in NJ.  These Equalized Valuations are for use in FY 2017, though are calculated in 2016.

("Equalized Valuation" is the market value of a town. It is computed annually and is used to apportion county taxes. It is supposed to be used to distribute state aid, but NJ's school funding law (SFRA) is non-operating.)

The state's total Equalized Valuation increased by 3.7%, from $1.166 trillion to $1.2 trillion, but, as usual, the increases in Equalized Valuation were very uneven.

Of that $43 billion increase, $11 billion (more than 25%) was in Hudson County alone.

As usual, Jersey City and Hoboken continued their stratospheric appreciations.

Jersey City's Equalized Valuation rose from $21.7 billion to $25.7 billion.  Jersey City's Equalized Valuation is now more than 2% of NJ's total.

Hoboken's Equalized Valuation rose from $13.3 billion to $15.13 billion. Last year Hoboken was in a tie for the fourth highest in NJ with Newark, but now Hoboken is in undisputed fourth place and is within $100 million of Toms River, the current third place occupant.

Hoboken's school tax rate will surely fall even farther below the 0.3% it has now.

Jersey City's school tax rate will fall below 0.5%.  If NJ distributed Equalization Aid under a formula, Jersey City would lose at least $30 million due to its increase in tax base.

Newark, Trenton, Elizabeth, Paterson, and Camden were more or less stable this year.

Atlantic City continues its collapse.  AC's EV was once the highest in NJ, but it is down another $2 billion and is now only $6.4 billion.  When new state aid figures come out in February 2017 Atlantic City will be ranked as even more exceptionally underaided.  Atlantic County as a whole lost over $5 billion in Equalized Valuation, so the whole region is hurting.

Update: 

If Jersey City's PILOTed property were an independent city, it would be in the top ten for New Jersey.

Here are the top EVs in NJ for tax year 2017.

1. Jersey City (taxable) $25.7 bil

2. Edison $15.8 billion

3. Toms River $15.167 billion

4. Hoboken $15.128 billion

5. Newark $13.8 billion

6. Ocean City $12 bil

7.  Jersey City PILOTed $11.6 billion
8. Middletown $10.6 billion

9. Woodbridge $10.5 billion

http://njeducationaid.blogspot.com/2017/03/jersey-city-piloted-property-is-worth.html

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See Also:
Divergent Fates of NJ's Big Cities

Two Cheers for County Taxes

NJ Auditor's Report Finds Deep Flaws in State Aid

MUST READ


NJ's Auditor has come out with a report on school funding and admits what we already know: that state aid appropriations bear no relationship with SFRA recommendations, tax base, or current student demographics.

Funding is not based on current district data.
The SFRA formula distributes aid based on district enrollment and student demographics  (income, special education, language barriers, etc.), as well as other factors such as district  wealth and property values. In fiscal years 2015 and 2016, funding remained static for each district at the fiscal year 2014 funding level for SFRA formula aid categories (with the exception of School Choice and Preschool Aid). Changes in districts’ enrollments, student demographics, and other factors influencing aid were not considered.

The SFRA formula aid has not been distributed per statute since fiscal year 2009. Starting in fiscal year 2010, the Appropriations Acts began superseding part, or all, of the formula.  Through fiscal year 2014, the methods followed for the annual calculations blended past and  current data from multiple years to determine funding, making the distribution convoluted. During fiscal years 2015 and 2016, no data from either year was applied to the formula to determine funding. Consequently, there were significant differences between actual funding and what the SFRA dictates.

I was encouraged to see that the report criticized Adjustment Aid, even though Adjustment Aid is part of SFRA:

Additionally, it should be noted that even though the SFRA formula aid was not distributed in accordance with statute, districts may have received Adjustment Aid. This aid is provided so districts do not receive less aid than their fiscal year 2009 amount. In addition, in fiscal year 2014, Additional Adjustment Aid was distributed per the Appropriations Act to ensure districts would not receive less than their fiscal year 2013 funding. Adjustment Aid and Additional Adjustment Aid can be contrary to the objective of the SFRA since funding may exceed the districts’ actual needs for their current student populations.

