Voucher Confusion from Bev Perdue

Voucher Confusion by Bev Perdue Rep. Paul Stam – Republican Leader of the North Carolina House of Representatives Yesterday I saw a Bev Perdue ad frightening me against Mayor Pat McCrory. The ad claimed his supposed voucher position would cost the State $900 million, requiring tax increases and slashed education spending. Yet a voucher is the same as a check drawn from a bank, just a form authorizing disbursement of cash and used as credit against a purchase or expense. The Smart Start Initiative backs a wide variety of purchases for private services, and not just for children of low-income families but for early childhood health screening, for example. If profit-making services were not available for health screening, transportation, and many child care and pre-school education providers the much touted success of this program would not be possible. National studies of pre-school programs in most states regularly cite the use of vouchers as standard policies, including an analysis done by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation 1, listed on the Partnership’s website as the chief private donor to Smart Start. This statewide non-profit has received $2.280.2 Billion2 in funding from the taxpayers. Every year Bev Perdue served in the state Senate, and later as Lieutenant Governor, she supported private education vouchers at the preschool level and at the college level in the form of Legislative Tuition Grants3. She has never claimed this was bad policy or that this drew money away from public education. For 35 years North Carolina has authorized what is today a $1,950 credit to every North Carolina resident attending our private and religious colleges. This saves the taxpayers money. According to the General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division we subsidize North Carolina students in the UNC system $11,833 per year. In 2003, Bev Perdue presided over extension of this program to Roanoke Bible College4, an accredited four-year institution. Good for her! Tax credits do not cost the state any more money than Bev Perdue’s Legislative Tuition Grants. In 2008, House Bill 388 and Senate Bill 2079 proposed tax credits for parents of children with special needs. Bev Perdue torpedoed that idea at the urging of her Union bosses. Fiscal Research staff estimated this proposal would have allowed $18 million in tax credits to 2,900 parents of special needs children and provided a net savings to the State of $7 million and $6 million for the counties each year. After 8 years on the State Board of Education, her recent ads demonstrate Bev Perdue as unqualified to lead education policy. 1 Financing Public Pre-School Programs: Current Practices and Future Possibilities, Committee for Economic Development, Nov. 2006. 2 North Carolina Partnership for Children, Inc. History of Funding. 3 North Carolina G.S. 116-21.2 “Legislative tuition grants to aid students and licensure students attending private institutions of higher education.” 4 2003 Session NCGA, HB 150, “Establish State Education Grants.” Roll Call 931 (S.L. 2003-429)