No Vouchers!

Put the brakes on GOP's backdoor voucher idea

The Chicago Tribune
Eric ZornContact Reporter

Wealthy supporters of private education in Georgia have a neat little scam going.

A law in place since 2008 allows them to donate to the Georgia Student Scholarship Organization, a clearinghouse agency that oversees the distribution of funds to qualified private schools, and receive a dollar-for-dollar credit on their state income taxes. Not just the standard charitable income deduction, but a straight-up subtraction — up to $2,500 for married couples filing jointly and $10,000 for shareholders or owners of businesses — from their state tax bill at the end of the year.

This means money that would otherwise go into Georgia’s general revenue fund to pay for the vast array of programs and services provided by the state, including public education, is effectively redirected to the pet cause of those who want tax dollars to support religious and other private schools.

A unanimous Georgia Supreme Court ruled in June that the program didn’t violate a provision in the state constitution that “no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, cult or religious denomination or of any sectarian institution.”

How can that be? Because of the fig-leaf of the clearinghouse. Since the donations never actually reach the state treasury, the court wrote, “no public funds are used in the program.”

But wait, the scam gets better!

Donors to the scholarship funds are also allowed to count that donation as a standard charitable donation for federal income tax purposes, meaning, as one Georgia agency that distributes to schools enthuses on its website, “You will end with more money than when you started.”

And the higher your tax bracket, the higher your risk-free return on your investment. I mean donation.

According to “Public Loss, Private Gain,” a May 2017 report from the School Superintendents Association (formerly known as the American Association of School Administrators) and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, private school supporters are able to profit from their donations in nine of the 17 states in which tax credit scholarship programs are now in place.

Will Illinois be the 10th?

A proposal to institute such a program here is thought to be part of the tentative bipartisan compromise deal on education funding announced Thursday afternoon in Springfield.

Whether it will offer a dollar-for-dollar credit, a credit as low as 50 cents on the dollar as in scholarship programs in Indiana and Oklahoma or something in between had yet to be formally announced at this writing. Also not officially confirmed is the limit on total tax credits issued (Georgia’s, for example, is $58 million), eligibility rules for students and whether the program will be permanent or a time-limited experiment.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Washington are touting a federal tax credit scholarship program as part of a major tax overhaul.

But it’s a bad idea everywhere.

Our state has similar constitutional barriers against using public money for sectarian purposes, and, legalistic shell games aside, tax credit scholarship funds are simply backdoor voucher programs — ways to funnel tax dollars from public coffers to religious schools in the name of “choice.”

Hey, wouldn’t we all like to direct our tax money to causes we support? I’d rather cut a check to Planned Parenthood, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless or the Old Town School of Folk Music rather than to the Illinois Department of Revenue. But that’s not how representative government works.

The “Public Loss, Private Gain” report estimated that these scholarship funds, often referred to as “neo-vouchers,” already divert more than $1 billion a year from state coffers into private schools that are less transparent and more restrictive in admissions than public schools.

In a statement issued Thursday, Illinois Education Association President Kathi Griffin said, “In an age where accountability means everything — where standards are being implemented to ensure students are being taught what they need to succeed in life — why would Illinois take public money and give it to private schools that have no accountability?”

Why?

Because too many lawmakers, including some Democrats, have either given up on the idea of public education, are secretly fond of the idea that taxpayers should support religious indoctrination or are under the delusion that competition for scarce resources will magically make public schools better.

Another scam.

ericzorn@gmail.com