Take Note

It's no Boston Tea Party, but residents of the Midwest who look forward to tranquil lakefront summer breaks in northern Michigan are hopping mad over taxes they must pay under the state's new school-finance system.

Michigan lawmakers in 1993 adopted a funding system that drastically reduced local property taxes for most homeowners. The legislators, however, allowed school districts to tax owners of second homes at more than three times the property-tax rate applied to primary residences.

As a result, Frank Andress, a retired financial executive who lives in Cincinnati but owns a vacation home near Lake Leelanau in Michigan, is paying $2,900 a year more in taxes to help finance schools there than residents who own one home and...