Saturday, January 11, 2025

Oconee School Board Member Says He Got Approval From Two Colleagues On Board’s Intent To Opt Out Of Homestead Exemption

***No Public Meeting Held Before Announcement***

Oconee County School Board Member Michael Ransom said he contacted Board members Amy Parrish and Ryan Hammock before he decided to announce on Jan. 2 that the Board intends to opt out of the statewide homestead exemption approved by voters on Nov. 5.

Ransom said he made the opt out decision after the Dec. 9 meeting of the Board and that he received the approval of Parrish and Hammock for the decision.

Under the law approved by the legislature last March, homestead assessment increases will be limited to the rate of inflation, with any excess being offset by the homestead exemption.

Local governing bodies can decide to opt out of implementation of the law.

Oconee County Schools Chief Financial Officer Peter Adams had briefed the Board of Education on Dec. 9 on the impact of the new exemption on the county’s school system, saying it “could significantly impact” revenue received by the schools from property taxes.

The Board took no action following the presentation by Adams, and all public indications were that the Board would address the question when it met in January.

Ransom said he felt empowered to take the lead on making the decision to state the intent to opt out since he had been elected Post 1 Board Chair on Nov. 5, but voters also passed at that time a referendum stripping him of that position in favor of a chair elected by the Board in January.

Ransom’s decision to get approval from Parrish and Hammock for such an important issue without holding a public meeting puts the spotlight on decision making by a Board that does not discuss issues in public but votes unanimously on issues large and small that come before it.

So far this school year the Board has voted 49 times on such things as the millage rate and a contract extension for Superintendent Jason Branch as well as field trips for students. Every vote has been unanimous.

In the last school year, the Board voted 105 times on matters other than approval of minutes and agendas. Every one of those votes was unanimous.

Decision Made

On Jan. 2, Oconee County School administrators issued a news release announcing the decision by Ransom to opt out of the new statewide homestead exemption.

Argo And Ransom 12/9/2024

The news release also announced three required public hearings where citizens can register their support of or opposition to that decision.

Those will be at 6 p.m. on Jan. 23, at 6 p.m. on Jan. 28, and at 4 p.m. on Feb. 3 at the Instructional Support Center, 71 North Main Street in Watkinsville.

After the hearings, the Board must pass a resolution opting out of the exemption and file a copy of the resolution by March 1 with the Georgia Secretary of State.

Board policy allows for a majority of the Board to call a special meeting, so Ransom, Parrish, and Hammock could have called a meeting of the Board for Jan. 2, where new Board members Adam Hammond and Brock Toole could have been sworn in.

The Board then could have made a decision on whether to opt out of the floating freeze and still met the March 1 deadline.

I asked Ransom in an email message on Jan. 6 why he did not do that, but he did not respond to that question.

What Floating Freeze Would Do

The General Assembly, in its session last year, put on the statewide ballot on Nov. 5 an amendment to the state constitution to authorize the General Assembly to create a “state-wide homestead exemption that serves to limit increases in the assessed value of homesteads.”

How It Works I

Across the state, 62.9 percent of the voters approved the amendment. In Oconee County, the percentage of voters approving was just higher at 64.3 percent.

The legislature last year also passed House Bill 581, contingent on approval of the amendment by voters, to set up the homestead exemption called for by the constitutional amendment.

The exemption created by House Bill 581 is referred to as a floating homestead exemption, so named because the value of the exemption changes based on the inflation rate.

If a homestead property has an increase in assessed value from one year to the next that does not result from improvements in the property, any increase in assessment higher than the inflation rate would be exempted from taxation.

The legislature tasked the Georgia Revenue Commissioner with selecting the inflation indicator.

Impact Of House Bill 581

The Association County Commissioners Georgia and the Georgia Municipal Association note that the floating homestead exemption will reward homeowners who remain in a community for a long time. New home owners will pay at the assessed rate when they purchase the home.

How It Works II

The exemption also has the effect of shifting the tax burden from the homeowner to agricultural, commercial, industrial, and residential properties that are not occupied by a homeowner. So renters likely would be impacted by the assessment increases.

