The McCleary Reversal

In 2012, the Washington Supreme Court ruled in McCleary v. State of Washington that the state was unconstitutionally failing to fund "basic education." The remedy was supposed to be permanent: shift more of the school funding burden from local property tax to state property tax, so wealthier districts couldn't out-spend poorer ones, and so the state — rather than 295 separate school districts — would be the dominant funder of every child's education.

For one Whatcom County homeowner — same house, same dirt, same school district — the state's share of his school property tax tells the story:

The state's share of his school property tax has dropped 12.2 percentage points in seven years. That's 57% of the entire McCleary gain — given back. And the trajectory is straight-line down at roughly two percentage points per year. At that pace, by 2032 the state's share of school property tax will be back at its pre-McCleary level. The constitutional remedy will have lasted about 15 years.

No legislature has voted to repeal it. No new court ruling has rolled it back. It just unwound on its own.

The Washington Supreme Court ordered a structural fix to school funding. The structure was duly built. It is being just as duly dismantled, by every adjacent ballot measure that's allowed to grow faster than the state's permanent contribution.

How it was supposed to work

The legislative response to McCleary was House Bill 2242 (2017). It did two big things:

1. Raised the state property tax from roughly $1.89/$1,000 of assessed value to about $2.70/$1,000 — a permanent ~43% increase in the state's regular property tax levy.
2. Capped local school M&O (enrichment) levies at the lesser of $1.50/$1,000 OR $2,500 per student.

Voters were told three things: (a) the state's share would go up, (b) the local share would go down, and (c) the net effect on a typical bill would be modest because the new state tax would offset the reduced local levy.

For two years that's exactly what happened. In 2019, this Bellingham homeowner's Meridian Enrichment line item dropped to $480.28 — down from a pre-McCleary baseline near $900. Meanwhile his state school taxes climbed to $884.87. The state had taken over the majority of his school property tax funding for the first time in modern Washington history.

The 2019 ratio: 53.1% state, 46.9% local. McCleary was working.

How it was quietly reversed

Eighteen months after McCleary's funding solution was supposedly permanent, the legislature passed Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5313 (2019). Marketed as "providing flexibility" for school districts, it did one specific thing: it raised the local M&O cap from $1.50/$1,000 to $2.50/$1,000, and the per-student cap from $2,500 to $3,000 (or $3,500 for large districts).

The dollar cap rose 67%. The rate cap rose 67%. Within two years of the McCleary solution being implemented, the central legislative promise voters were sold — that local school levies would be permanently bounded — was structurally rewritten.

The effect appears in the homeowner's bill three years later:

The 2022 enrichment line — $1,006.63 — was already 3.1× the cap-year low of $480. By 2026 it had nearly doubled again. Each year's growth was statutorily permitted; collectively, they reversed the entire purpose of the McCleary cap.

The less-obvious reversal: adjacent districts doing the math

Here is where the story gets harder to see — and harder to fix. The state's share of school property tax has continued to erode even though state school taxes themselves are growing. Per the same homeowner's bill, state school grew 53–56% from 2018 to 2026. That's not nothing.

But during the same window, six other taxing districts on the same bill grew 100% or more:

Six adjacent districts grew 100–127%, nearly double the growth rate of state school. The 1% annual lid in RCW 84.55 applies only to "regular property tax levies" of each district before any exceptions like bonds, EMS authority, lid lifts, or new sub-levies.

No one had to vote to undo McCleary. Each of those 100%+ growth lines was approved separately, often by narrow votes, often without anyone summing them.

The mathematical result: when the adjacent districts grow faster than state school, state school's share of the total bill erodes automatically — even though state school itself is growing too. This is the structural truth the 1% lid never solved: a property tax bill that splits across 21 districts can grow at the fastest rate of any single district plus the cumulative growth of all the others. Each district legally complies with its own 1% lid; the homeowner's total bill grows 13% per year.

The 2017→2026 picture

For our one homeowner, in nine years:

The pure McCleary effect — the permanent shift from local to state — has shrunk from a 21.4-point gain to a 9.2-point gain. More than half has eroded. And there's no mechanism in current Washington law to prevent it from continuing.

