{"id":37619,"date":"2017-01-24T01:09:34","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T07:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=37619"},"modified":"2017-01-24T12:21:36","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T18:21:36","slug":"representative-jay-hughes-tax-shift-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/representative-jay-hughes-tax-shift-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"Representative Jay Hughes: Tax Shift Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAX SHIFT AHEAD – EXIT NOW!<\/span><\/p>\n

Lawmakers are in session in Jackson.\u00a0 Local school districts, property owners, superintendents and supervisors beware!\u00a0 The legislature is trying to lay the groundwork to raise your local taxes by shifting the responsibility of K-12 public school funding down to your counties and cities.\u00a0 How will that happen?\u00a0 Less school funding from Jackson, and higher school funding from the local districts, which will have to be locally voted on every single year.\u00a0\u00a0 That way, your local officials will have to either raise your taxes or watch the schools fail.\u00a0 Of course, this is nothing but an effort to deflect blame in the next election cycle that legislators have once again underfunded the schools of our 490,000 children, ensuring that our best resource for attracting jobs is forever broken.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0This is not law – yet.\u00a0 No, it is merely a set of \u201crecommendations\u201d from the super-secret study done by a New Jersey consulting company, EdBuild.\u00a0 Having listened to every word, and read the whole 79-page sales brochure, I know enough to be scared, very scared.\u00a0 There is a popular question from a bestseller:\u00a0 \u201cWhat is your one thing?\u201d<\/i>\u00a0 If these recommendations could talk and tell the truth, their one thing would be:\u00a0 Shift taxes to local taxpayers so we cannot be blamed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0The 79 pages can be boiled down to seven simple and devastating points:<\/span><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Your local taxes will increase (\u201ctax shift\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Your car tags will increase (\u201ctax shift\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

3. The State will send less money to your local school districts than it is sending now (\u201cdeflect\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Your state taxes will not decrease;<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Poor and rural districts will take money from wealthier districts, but still not enough to survive \u00a0(hmmm, sounds like 42-A threats);<\/span><\/p>\n

6. Classroom sized will be increased, and there will be fewer teachers; and,<\/span><\/p>\n

7. Assigning specific dollars to specific students is the first step toward vouchers and full charter schools.<\/span><\/p>\n

The biggest sign that the whole \u201cplan\u201d is suspect came when the CEO deflected a question during the presentation.\u00a0 Remember, this young company was hired to re-calculate the entire $2 Billion education spending. \u00a0\u00a0The question was simple:\u00a0 Will this new formula, if adopted, mean more or less money than our schools are currently receiving? \u00a0\u00a0She simply responded:\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m not good with math.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, we all know the real answer to that:\u00a0 Grab your wallets and prepare for your local taxes to go through the roof \u2013 with no relief from the budget mess in Jackson.\u00a0 Be prepared to share your views on this tax shift before the legislature has its way with your local property taxes.\u00a0 Otherwise, this will pass in the darkness of night.\u00a0\"The<\/span><\/p>\n

Jay Hughes is a Mississippi\u00a0State Representative from\u00a0District 12 \u2013 Lafayette County.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TAX SHIFT AHEAD – EXIT NOW! Lawmakers are in session in Jackson.\u00a0 Local school districts, property owners, superintendents<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":254,"featured_media":36171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[7811,1447,256,5,4],"class_list":["post-37619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-opinion","tag-district-12","tag-jay-hughes","tag-lafayette-county","tag-mississippi","tag-oxford"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/jay-hughes.jpg?fit=940%2C490&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}