As an incentive for not opting out of the freeze, House Bill 581 allows county and city governments to offset the loss of revenue with the addition of a second Local Option Sales Tax.

In Oconee County, that could increase the sales tax from its current eight cents on the dollar to nine.

Schools districts cannot pass a Local Option Sales Tax, which can be used to cover operating as well as capital projects. School districts are only allowed to use an Education Local Option Sales Tax, the revenue from which can only be used for capital, not operating, expenses.

School districts also have a 20 mill cap on the millage rate they can set without a vote in a referendum, while local governments do not have a millage rate cap. (At present, the Oconee County Schools millage rate is 14.25.)

All three of Oconee County’s representatives in Atlanta, Rep. Houston Gaines, Rep. Marcus Wiedower, and Sen. Bill Cowsert, voted in favor of House Bill 581.

The vote in the House on House Bill was 164 to 2. In the Senate, it was 52 to 0.

Oconee County Schools Analysis

The Georgia School Board Association opposed House Bill 581 when it was being considered by the legislature because of the loss of revenue to school districts.

New Sales Tax Explained

Before the vote in November, as I was preparing an explanatory post on the items on the ballot, I asked then Oconee County School Board Chair Kim Argo if anyone locally had “analyzed the impact for Oconee County Schools of Constitutional Amendment #1 on the ballot.”

Argo referred me to School Superintendent Jason Branch, but Branch did not respond to my request.

Chief Financial Officer Adams’s presentation to the Board on Dec. 9 was the first public discussion of the impact of House Bill 581 on Oconee County Schools.

Adams told the Board at that meeting that the floating homestead exemption “could significantly impact property taxes for the school district.”

Adams said he went back to 2018 and calculated what impact the floating homestead exemption would have had if it had been in effect those years.

The cumulative loss to Oconee County Schools would have been $13.9 million across seven years, he said, with the loss greater in the last three years, when inflation has been greatest.

The change also will affect state funding, Adams said.

As part of the Quality Basic Education (QBE) formula, school systems in the state have to offset or take a reduction in their state funding based on calculation of the revenue that five mills produces in property taxes.

That calculation will be based on the tax digest prior to the floating homestead exemption, Adams said.

Board Action

“At this time we are not making any recommendations on this matter,” Adams said as he ended his comments to the Board.

Policy Considerations

No member of the Board suggested any time line for making that decision. Board Member Tim Burgess, who was stepping down at the end of the year, said that a future Board would be responsible for that decision.

The next scheduled meeting of the Board is Monday, and the agenda for the meeting on Monday says the swearing in for Hammond, Ransom, and Toole will be the first item.

The election of a Board chair, vice chair, and legislative liaison will be the third item, following a call to order. (It isn’t specified who will issue the call to order.)

The agenda does not include any discussion of the Board decision to opt out of the floating homestead exemption and does not list a vote on that decision under action items.

State’s Open Meetings Law

The Georgia Open Meetings Act defines a meeting as “The gathering of a quorum of the members of the governing body of an agency at which any official business, policy, or public matter of the agency is formulated, presented, discussed, or voted upon.”

The law states that “Except as otherwise provided by law, all meetings shall be open to the public. All votes at any meeting shall be taken in public after due notice of the meeting and compliance with the posting and agenda requirements of this chapter.”

“The public at all times shall be afforded access to meetings declared open to the public,” the law reads.

“Any resolution, rule, regulation, ordinance, or other official action of an agency adopted, taken, or made at a meeting which is not open to the public as required by this chapter shall not be binding,” the Act reads.

An agency can meet by “teleconference” only “Under circumstances necessitated by emergency conditions involving public safety or the preservation of property or public services,” according to the law.

In short, even for Parrish, Hammock, and Ransom to meet to discuss opting out of the freeze, they would have had to do so in an announced public meeting.

They were prohibited from meeting and voting via teleconference. A dictionary definition of a teleconference is “a conference with participants in different locations linked by telecommunications devices.”

Board Meetings And Votes

The Oconee County Board of Education is scheduled to meet 19 times this school year, the same as last year.

Board During Recognitions 12/9/2024
Hammock, Parish, Branch, Argo, Random, Burgess (L-R) Rear

Seven of those are labeled as work sessions–in August, September, October, February, March, April, and May–when the Board meets twice a month.