More originally, the report claims that SFRA's formula for Special Ed Aid, which assumes that every district in NJ has a 14% classification rate, does not work for scores of districts:

"Our review of districts with 100 or more special education students in fiscal years 2015 and 2016 found that 234 districts (59 percent) and 258 districts (64 percent), respectively, had an actual classification rate that deviated more than 10 percentage points from the statewide average classification rate of 14.78 percent. As a result, district funding is not commensurate with actual enrollment of classified students in many instances."

The report also found that every district getting PreK aid OVERestimated its enrollment.  The overestimates result in an extra payment of $32.9 MILLION.

Our review also noted that every district overestimated their projected enrollment in fiscal year 2015, resulting in overpayments to 32 districts totaling $25.7 million. In fiscal year 2016, 33 districts overestimated their projected enrollment, resulting in 30 districts being overpaid a total of $32.9 million. However, using actual enrollment data, we determined that seven and ten of the SDA districts in fiscal years 2015 and 2016 would still have been held harmless to their fiscal year 2009 funding, resulting in additional overpayments of $10.9 million and $28.2 million, respectively.

The report revealed something I did not know, which is that Abbott districts have been "held harmless" for PreK aid and not just K-12 aid.  This means that if an Abbott districts has fewer PreK students now than it had in 2008, it gets the same amount of money it got before.

The SDA [Abbott] school districts are held harmless to fiscal year 2009 thresholds. They will receive the greater of their calculated fiscal year 2015 or 2016 Preschool Education Aid, as explained above; the amount of aid they received in fiscal year 2009; or their fiscal year 2009 per pupil amount multiplied by their current year total projected enrollment. During our audit period, seven SDA districts were held harmless providing them with $11.8 million and $16.5 million in excess funding for fiscal years 2015 and 2016, respectively.  [my emphasis]

The report also demonstrates disparities in Pre-K aid that are rarely covered:

Districts can operate full-day, half-day, or a combination of both for their preschool programs. The [Early Childhood Program Aid] per pupil amounts are based on full-day preschool programs. Students attending half-day programs receive half of the per pupil amount for each enrolled student. We noted that the per pupil amounts for the 93 districts ranged from $2,036 to $27,663. This disproportionate funding creates educational inequities among the students being served by this aid. 

The DOE response is included.  The DOE concurs with all recommendations except the one for Specia Education.  The DOE says it is working to make Pre-K distributions match enrollment.

Is Steve Sweeney Overselling His State Aid Proposal?

Readers know that I'm a fan of Steve Sweeney's "Formula4Success" proposal and, because of his stance on state aid, I'm a fan of Steve Sweeney himself.

I see Sweeney's proposal as the progressive, pragmatic, and fair plan for state aid that New Jersey needs. By combining $100 million annual boosts in K-12 education funding with at least $500 million in redistribution from overaided districts, Sweeney's plan could finally be the pathway to fair school funding that New Jersey has been waiting forty years for.  I also am thrilled that Sweeney's proposal will address the distortions of state aid that result from PILOTed property being "invisible" to the formula for state aid and amend the tax cap law too.

And yet, I worry that Steve Sweeney is slightly overselling his aid plan and that it won't bring every district up to 100% of its SFRA recommendation, nor will it end the disparities that vex the state.

To be brief, here's why:
1.  The amount of money being discussed is not enough.
2.  The aid targets may be for Capped Aid, not Uncapped Aid.

So, this is how Sweeney characterizes his plan:

That is why I joined with Senator Ruiz, Assemblywoman Joann Downey and Assemblyman Eric Houghtaling to introduce legislation to establish the State School Funding Fairness Commission.
By June, the panel will recommend revisions to the 2008 law to ensure that state aid is distributed on a fair and equitable basis to all districts, and that fast-growing school districts receive the additional funding they need to compensate for enrollment growth.
We have pledged to add $500 million in additional school aid over the next five years to guarantee that every school district receives 100 percent funding and that the commission’s recommendations are implemented.

