Committee votes to draft bill to raise ECS foundation; members urge CPI indexing and confirm state funding
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Summary
The committee voted to draft a bill to raise the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) foundation and discussed ensuring the increase comes from state funds and the possibility of tying future adjustments to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Senator McCourt called the measure a caucus priority.
The committee voted to draft agenda item 5 to raise the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) foundation, with members emphasizing that any increase would rely on state funding and suggesting indexing the foundation to the Consumer Price Index to avoid yearly legislative fixes.
Representative Haines asked whether the additional funding would come from the state rather than falling to municipalities, saying, "The funding for this, I absolutely a 100% agree, and I think it should be even higher. But I just wanna be sure that it's coming from the state as opposed to falling back onto the municipalities." The chair responded, "All education cost sharing, funds are funded from the state. So if we're raising the foundation amount of that formula, it is state dollars."
Representative Belinski asked for the committee to consider tying the new foundation amount to CPI so the amount would auto‑adjust, saying it would be "my preference if we could include in the conversation the possibility of tying the new foundation amount to the CPI so that we don't have to come back and make the adjustment every year." The chair indicated agreement and anticipated further conversation about options to increase state support.
Senator McCourt described the proposal as a Democratic caucus priority in the Senate and noted that the foundation "has been raised since 2013," arguing for a raise now and possible indexing later to maintain purchasing power.
The committee approved drafting the bill by voice vote; the chair instructed staff to prepare draft language. No fiscal note or specific dollar amounts were presented during the meeting. The drafting vote was procedural and moves the proposal into the drafting stage where staff will prepare statutory text and fiscal estimates for future committee consideration.
Next steps: committee staff will draft statutory language and fiscal estimates; committee members indicated support for discussing indexing options in subsequent meetings.