Board meetings, both work and regular, are tightly choreographed affairs, with much of the time devoted to the Board recognizing students, teachers, administrators, themselves, and members of the public.

Another significant part of the meetings is set aside for presentations to the Board by designated teachers and administrators, often with accompanying students, of some program of a selected school.

Superintendent Jason Branch and his administrators also give reports, on such things as finances, technology, special education, and curricular matters.

Board members sometimes ask questions, but there is almost never any discussion among Board members. Administrators are never challenged.

Burgess frequently asked questions for which he knew the answers and then repeated the answers he was given a second time, to make some public point about the schools or the Board.

At the end of the meetings, the Board votes on recommendations from Branch, including to approve travel by students, purchase of equipment, curricular changes, acceptance of bids, and, once a year, on budgets and on setting the millage tax rate.

At the end of the meetings, the Board goes into executive session, returning to approve personnel recommendations from Branch, such as to hire a teacher, an administrator, or staff.

Once a year, it approves a new contract for Branch after an executive session. It also reports when it has reviewed student disciplinary actions.

So far this year, the Board has voted 48 times on these matters, and the Board approved all of them unanimously.

Last school year, the Board voted 105 times, and each time the vote was unanimous.

(I have left out of this count votes on acceptance of the minutes of meetings and on the agendas for meetings. These are routinely unanimous as well.)

For some unstated reason, the Board never voted last March when Burgess, acting as legislative liaison, asked Wiedower and Gaines to introduce legislation to change the way the Board Chair is selected. Wiedower and Gaines introduced the legislation regardless.

Retreat

The Board holds called meetings, such as the ones announced in the news release on Jan. 2 for hearings on the decision to opt out of the floating homestead exemption.

Burgess 12/9/2024

The Board also holds an annual retreat, usually in January and at the Georgia Club, just outside the county boundary in Barrow County.

This meeting is an exception to the rule. Much of the meeting is consumed with reports to the Board from school administrators, but there also is discussion among the Board members and with Branch and other administrators.

This meeting is not on the calendar and is technically treated as a called meeting.

On Dec. 30, I sent Oconee County Schools Communications Director Steven Colquitt an email, telling him “I am doing some advance planning for the New Year. Would you be so kind as to tell me when the Board will hold it annual retreat and where it will be held?”

He responded the next day, saying: “Thank you for your inquiry regarding a Board of Education special session. In keeping with OCS’s standard practices, should a special session be scheduled, details will be shared with the legal organ and posted on the district’s website and social media platforms. Please let me know if you have any further questions.”

Board Chair Argo last year also had refused to give advance notice of the dates for the retreat.

Colquitt, Standing, 12/9/2024

In he end, I could not attend the meeting lasts year because of medical appointments, but a reporter for the legal organ, The Oconee Enterprise, and one other citizen were present.

Both were asked by Colquitt to leave the room when the Board broke for lunch, and they complied.

Colquitt called the luncheon break an “executive session,” which the Board is allowed to have only after a vote–which did not take place–and only to discuss personnel, legal actions, or land transactions.

It isn’t possible to know what the Board discussed during the luncheon break, which lasted about an hour.

Colquitt, who is the open records officer for Oconee County Schools, subsequently said he had made an error in calling the luncheon break an executive session.

First Email Exchange With Ransom

When an announcement appeared on the web site of Oconee County Schools on the afternoon of Jan. 2 stating that the Board of Education intends to opt out of the floating homestead exemption, I began an email exchange with Ransom.

“Opting out would allow Oconee County Schools to retain local control over matters that directly impact the system,” Ransom is quoted as saying in that release.

Burgess (Left), Ransom (Right) 12/9/2024

He is identified as having been “elected as Board Chair in November.”

“Can you tell me when the Board made that decision?" I said in my first email on the evening of Jan. 2, referring to the decision to opt out of the exemption.

“I have seen nothing of a called meeting,” I wrote. “And I don't even know who is on the Board on this date, given that Kim and Tim have expired terms on Dec. 31 and Adam and Brock, as far as I know, have not yet been sworn in.”