I hate to say this, but something is wrong here. $500 million in new aid plus about about $500 million in redistributed aid is only about $1 billion.

According to data I received from the Department of Education, NJ's underaided districts have a deficit of $1,946,380,097 for 2016-17.  Since Steve Sweeney is unambiguously for redistribution, it's the net deficit that matters, which is only $1,378,606,184 (for non-vo-techs). (Hereinafter approximated at "$1.4 billion."  See the chart here to see the numbers)

So the total amount of excess aid is $567,773,913, but some of that is Interdistrict Choice money, which is not subject to redistribution under Sweeney's proposal.

However, that $1.4 billion deficit figure is a moving target since the DOE is supposed to make periodic inflation adjustments to districts' Base Per Pupil amounts, ie, their aid targets.  Although the Christie administration hasn't made these adjustments, the next Democratic Department of Education may do so.  As inflationary adjustments are made, the deficit will grow and the amount of Adjustment Aid to redistribute will (usually) shrink, since the Adequacy Budgets of Adjustment Aid districts will grow.

In any case, $568 million in excess aid, even with another $500 million thrown in, is less than $1.4 billion, even before inflationary increases are factored in and even before excesses from Interdistrict Choice are roped off from redistribution.

So what are Steve Sweeney and his coauthors talking about when they say "100 percent funding"?

The cap is 10% if the district is above Adequacy or
20% if the district is below Adequacy.

It appears they are talking about Capped Aid, with which NJ has a deficit of about $1 billion ($864 million according to Senator Ruiz) and Capped Aid full funding is not real full funding and the distribution of aid under full Capped Aid would still be unfair.

Capped Aid and Uncapped Aid are not aid streams like Equalization Aid, Special Education Aid, and Adjustment Aid are; Capped Aid and Uncapped Aid are aid amounts.

Capped Aid is just an incremental step on the way to Uncapped Aid.

Capped Aid's origins are in SFRA itself:

For the 2009-2010 school year and thereafter, total stabilized aid shall include Equalization aid, Special Education categorical aid, Security Aid, and Transportation aid. 

d. For the purposes of this section, “State aid growth limit” means 10% in the case of a district spending above adequacy and 20% in the case of a district spending below adequacy. 

SFRA also contains a section here ordering the Commission to "adjust" (ie, cut) a district's aid if it somehow exceeded the State Aid Growth Limit.

a. Notwithstanding any provision of this Act to the contrary, the total stabilized aid for each district shall not be increased by more than the district’s State aid growth limit. In the event that total stabilized aid exceeds the prebudget year total by a rate greater than the State aid growth limit, the commissioner shall adjust the components of total stabilized aid so that they total exactly the prebudget year total increased by the State aid growth limit.

So, if a district was getting $50 million pre-SFRA (ie, 2007-08) and SFRA said it should get $90 million (ie, $90 million is its Uncapped Aid),the biggest boost the district would get is 10% or 20% of what it got previously, so $5 or $10 million, depending on whether or not the budget was above or below Adequacy.

So calling "Capped Aid" "100 percent funding" is inaccurate.

SFRA never envisioned that districts would lose aid in the Great Recession, so the calculation of Capped Aid is now very opaque, but the basic point is that Capped Aid is tied to what a district got in the past and its own spending relative to Adequacy, not what a district's economic-demographic needs are at the present.

(See Also:
"The Long Wait for Full Funding Under Capped Aid")

Steve Sweeney knows the difference between Capped Aid and Uncapped Aid and his proposal has always contained a clause to correct the unfairness of Capped Aid, but Capped Aid targets appear on the Formula4Success website. (see Edison for example)

If a district is brought up to its Capped Aid the gain is often just trivial.  For Edison to gain only $2.5 million over five years is pathetic.  Edison has a $226 million operating budget, so $2.5 million is 1% of that.  Edison already increases taxes by $5-$10 million per year, so what does an additional $2.5 million do?  

