As school districts fight the public relations battle in Albany over the next few months regarding their state aid dollars, we hope they also put some significant energy into securing legislation that would free up some $407 million in taxpayer-funded reserves that are currently doing nothing more than collecting interest.

We're talking about employee benefits accrued liability reserves, funds that many school districts established a few years back. The problem, according to an analysis by the Office of the State Comptroller, is that those funds have far too much money in them, and they're not being used for the right purposes.

These EBALR funds are legally limited to paying for “cash payments to employees upon separation of service, for unused sick leave, holiday leave, vacation time, time allowances granted in lieu of overtime compensation and any other forms of payment for accrued leave time due,” according to the comptroller. Many districts, though, have been putting money into the funds with the idea that one day they could help cover retiree health insurance. Unfortunately, that's not a legal use of the money.

The result of this misunderstanding - some may call it mismanagement - is hundreds of millions of dollars stuck in these accounts.

That includes significant funds for several local school districts. Within the Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES, the Auburn, Cato-Meridian, Jordan-Elbridge, Moravia and Port Byron school districts have excess funding in EBALR accounts of $4.5 million.

At this point, the only real solution is state legislation that would loosen the restrictions on these accounts so districts could start using them to pay for retiree health insurance.

But they also need to put some of the money back into the general fund to help keep tax levies under control, especially during this time of economic upheaval.