What this means

The McCleary decision was a constitutional victory. It established that the state has an "ample" funding duty for basic education and that Washington was failing it. The implementation was a political compromise that bundled the constitutional remedy with a property-tax restructuring that voters were told was permanent.

It wasn't.

The mechanism by which it was reversed is not corruption or conspiracy. It's the slow, quiet, lawful exercise of the dozens of separate taxing authorities that have always existed in Washington property tax law. Each district can pursue its own ballot measure. Each ballot measure looks small in isolation. Cumulatively, they have already undone half of what the Washington Supreme Court ordered.

This matters beyond schools. The same mechanism is dismantling the property tax structure homeowners thought they had:

• The 1% annual lid: functionally fiction once you account for 21 separately-authorized districts.
• The McCleary cap on local school M&O: raised 67% within two years, fully reversed within five.
• The state's "permanent" assumption of school funding: drifting back to local at 1.5–2 percentage points per year.
• Property tax stability through scarcity: assessed values doubled in five years; tax bills tracked.

Each of these was sold as protection. None of them has held.

Note which districts have grown the fastest. Note when each of them had its lid-lift or M&O vote. Then ask why you weren't told McCleary was being undone, one ballot measure at a time, while it was happening.

The Washington Supreme Court ordered a structural fix to school funding. The structure was duly built. It is being just as duly dismantled, by every adjacent ballot measure that's allowed to grow faster than the state's permanent contribution.

The constitutional ruling wasn't repealed. It was just outpaced.

1. OSPI documentation of the per-pupil and per-$1,000-AV cap calculations for Meridian School District M&O levies, tax years 2019–2026.
2. WA Department of Revenue methodology and worksheets for the State School Fund Part 1 and Part 2 levy rate calculations, tax years 2017–2026.
3. Whatcom County Annual Tax Book per-district rate and amount detail for TCA 5010 (Meridian SD #505), tax years 2017–2026 inclusive.
4. Whatcom County Assessor parcel statements for Whatcom County 3903311193820000 (5200 Guide Meridian), tax years 2017–2026, listing every taxing district and its individual levy contribution.
5. Documentation of any ESSB 5313 fiscal-impact analysis prepared in 2019 estimating its effect on the state-vs-local share of school property tax funding statewide.

This investigation uses a single Whatcom County parcel as a citizen-level anchor. The mechanism described is statewide — every Washington property is subject to the same lid mechanics and the same legislative reversals. The parcel-level data is reproduced from the Whatcom County Assessor & Treasurer's public records, year by year, district by district.

Parcel

Whatcom County 3903311193820000 · 5200 Guide Meridian, Bellingham, WA · TCA 5010 · Meridian School District #505

State share — definition

State school property tax (WA1 + WA2 line items) ÷ (state-school + local Meridian Bond + Capital Projects + Enrichment) for each tax year.

Estimated years

2018 and 2024 state-share figures interpolated from adjacent years using the "% since 2018" badges shown on the Real Record property tax history tool. All other years from published assessor statements.

"% since 2018" methodology

Per-jurisdiction growth percentages reflect change in the levy amount on this parcel from tax year 2018 (baseline year for McCleary changes) to tax year 2026. Decoded from the Whatcom Annual Tax Books.

Primary sources

Whatcom County Assessor & Treasurer annual property tax statements (2017–2026); Whatcom County Annual Tax Books (2017–2026, used for per-district rate decomposition).

Legislative citations

RCW 84.55 (one-percent property tax lid); HB 2242 (2017, McCleary funding response); ESSB 5313 (2019, local levy cap revision); McCleary v. State of Washington, 173 Wn.2d 477 (2012).

Verify any WA parcel

realtaxes.org/washington-state-property-tax-history — same year-by-year, district-by-district breakdown for any Washington address.

Limitations

One-parcel anchor; a future revision will extend the state-share trajectory to sample parcels in King, Snohomish, Pierce, and Spokane counties to confirm the pattern is uniform statewide. The 2018 and 2024 values are interpolated within approximately ±1 percentage point; others are decoded directly from assessor statements.

Updates & corrections

This investigation will be updated as 2027 tax statements and any successor legislation arrives. Corrections welcomed at tips@realrecord.org.