$2.5 million is only $160 per student for Edison.  

What's even more annoying is that since SFRA sets increases according to a percentage of what a district got previously, and not a set amount per student, a high-aid/moderately underaided district would gain more than a low-aid/severely underaided district.

Compare Newark and Red Bank Boro.  Red Bank Boro is underaided by almost $5000 per student.  Newark is underaided by $1800 per student, but Newark would gain the full $1800 (since its existing aid is $14,700 per student) whereas Red Bank Boro would gain not even $400 per student, since its existing aid is only $2100 per student.  

People have brought up the problems of Capped Aid versus Uncapped Aid and the legislation may have been changed to directly the Commissioners to consider Uncapped Aid needs.  

Originally the legislation said:

2. a. It shall be the duty of the commission to study: (1) the adjustment aid and State aid growth limit provisions of the “School Funding Reform Act of 2008” (SFRA), P.L.2007, c.260 (C.18A:7F-43 et al.), to determine recommendations for revising those provisions in order to bring all school districts to their adequacy budgets as calculated pursuant to section 9 of that act over a period of five school years; 

But now it says:

     (1)   the impact of the adjustment aid and State aid growth limit provisions of the “School Funding Reform Act of 2008” (SFRA), P.L.2007, c.260 (C.18A:7F-43 et al.), on the fairness of the school funding formula, to make recommendations for revising those provisions in order to provide full funding of the “School Funding Reform Act of 2008” over a five-year period, and to bring fair and equitable funding to all school districts for enrollment growth over a multi-year period;

"Fair and equitable manner" can mean absolutely anything, but it is an addition to the text and the Commissioners could read it to prioritize districts with the largest deficits relative to Uncapped Aid.

And even if Sweeney's plan is affirmed by the legislature in 2017 and Christie signs it, an additional problem with Sweeney's approach is that it depends on NJ's next governor being pro-reform.

Chris Christie has proven that a governor can ignore the state's funding law if he doesn't like it and the state's revenue is adequate.  If NJ's next governor doesn't like redistribution, wants to do something outside of SFRA, such as give extra aid to charterized districts, or conflates being below Adequacy with being underaided, he can ignore NJ's new state aid law and allow more aid hoarding.

NJ's overaided districts have been passive so far in the face of losing state aid, but once it actually begins to happen and their taxes increase way beyond inflation, they'll howl.

Steve Sweeney or a pro-reform Republican like Jack Ciattarelli may be NJ's next governor, but the governor could also be Phil Murphy or Steve Fulop.

State aid is not a priority for Phil Murphy and Steve Fulop.  They rarely comment on aid to begin with, but when they do, their views are uninformed.  Phil Murphy says he wants to "implement that formula," but is evasive on the subject of redistributing state aid, has made billions in non-education promises, takes inaccurate cheap shots at Chris Christie, and does not recognize that fully funding SFRA without redistribution would cost $2 billion a year.  Steve Fulop is even worse.  He has never admitted the unfairness of Jersey City's state aid level and his strenuous opposition to a tax reval for Jersey City indicates a contempt to fair taxation altogether.

Yet, Steve Sweeney is still just a politician and he has exaggerated what his plan would do.  I still support Sweeney's plan and like Steve Sweeney very much, but aid-activists should clarify with Steve Sweeney about the need to focus on Uncapped Aid, not Capped Aid.  Journalists should also investigate what the true costs to fully fund SFRA would be.

Education Spending Hasn't Reached Pre-Recession Levels

Back to school budget analysis from FiveThirtyEight:

As millions of children across the country head back to school this month, they will be returning to schools with fewer teachers than in past years. Those teachers will be paid less, on average. And many of them will be working in school systems that receive less funding. 

