It’s anti-children, anti-education, and anti-taxpayer.
A provision of the federal law H.1, aka the One Big Beautiful Bill, allows taxpayers to receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit on your federal income tax of up to $1700 for contributing to a state-based 501c3 organization classified as a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO). The SGO then uses that money to, as its name suggests, grant scholarships for school tuition, tutoring, school supplies, home schooling, etc. for students in their states who are 300 percent of poverty level or below. It’s all good. Good for taxpayers, good for students, good for the overall education of the population.
But because some of the revenue raised by a Vermont SGO might be used to support Vermont students’ choices to attend independent schools, Vermont Democrats, led by Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (D-Brattleboro), chair of the Ways & Means Committee, and Rep. Peter Conlon (D-Cornwall), chair of the House Education Committee, want to bar Vermont taxpayers and low-income students from benefiting. This is viciously mean, utterly heartless, and mind-blowingly stupid. I’m sorry, but these are truly awful people, as are any other legislators who go along with them and their bill, H.770, to kill this opportunity.
What H.770 demonstrates is that Vermont Democrats are not really interested in fixing our education system. Their goals are to destroy Vermont’s independent schools at all costs, take away any choice families have, and maintain the public education bureaucracy that is bankrupting Vermont taxpayers while producing student outcome below those of Mississippi by shielding it from any pressure to implement meaningful reform. What’s best for children, taxpayers, and even the public schools is, for them, irrelevant other than as a talking point.
Here’s why Conlon and Kornheiser’s ban is downright evil. Act 73 already cut off over half of Vermont’s independent schools that had been legally able to receive tuitioning. These schools were all subject to high standards of accreditation and were/are doing a great job of serving students – otherwise kids and families wouldn’t choose to attend. But losing tuitioning status is a financial blow that could end the viability of many of these schools, and certainly prohibit many students, especially lower-income children, from attending them. The federal Scholarship program is a potential life preserver — an easy act of compassion — for folks thrown overboard by their legislators.
Now, if you are opposed on principle to allowing public education fund dollars to go to non-government run schools, I get the argument even though I strongly disagree with it. But if you won’t even allow federal taxpayers the opportunity to voluntarily support students with additional money that in no way, shape or form impacts the funding of the government run public schools system or state revenues, you’re just a wicked, soulless [censored for extreme profanity].
You’re not about protecting public schools, you’re about breaking things and taking away people’s choices out of pure spite. Keeping with the analogy above, legislators like Kornheiser and Conlin don’t just want these independent schools off the boat, they want them dead and drowned. Even if it means less funding and opportunities for the public school students they pretend to care about. That’s sociopathic.
And here’s why Conlon and Kornheiser’s bill is colossally stupid. While the SGOs are limited to distributing the money they raise to students within their respective states, federal taxpayers are free to donate to any SGO anywhere in the country to get the tax credit. So, let’s say just 5 percent of Vermont tax fliers decide to take advantage of the credit, that would raise about $25 million. If the Conlon/Kornheiser bill passes, that $25 million would necessarily leave Vermont to to support and improve the education of students in other states. That’s just freakin’ stupid.
On the flip side of the coin, if other Blue State legislators are equally as blinded by Trump/School Choice Derangement Syndrome as Conlon and Kornheiser are and refuse to opt into this program (so far that number is four: Hawaii, Oregon, New Mexico, and Wisconsin), Vermont would be in a strong position to court taxpayers from, possibly, New York and/or Massachusetts, etc. These two states alone have a combined population of over 40 times that of Vermont – as well as higher average incomes subject to federal taxes – and thus could potentially bring hundreds of millions of dollars of out of state money into Vermont to help cover the cost of educating our children. This would be NOT stupid. (On our part, anyway.)
The federal law gives the governor of each state the power to opt into this program or not, but Kornheiser and Conlon are trying to exploit what they see as a gray area. According to the congressional summary, “Governors (or other individuals, agencies, or entities specified in state law) are responsible for preparing lists of SGOs within their states and remitting the lists to the Secretary of the Treasury.” H.770 would take that authority away from the governor and specify that the legislature (a.k.a. Kornheiser and Conlon and the majority party) is the “other entity” in charge. And they will not participate.
Phil Scott needs to put his foot down on this and assert his control here. I’ve got to hand it to whoever the Republicans at the federal level are who conceived of how this program is structured because it’s an ingenious trap. All but one Republican governor (cough, cough, Phil) has indicated they will participate. If Blue State Democrats refuse to participate in the scholarship program, and it’s looking that way, it will result in potentially billions of dollars flowing from those Blue States into the mostly Red States that do opt in. (I say mostly; Blue Colorado looks like it will participate because Governor Jared Polis (D-CO) apparently isn’t a sociopathic idiot!) And the Blue States will not just have fallen for this partisan transfer of funds, they will have insisted upon it!
Hilarious! So long as our Republican governor makes sure we’re in on the joke and not the butt of it.