I also asked: “Can you explain this designation of you as chair? Did the Board do some kind of vote that I don't know about that made you chair?”

Ransom responded on the afternoon of Jan. 3 saying:

“Since I was elected to Post 1 in the November election, I will serve in the Chair capacity until the January 13 meeting, when the Chair, Vice Chair, and Legislative Liaison will be elected by the Board. Per Board Policy BCAC, special meetings of the Oconee County Board of Education may be called by the Chairman and I asked Dr. Branch to work with staff to determine dates and times for hearings that ensured the community had appropriate opportunities to participate.”

I sent Ransom a follow-up email on Jan. 3.

“So your answer only deals with your authority to call the meetings,” I wrote. “But the news release, consistent with the requirement of HB 581, includes the message that the Board intends to opt out.”

“So I'm trying to understand when that decision was made and by whom?” my email continued. “I want to be clear. It is your position that you as chair made that decision and then asked Dr. Branch and his staff to set up the meetings?”

Ransom replied a little bit later on Jan. 3.

“That is correct,” he wrote. “After sitting through training related to HB 581 in December, I asked Dr. Branch to set up meetings.”

Second Email Exchange With Ransom

On Jan. 6, I sent Ransom another email.

I pointed out that House Bill 1496, which set up the local referendum approved by Oconee County voters in November, states that “The Board of Education of Oconee County which existed on December 31, 2024, is continued in existence but on and after January 1, 2025, shall be constituted as provided in this Act.”

“As of January 1, 2025, the board shall elect, by majority vote of the full membership, a chairperson from among its membership who shall serve for a term to be determined by the board or until a new chairperson is elected by a majority vote of the full board's membership,” the legislation states.

I said in my email to Ransom that he could have called a meeting after Jan. 1, Toole, Hammond, and he could have been sworn in, the Board could have chosen a chair, and “And then you could have voted to proceed with the opt out provisions of House Bill 581.”

“Did you contact any or all of the other four members of the 2025 Board, Amy, Ryan, Brock, Adam, with the goal of calling a special meeting of the Board to elect a chair and to discuss the provisions of House Bill 581?” I asked.

“If you did contact Amy, Ryan, Brock, and Adam, what was the outcome, that is, who favored calling a meeting and who did not?” I asked.

“If you didn't contact Amy, Ryan, Brock, and Adam to call a special meeting for that purpose, why didn't you do that?” I asked.

“As a follow to those these questions,” I asked, “did you contact Amy, Ryan, Brock, and Adam to get their approval of your decision to proceed with the opt out provisions of House Bill 581? If so, who supported the decision to proceed and who did not?”

Ransom responded on the evening of Jan. 7 with the following two sentences.

“After sitting through training related to HB 581 in December,” he wrote. “I asked Dr. Branch to set up the hearings. Amy and Ryan were in agreement, so a majority had given approval.”

5 comments:

Pam Davis said...

All I can say is....Thank you Lee !

Bill Mayberry said...

Interesting sidestepping of the public access rules by two of the five commissioners getting permission from a third to create a phantom "majority." Now that's chutzpah. Not cheek but gall.
William S. Mayberry, MD

Bill Mayberry said...

A "significant impact" on revenues? Oh, no!
Guess over $30 million in "fund balance" (aka surplus = slush fund)
just isn't enough. The Board may

Bill Mayberry said...

So a limitation of the homestead exemption "could significantly impact" revenues. Oh, no! $30 million in surplus funds (aka slush fun) just isn't enough, eh? And since when does a BOE member need "approval" via private, not public, discussion to vote one way or another? Meanwhile, this majority could have called a *gasp! PUBLIC* meeting.
Ben Franklin had it right, but backward: Nothing more inevitable than taxes and death.
Here's a worthwhile idea: Recall the entire Board, replaced by people willing to be more than rubber stamps.
William S. Mayberry, MD, once upon a time a significant taxpayer.
Now my land

Harold Thompson said...

“But I think most Board members are more than happy to talk with you on the phone or meet with you for coffee.” - Michael Ransom, 9/15/2024 Oconee County Observations

Until voters put in school board members that practice, not just preach, transparency, these decisions will continue to be made in secret.