Tuition tax credits committee gets Republican members

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by David Safier
This promises to be interesting. A few days after D legislators held a news conference announcing the formation of a committee to take a closer look at tax credits and inviting Rs to join, a few Rs actually agreed. Why? There are all kinds of possible answers. Maybe they were actually a bit shocked by the Trib investigative articles and want to improve the tax credit legislation. Maybe they don't want the Ds to get all the credit for the reform. And maybe they want to do some damage control, since they know Ds have never taken kindly to the whole tax credit thing. It's probably a mixture of the three, but I'm giving most weight to the third possibility: damage control.

Republicans Rich Crandall, Steve Court and Doris Goodale are joining Democrats David Schapira (Chair), Tom Chabin (Vice Chair), Nancy Young Wright, Chad Campbell and Cloves Campbell.

Another interesting wrinkle.

Crandall said he also hopes to invite members of the Goldwater Institute to participate in the discussions early on.

"Obviously the Goldwater Institute feels strongly there are abuses taking place," he said.

Watch your backs, Dems. Inviting in G.I. is playing the "expert" card. ("We've written studies about tax credits and made recommendations for improvements years ago. Let me cite some figures for you. Are you aware that the average tax credit is $2,000, while we spend $10,000 to educate a child in the public schools? Tax credits are a bargain!") Get yourself some experts on your side as well. Remember, you hold all the cards here. Tuition tax credits are the Republicans' baby. They wrote and passed the toothless legislation without a means test and with few regulations on the credits or on the STOs that collect the money and dole out the scholarships. The mess is of their making. Your job is to clean house, not make nice.

7 thoughts on “Tuition tax credits committee gets Republican members”

  1. “A “means” test is the only way to ensure the program is working within the spirit of the legislation.”

    Was the spirit of the legislation “pro-market” or something lesser?

    If the spirit of the legislation was pro-market then a means test is not appropriate. Understand that how market education reform is expected to work is middle-class first, bringing the poor kids with as choice becomes universal. Understanding marginalist reasoning is key here. (Before anyone gets to being an equivocal wanker, that’s “marginalist” in the economists’ sense.)

    And there is no ethical argument, really no argument save spite, for saying that kid X shouldn’t get a better education just because right now kid Y can’t get one too.

  2. A “means” test is the only way to ensure the program is working within the spirit of the legislation. If you aren’t willing to see it regulated with means testing, then the program should be shut down. Private school tax credits are, without a doubt, supporting a modern day segregationist form of educating children at the tax payers’ expense. Millions of dollars that should be in the general fund, are credited out and into high-interest accounts for executive directors who reward themselves pretty nicely. What’s more, I suspect these STOs are used as a way to “wash” money for purposes completely unrelated to educating a disadvantaged child.

    Take a look at Rep Yarbrough’s clean election reporting. His campaign finance person was his ACSTO office assistant. I’m sure there isn’t anything wrong with this…but it begs the question: Is there NOTHING this man pays for??? Near as I can tell, this man is 100% tax-payer supported.

    http://www.azsos.gov/cfs/PublicReports/2008/9B05B14D-BEC5-4C1B-BFFD-C7E16CEB105A.pdf

  3. Of course Crandall would ask for GI to get involved. A Republican without his band of liars is like going for a walk without your shoes. GI’s only problem from what I can see is that the GOP set up such a crooked system that there is no plausible deniability for the destroy-public-ed and destroy-the-ability-of-government-to-raise-operating-funds crowd.

  5. Maybe it is a better analogy to invite Grover to lend his “expert” opinion on tax structure.

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