The 7-year-old economic recovery has not been kind to the American public education system. In May 2008, as the Great Recession was just beginning, U.S. school departments employed 8.4 million teachers and other workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This past May, they employed just 8.2 million — despite public-school enrollments that the Department of Education estimated have risen by more than 1 million students during the same period. Student-teacher ratios are as high as they’ve been since the late 1990s, though they’re still well below their levels of the 1980s and most of the 1990s. 

The staff cuts reflect a broader pullback in education funding in recent years. Public schools actually came through the recession relatively well, as stimulus money from the federal government helped offset cuts at the state and local levels. But federal dollars dried up before states were able to pick up the slack. In 2014, the latest year for which full data is available, state public-education funding was 6.6 percent lower than in 2008. (Local funding, which accounts for about 45 percent of school budgets, was down about 1 percent over the same span.) Federal spending rose, but not enough to overcome the state cuts: Per-student spending fell 2.4 percent after adjusting for inflation. (All spending figures in this story have been adjusted for inflation.) 

More spending, of course, doesn’t necessarily translate into better education, and budget watchdogs have long called on states to rein in spending on administrative salaries, building construction and other non-instructional items. But classrooms haven’t been spared; instructional spending has been cut at roughly the same rate as overall budgets.

According to the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in inflation adjusted terms, NJ spends 7.5% less per student than it spent in 2008, which is bad, although near the national median.

State funding for education has declined by only 1.9% per student.

The Abbotts Didn't and Don't Have NJ's Worst Municipal Overburden

One justification Robert Wilentz and the NJ Supreme Court gave for ordering massive state aid to the Abbott districts is that the Abbotts suffered from "municipal overburden" and thus were not in a position to increase their local taxes further.

As Wilentz wrote:

1. Municipal Overburden “Municipal overburden” is the excessive tax levy some municipalities must impose to meet governmental needs other than education. It is a common characteristic in poorer urban districts, a product of their relatively low property values against which the local tax is assessed and their high level of governmental need. The governmental need includes the entire range of goods and services made available to citizens: police and fire protection, road maintenance, social services, water, sewer, garbage disposal, and similar services. Although the condition is not precisely defined, it is usually thought of as a tax rate well above the average.

The underlying causes of municipal overburden are many and complex. Its consequences in this case, however, are clear and simple. The poorer urban school districts, sharing the same tax base with the municipality, suffer from severe municipal overburden; they are extremely reluctant to increase taxes for school purposes. Not only is their local tax levy well above average, so is their school tax rate. The oppressiveness of the tax burden on their citizens by itself would be sufficient to give them pause before raising taxes. Additionally, the rates in some cases are so high that further taxation may actually decrease tax revenues by diminishing total property values, either directly because of the tax-value relationship, or indirectly by causing business and industry to relocate to another municipality.

Indeed, there is much truth to what Wilentz said of the Abbotts and excessive taxes.

In FY1990, the average NJ property owner paid an all-in 2.041 tax rate, but the average Abbott property owner would have paid 2.918, a significantly higher figure.  A reasonable person could conclude that most (NOT ALL) of the Abbotts required significantly more state aid than they were then receiving.

Looking at the high (superficial) average, the high Abbott tax rate would seem to justify Wilentz' dictates, but the overall 2.918 Abbott average masks great diversity and completely omits any consideration of the many high-tax non-Abbotts who were left behind.

The problem with the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision in Abbott isn't the idea that poor districts needed more state aid to avoid municipal overburden, it's what districts the NJ Supreme Court designated as having those special needs.

Instead of using a data-based method to determine what districts had the highest taxes and should be the ones to get that extra aid, the NJ Supreme Court unilaterally decided that districts who were both in DFG A or B and classified as "urban" by the Department of Community Affairs had a claim to the money that poor or poorer non-urban districts didn't have.

 A number of the Abbott districts indeed suffered from municipal overburden, but not all of them did and there were a great many non-Abbotts that also had acute municipal overburden who were completely left out of the Abbott decision.

