Public Money ‘Laundered’ For Private Corporate Interests

S-1872 would allow public school funds to go to religious schools by creating the same funding process that survived a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court challenge. The Cleveland, Ohio voucher program, which sent 96% of its students to Catholic schools, was challenged in Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris.

In that case, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, found that the Cleveland voucher program did not violate the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution – which up to that point had prohibited the use of public funds for religious purposes – because vouchers were given to parents, not directly to the institutions.

Critics accused the Supreme Court of essentially signing off on “money laundering,” because the funds eventually ended up going to religious institutions. The diagram on this page traces the money “laundered” for S-1872 from the corporation to the voucher fund, then out of the taxpayer’s pocket back in the coffers of the corporation.

Last November, the court heard a similar case – Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn – challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s 13-year-old program that allows taxpayers to get up to $1,000 credits on state taxes for contributions to “school tuition organizations,” many of which give money directly to religious schools. A ruling is expected in June.

Corporations, not public, oversee voucher funds
Under the proposed voucher legislation, the scholarships would be distributed by “nonprofit scholarship organizations” overseen by a three-member Opportunity Scholarship Board, appointed by the governor. All must be representatives of corporations that are eligible for S-1872‘s tax credits.

That board would select one “scholarship organization” in each of the northern, central and southern regions of the state to administer the vouchers made available through corporations contributions to them. As the diagram on this page illustrates, every penny of those corporate “contributions” is returned to the donating corporations in the form of a tax credit.

The vouchers would provide at least $8,000 for parents of elementary students, and at least $11,000 for parents of secondary students.

The number of students eligible would grow from 3,900 in the 2011-2012 school year to 7,800 in 2012-2013, 15,000 in 2013-2014, 25,000 in 2014-2015, and 40,000 in 2015-2016.