Should there be a Constitutional Right to Unlimited Property Taxation?
A Reply to Dunn and Derthick in Education Next
Anyone who has read my previous work knows I’m not generally a fan of tax and expenditure limits. A significant body of empirical research does show that strict tax and expenditure limits can cause significant damage to state school finance systems over the long haul. For example, Author David Figlio in a study of Oregon’s Measure 5 (National Tax Journal Vol 51 no. 1 (March 1998) pp. 55-70) finds that: Oregon student-teacher ratios have increased significantly as a result of the state’s tax limitation. David Figlio and Kim Rueben in the Journal of Public Economics (April 2001, Pages 49-71) find: Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics we find that tax limits systematically reduce the average quality of education majors, as well as new public school teachers in states that have passed these limits. In a non-peer reviewed, but high quality working paper,
