Sand Springs Public Schools wants the Oklahoma Supreme Court to settle a motor vehicle tax distribution dispute.
District general counsel Gary Watts said the problem started when lawmakers last year permanently capped the distribution to schools at 36.2 percent.
"The Tax Commission, early in the fiscal year, misconstrued the statute and has been paying out the money in a way that greatly distorts the way the distribution should be going," Watts said.
The Tax Commission couldn’t pay districts the same amounts they got last year and made distributions based on student enrollment. Watts said districts’ shares should have been decreased by equal percentages, otherwise the entire state school funding formula gets thrown off.
The funding formula projects what certain amounts will be because they haven't actually come in yet. According to the court filing, districts are receiving vastly different amounts of motor vehicle tax distributions, ranging from one-fourth to double what they received the previous year.
The filing says overall motor vehicle tax revenues are about two-thirds what they were in the previous fiscal year.
Watts would like to see a ruling by June 30.
"Before that, we think that there is a way to resolve it. It would be resolved over this fiscal year and next fiscal year, but it would be resolved," Watts said.
He believes Sand Springs has lost more than $200,000 and the statewide loss is more than $10 million because of the change in distribution.
