The Sand Springs school district has gone to the State Supreme Court in a fight with the Oklahoma Tax Commission over how motor-vehicle tax revenue is distributed to schools.
The district’s general counsel and chief financial officer, Gary Watts filed a petition with the court after the district lost $184,000 in motor-vehicle taxes this year. He said it might lose more in the remaining months of the current fiscal year. The Tulsa school district lost about $1.4 million.
“The Commission’s erroneous application of the law has led to inequity and to a perversion of the legislative intent,” stated the filing. “In addition,the Commission’s erroneous application of the law since July 1, 2015, has caused some school districts to be collectively disadvantaged by more than $9 million through February, while other school districts have collectively received windfalls of more than $9 million, all at a time when education is suffering from a tremendous lack of funding.”
The Sand Springs district contends the Commission wrongly made the changes based on last year’s legislative approval of HB 2244. It puts a cap on motor-vehicle tax revenue going to other than state agencies. The School district portion was capped at 36.2 percent and Watts, according to the Tulsa World, believes the bill was written in haste.
Read full story in The Tulsa World.
Tulsa World
