American News Dec. 3headline: State tightening belt. Page 6: Governor's plan would make public schools more dependent on local property taxes. Just what we need in the midst of a major recession. Does this proposal really surprise anyone? After all, how to properly fund education has only been kicked around for at least 40 years. Some 32 years ago, in 1976, the Legislature had enough foresight to tackle the issue - in a bipartisan effort - because it was a critical issue then ...and is most certainly today. At that time, the effort failed by one vote in the Senate. You would have thought an issue as major as that would certainly have been considered again in short order. Instead, the status quo of high property taxes and one of the broadest sales taxes in the nation has been kicked around by the Republican-dominated Legislature and executive branch for more than 32 years since that 1976 vote. Most Democrats haven't even put up a big fight. The status quo even brought a so-called property tax revolt in 1994. That would've been the perfect time for another tax reform debate. Instead Gov. Bill Janklow proposed a so-called property tax relief program that eventually lowered property taxes across the state from $579-plus million in 1995 to $514-million plus in 1996. Two years later, in 1998, we were back up to $582 million. The latest figures I have (2007) on all property was $848 million. Now - two years later - it could be $900 million or more. Now Gov. Mike Rounds thinks it is appropriate to shift more school tax back to the property that the state has been providing. The only good thing that came out of all that debate in 1994 was that the state agreed to pay a greater share of the school funding: about 50 percent property tax and 50 percent state. The token effort the state has put toward that effort the last several years has now moved the state share to about 57 percent, some $73 million, according to the governor. That was a move in the right direction. A big share of this is what the governor wants to shift back to property. Not raising mil levies but by raising property values it raises taxes either way, as well as raise fee's and make major cuts. Some I do not have a problem with. On top of all those efforts a few years back for tax relief we also wound up with a $250 million-plus a year gambling problem and higher broader sales tax mostly by the cities. That equates to at least a 6-percent gross income tax on the lower income and the elderly with no exemptions because they spend all they make or receive in Social Security on their needs. That's really a fair tax? Right. After all this, for tax relief we have people now like Sen. Al Novstrup saying farmers are not paying their fair share of the tax burden. He says we should scrap all the legislation that we put in place a few years back, the 150 percent of assessed values and the NAZ provision that throw out all the sales that were high speculation sales and unrealistic sales for ag purposes over the last few years with almost no legitimate sales left to assess land with, and - by the way - we are the only state of at least 43 that uses sales to determine property values. The rest have production-based formulas to determine values on income ability for ag lands. If this system of assessment stays in place and Novstrup gets his way to use all sales it would more than double the value of ag land from now - about $17.5 billion across the state - to more than $38 billion. The small percentage of farmers who are left out there with less than 20 percent of the K-12 public school children are already paying four to six times more in property taxes for education versus the average home and business who have 80 percent of the children in the system. In addition they pay a huge amount of sales taxes on all their input costs whether they make a profit or not, and the way things are shaping up right now in the economy, that might be the case. No, the farmers, homeowners and businesses do not need more school tax shifted back to them. Nor do we need more sales tax and higher fees. It has been more than 32 years; if ever there is a time for the Legislature to once again take up tax reform it is now. A continuation of the status quo is no longer going to do the job. Readers React appears occasionally on this page. It is designed to provide a forum for readers to express their views on matters in the news. Questions may be sent to Readers React, American News, P.O. Box 4430, Aberdeen, S.D., or e-mailed to americannews@aberdeennews.com. Please include a daytime telephone number. Al Waltman is a former South Dakota legislator.