News in Brief: A State Capitals Roundup

The Vermont Supreme Court has upheld one of the most controversial aspects of the state's school finance law, the "sharing pool."

Under Act 60, the 1997 law that abolished local property taxes and created a new statewide tax to support education, towns that increase their tax revenues must also send those funds back to the state, to be redistributed from the sharing pool on the basis of wealth. ( "In Vermont's Funding Shakeup, a Bitter Pill for the 'Gold Towns,'" Oct. 28, 1998).

Stowe Citizens for Responsible Government, a local advocacy group in a well-to-do resort town, argued in a lawsuit that the pool was unfair to wealthy towns, which have seen higher taxes as a result of...