School Bonds as ‘PROPERTY TAX INCREASES’: The Impact of State-Mandated Ballot Language on Local Elections

• In Event: State Politics and School Finance

Abstract

American democracy operates on many levels. Policies are created across venues (courts, separate legislative bodies, executive offices) and tiers (local, state, federal). Such institutional fragmentation amplifies the importance of organized interests who are uniquely positioned to strategically pursue their policy goals across multiple venues (Hacker et al. 2021). In particular, cross-state conservative policy networks have demonstrated remarkable sophistication in leveraging state-level institutional mechanisms to advance their political objectives (Hertel-Fernandez 2019). National organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN) have proven adept at navigating the informational asymmetries and institutional vulnerabilities within state-level political systems, particularly where legislative capacity is relatively weak. However, the mechanisms of influence are less clear when cross-state networks attempt to shape local governance.

 

Unlike the states, local democratic institutions are potentially more resistant to the policy influence of national networks. Because local institutions that promote participatory, deliberative, or direct democracy can incite authentic civic engagement, they are perhaps more difficult for elite-oriented groups to influence (Collins 2021; 2018). This tension raises a puzzle: Can national policy advocacy networks systematically reshape local policymaking?

 

One possible method by which national policy advocacy groups could shape local policy is to leverage their state influence to change how local decisions are made. We study this in the case of a SPN-supported and ALEC-member initiated policy change in Texas. Specifically, the Texas legislature passed a bill in 2019 requiring the ballot text of school bonds to end with "THIS IS A PROPERTY TAX INCREASE."

 

We use both differences-in-differences (DiD) analysis and two survey experiments to examine the effect of this policy change. We first leverage the fact that the policy did not affect other government entities to estimate its impact on local school bond elections in a DiD framework. We find that the 2019 policy reduced bond passage rates by 9 percentage points overall in Texas, and by 22 percentage points in general elections. We also conduct survey experiments nationally and within Texas. Preliminary results from the national survey experiment suggest that adding "THIS IS A PROPERTY TAX INCREASE" decreases the likelihood of school bond passage by 9 percentage points. This outcome was driven by increasing the salience of property tax issues. Taken together, these results demonstrate how national policy advocacy networks use their state-level influence to shape local policy.

Author

• Melissa Arnold Lyon, University at Albany
  Presenting Author