http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=856269

Here we go again, more than likely.

A state district judge has determined that Texas’ public school financing system, which relies heavily on property taxes, is unconstitutional. He issued a bench ruling after a three-month trial meant to settle the state’s clumsy school finance mechanism.

It didn’t settle anything. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said he plans to appeal the ruling to the Texas Supreme Court.

This isn’t the state’s first public education funding rodeo. In the late 1980s, the Edgewood school district near San Antonio got involved in the first such landmark ruling in which another judge ruled the funding system to be in violation of the Texas Constitution. The reforms produced the infamous “Robin Hood” plan in which property-tax-wealthy school districts – such as Bushland and Highland Park – were forced to surrender some of their tax revenue to poorer districts. That went over badly.

The state cannot seem to get itself out of this conundrum.

One of the reasons is the Legislature’s decision to tie the state’s hands behind its back by declaring that a state income tax should be left up to the voters, who would have to change the Texas Constitution. We all understand how that would work. Texans won’t approve a state income tax, period, end of discussion.

Why is this critical? Because an income tax is seen by many reformers as the only way the state ever will extricate itself from the continuing legal battles over the constitutionality of its school finance system.

Stubbornness is resisting ways to find a fair and equitable system for financing public education in Texas is no virtue.