Charles North, tuition tax credit expert

by David Safier

In the post below, I wrote about the recent meeting of the R-created committee looking into painting a happy face on the tuition tax credit mess. I mentioned it brought in an "expert," Charles North, to explain that tuition tax credits save Arizona millions and millions of tax dollars.

So who is this "expert," Charles North? He's an econ prof from Baylor University. About Baylor, from its website:

Baylor University in Waco, Texas, is a private Baptist university, and a nationally ranked liberal arts institution.

The only publication of note I could find by North is a book he co-authored in 2008: Good Intentions: Nine Hot Button Issues Viewed Through the Eyes of Faith. One reviewer calls the book "Jesus Freakonomics." That, by the way, isn't an insult, since the original Freakonomics has earned lots of praise.

This is praising with faint damns, but based on the reviews I read, North's book shouldn't be simply laughed at and discarded. I don't know if it's any good, but it appears to be reasonably serious, and it arrives at some conclusions that the Christian right might be bothered by. Nonetheless, there is nothing here that makes North an expert on education or the Arizona tuition tax credit system.

Which makes you wonder why Murphy and other Rs on the committee would fly someone in all the way from Texas when we have excellent economics and education profs within jogging distance of the capitol.

The answer can be found in these two quotes from news articles on the meeting. From the Republic:

[North] was paid to conduct the study by the Center for Arizona
Policy, a conservative research and advocacy group that supports school
choice.

From the Guardian:

The conservative Center for Arizona Policy paid to bring North out from Baylor, a Baptist university in Waco, Texas. The Christian-based center is also a big supporter of STOs. Several years ago when the Tribune wrote several articles critical of an STO run by GOP Rep. Steve Yarbrough, the head of CAP called on her members to ban the newspaper.

To recap. CAP fished around and found North, who it knew would come up with a study on tuition tax credits it liked. CAP paid for the study, then paid to bring him to Phoenix to testify.

One final piece of the puzzle. North writes from a religious perspective and works at a Baptist college. About 70-80% of Arizona's private schools are religious schools (the percentage is similar nationwide), so the lion's share of the taxpayer funded scholarships to private schools go to students attending religious institutions.