Study: Pension costs feed resistance to higher school taxes in Marin County

The unexpected defeat in 2016 of a school parcel tax in wealthy Marin County and the near-defeat of another in the county that same year prompted a trio of authors to look into what had turned many voters against them.

Their conclusion, in a report issued recently by the nonprofit Policy Analysis for California Education, was that the high cost of school employee pensions was very much on voters’ minds — a bad omen for other districts considering parcel taxes to supplement state funding for schools.