(I got the historical tax data from the Dept of Treasury. I've put it up on my Historical State Aid Data Spreadsheet.)

In terms of taxes, the creation of the Abbott list had more mistakes of exclusion than inclusion.

Most of the Abbotts did indeed have high taxes; but most of NJ's highest tax districts were not Abbotts.

Hence, if you actually look at the 50 towns in NJ with the highest tax rates, only 15 were Abbottized in 1990.  (Salem City was not Abbottized until 2004)

Click to Enlarge

If you look at the Abbotts themselves, their tax rates were much higher than average and were destructively high in Camden, East Orange, Orange, Bridgeton, and Asbury Park, but Abbott tax rates varied and so did the reasons for the excessive taxation.  Asbury Park's high taxes translated into very high student spending (in excess of Millburn) even in 1989-90, so its high tax burden can be seen as partly voluntary.

However, punishing taxes also existed in other low-DFG districts.  20 of the non-Abbott districts who were also among the 50 highest taxed towns were in DFG A or B:  Salem City (then DFG A), Penn's Grove (DFG A), Pine Hill (DFG B), Woodlynne (DFG B), Commercial Township (DFG A), Lawnside (DFG B), Clemonton (DFG B), Lawrence Township (DFG A), Chesilhurst (DFG A), Egg Harbor City (DFG A), Clayton (DFG B), Bellmawr (DFG B), Brooklawn (DFG B), Maurice River (DFG A), Fairfield Township (DFG A), Paulsboro (DFG A), Lakehurst (DFG A) Elk (DFG B), National Park (DFG A), and Greenwich (DFG B).  (these are 1980s DFG classifications)

Of the future Abbotts, you would not be able to say that Garfield, Burlington, Harrison, Perth Amboy, Neptune Township, Phillipsburg, and Hoboken had any kind of real municipal overburden.  (And Hoboken also already outspent Millburn in 1989-90.)

Click to Enlarge

The Supreme Court gave the legislature some discretion over the final composition of the Abbott list, but since the NJ Supreme Court came out with the Abbott II decision in early June and the budget had to finalized by the end of June, the legislature did not have the time to thoughtfully and thoroughly evaluate what districts most merited this mountain of state aid.  The only changes the legislature made were the additions of Neptune Township and Plainfield to the list of Abbott districts.

Today the immensity of state aid for the Abbotts has reduced their school taxes significantly and taken many Abbotts out of the realm of acute municipal overburden.

In 1990, fifteen of the 50 worst-taxed towns in NJ were Abbotts.  In 2016 only eight are.

Click to Enlarge:
Source: http://www.state.nj.us/dca/divisions/dlgs/resources/property_tax.html#1

In terms of school taxes alone, even fewer Abbotts were among the 50 highest taxed districts.

The Abbott decision was wrongheaded for multiple theoretical reasons. Abbott was wrongheaded for its insistence that money was the dominant factor in academic success, for its belief that the state could rigidly demarcate "urban poor" from all other districts, from its blindness towards the many struggling non-Abbotts who would be left behind.   Lastly, Abbott was wrongheaded because of the Supreme Court's repeated contempt for democracy and the elected branches.

However, the more I did into Abbott history the more I realize it was wrong even on factual reasons. The Abbotts weren't New Jersey's lowest spending, Pemberton was no instance of "society is failing," and the Abbotts, as a class, didn't have New Jersey's worst municipal overburden.

Finally, the relevance of the Abbotts not having NJ's worst municipal overburden cannot be emphasized enough in response to the Education Law Center's threats to launch another Abbott case.

The relevance of the Abbotts cannot be emphasized enough in condemning Chris Christie's failure to update the Abbott list.

I've said this before and said it again, but Abbott is judicial activism at its worst.

More Abbott History:

• The Abbott List Has Always Been Unfair

• The Role of Abbott Funding in the Pension Crisis

• If the Abbott List Were Updated, Who Would Be On It? Who Would be Off It?

• The Transformation of State Aid Since 1990