Johnstone v. Thompson, No. 06-0400 (Ga. June 12, 2006)
The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that the Cobb County School Board (CCSB) was not legally authorized to use proceeds from a special purpose local option sales tax (SPLOST) to purchase laptop computers for all middle and high school students, because that use of the tax proceeds was different than the purpose of the tax initiative presented to and approved by the county's voters. Georgia law requires a SPLOST to used "exclusively for the purpose or purposes specified in the resolution or ordinance calling for imposition of the tax." CCSB's ballot language informed voters that the SPLOST would be imposed for educational purposes including "new schools, land, additions, renovations, equipment, and technology systems." The SPLOST notebook promulgated by CCSB detailed eight "Curriculum/Technology Initiatives," with an estimated cost for each. These included "refresh obsolete workstations," which the notebook estimated required replacing 30,563 units. After the voters approved the tax referendum, the board decided to use $59 million of the $75 million set aside for the technology portion of the SPLOST to provide every middle and high school student in the district with a laptop computer as part of its "Power to Learn Initiative" (PLI). A Cobb County taxpayer sued in state court to prevent CCSB from using the proceeds in this way. The trial court granted this relief.
The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's decision, finding that CCSB's decision as to how to allocate the tax revenues from the SPLOST was limited by the projects specifically delineated in the SPLOST notebook, which clearly stated the money was to be used to "restore obsolete work stations." The high court agreed with the trial court that the evidence demonstrated that PLI was not the "functional equivalent of the SPLOST notebook project to 'restore obsolete work stations' because PLI provided laptops only to middle and high school students while the notebook project called for updating the computer laboratory workstations at all the schools, including elementary, middle and high schools." It rejected the board's argument that the SPLOST referendum language gave the board discretion to use the funds to provide technology systems to only a portion of the district's students. Instead, the supreme court concluded CCSB had engaged in a gross abuse of discretion, allowing the trial court to issue its order based on the evidence that the defendants "failed to comply with their clear legal duties when they sought to 're-budget' the original technology initiatives in favor of the Power to Learn initiative and that they abused their discretion when they abandoned the original initiatives even though those initiatives remained feasible of completion."
Johnstone v. Thompson, No. 06-0400 (Ga. June 12, 2006)
[Link to full opinion][
Editor's Note: Background on the case is available below.]
[NSBA School Law pages on Johnstone v. Thompson]