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Andru Volinsky, a former executive councilor and 2020 Democratic candidate for governor, talks about his new book, “The Last Bake Sale,” during a State House interview. Andru Volinsky’s new book about his 20-year fight for fair school funding, “The Last Bake Sale,” is also a blunt message to leading Democrats who cling to their opposition to broad-based taxes. “If I were a Martian and landed in Concord without any background and just started gathering facts, I would learn Democrats have been largely out of control of every State House office for much of the past 10 years.
This would reasonably lead me to ask what were Democrats doing wrong and why was it not effective,” Volinsky said during a recent interview. “What we have been doing was adopting The Pledge (against new taxes) and not offering real solutions that will help people in danger of losing their homes or facing personal bankruptcy.” Volinsky’s book, released in early April, explains how close the vaunted Claremont school funding case came to completely falling apart financially.
This came even after his legal team had convinced the New Hampshire Supreme Court in the first case to recognize the constitutional right to a public education. “I tried to keep the outcome of Claremont a bit of a mystery until you got to the end of the book,” Volinsky said. The title refers to the bake sale that Claremont School Board member Tom Connair came up with to raise money — and more importantly, to get national attention — for the case of five property-poor and income-poor school districts suing the state.
“George Bailey, the lead character in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ who sacrificed personally to protect his community, would have been proud of Tom Connair,” Volinsky wrote. Today, the suspense is gone. The state Supreme Court’s two Claremont rulings — that the state has a constitutional obligation to provide an adequate education, and that the state must develop a funding system that taxes all residents equitably — were among the most sweeping education finance decisions in the country.
Andru Volinsky will be at Balin Books, Somerset Plaza in Nashua to discuss his experiences and his new book, “The Last Bake Sale,” today, April 12, at 11 a.m. The event is free.
“We were able to marry the adequate school funding side of the coin to the economic justice, fair taxation side of the coin,” Volinsky recalled. The battle continues today. In separate Supreme Court appeals, Volinsky and lawyer Michael Tierney could again upset the school finance apple cart.
Volinsky and partners are pursuing their constitutional attack against the statewide property tax; Tierney has his claim that the matrix formula of state aid to support an adequate education is anything but adequate. New Hampshire isn’t mentioned in Volinsky’s book until page 41. He opens with the modern day building blocks of school finance in American jurisprudence, the cases of Serrano v.
Priest I in California in 1971 and Rodriguez v. San Antonio Independent School District in 1973. U.
S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell led the high court to strike down both with his controversial opinion that the drafters of the 14th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution never intended education to be a fundamental right. Both cases told the story of educational opportunity for minority families who lacked the same access to quality schooling as wealthy families did. “It’s almost always about race,” Volinsky says.
Volinsky pivots to further his claim that even in New Hampshire, “racism and privilege” played a role in separate but unequal education that developed here. Volinsky cites Boston’s forced-busing crisis in the 1970s, which led to an exodus of families from urban neighborhoods to safe, white suburbs like Salem, New Hampshire. “Many moved to southern New Hampshire where Salem was one of the primary beneficiaries of this white flight,” Volinsky writes.
“Before New Hampshire readers protest the above characterizations, they should consider the statewide newspaper, the Union Leader, and its publisher, William Loeb, whose heyday was also in the mid-1970s.” He quotes from some of Loeb’s front-page editorials during the Boston busing crisis, which were laced with racist language. Peter Powell, the son of the late Gov.
Wesley Powell, tells Volinsky the people of New Hampshire can’t escape their tolerance for Loeb’s racism at that time. “I think we have to answer some questions. I am not accusing New Hampshire being racist but we do have to answer some questions,” he says.
Decades after Loeb and Gov. Meldrim Thomson led the anti-tax campaign that evolved into The Pledge, Volinsky says leading Democrats remain afraid to even talk about fundamental change to tax policy. He contends it should start with an income tax and include a statewide property tax on second homes and business property to tap the uber-wealthy, pointing to former Massachusetts governor and Utah Sen.
Mitt Romney, who owns a $10 million mansion on Lake Winnipesaukee. “New Hampshire has always relied more heavily on local taxes to fund schools than other states and it’s not clear why. It’s almost as if the leaders of New Hampshire lack commitment to the common good,” Volinsky writes.
In 2020, Volinsky ran for governor on a tax reform platform, losing narrowly to Senate Democratic Leader Dan Feltes, who took The Pledge. Gov. Chris Sununu beat Feltes so badly that the loser left the state and returned to Iowa while down-ballot Democrats suffered their worst beating in generations.
“The lesson party leaders took from 2020 was to be more like the Republicans and Sununu in opposing taxes,” Volinsky says. “The lessons they should have learned was about the need to extensively engage voters about your plans so you can convince them your party will make things better.” Volinsky admits he failed in 2020 to counter the claim from establishment Democrats that his call for an income tax and against over-reliance on the local property tax was making the state “look bad.
” “My lesson was to beware of those within your own party who are more afraid of being shown up than showing up to accomplish needed change,” Volinsky says. “I also learned that I should have expected this challenge and worked to defuse it before it was deployed by arguing that I was willing to take the heat for others and they could follow my lead. I wasn’t trying to make them look bad.
” This image from Andru Volinsky’s book shows a ticket to a March 18, 1994 bake sale to raise money for the five plaintiff school districts’ lawsuit against the state in what led to the Claremont school funding decisions. Despite the setbacks and years of inaction, Volinsky says he remains “committed” and hopeful that his desired reform of tax and education policy will come. “I think being optimistic or being pessimistic is a privilege that I do not have.
For those who say we have accomplished nothing, when we started, state support for education was 3% and now it’s 24%,” Volinsky says. “I’m the lawyer, I’m not the Legislature. For the first time in 200 years the Legislature recognized a fundamental right.
That’s not nothing, it’s progress.” This explains the three words Volinsky pens in every book he signs. “Change can happen,” it reads.
Andru Volinsky will be at Balin Books, Somerset Plaza in Nashua to discuss his experiences and the book today, April 12, at 11 a.m. The event is free.
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