The fiscal note for 174 does not state that 174 cannot stand on its own. Here’s the pertinent language:

Given the coordination clause in Section 7 of H.B. 174 and given that “Education Vouchers” (H.B. 148, 2007 General Session) has already passed and been signed by the Governor, H.B. 174 will not require appropriations in addition to those contained in H.B. 174 itself. Had H.B. 174 passed in absence of the
H.B. 148 or without a coordination clause, H.B. 174 would have had an estimated fiscal impact of $9.4 million in FY 2008 and $12.5 million in FY 2009.”

It only states that it will not require additional appropriations. The appropriation language in both bills is the same, as is this key language:

(1) (a) Scholarships shall be awarded by the board subject to the availability of money appropriated by the Legislature for that purpose.
(b) The Legislature shall annually appropriate money to the board from the General Fund to make scholarship payments for all students projected to apply for scholarships.

Section 53A-1a-806

As for the mitigation monies, HB 148 will cost the state more than HB 174 will, not less. Mitigation monies are only transfers from the state to local governments. Without the mitigation monies, the state would save more money (by not transferring money to the local school districts) and local schools still come out ahead financially because they don’t have to pay to education as many students.

More later.

Did you happen to read the fiscal notes you linked to for each piece of legislation? If not you should check them out…they are pretty devastating to those who would argue that HB 174 can stand on its own. If HB 148 is wiped out by the referendum then there is no funding for HB 174. The definitions section from 148 is also not included in HB 174 which was a basis for the State School Board’s recent rejection of HB 174 as a legitimate implementation of the voucher program. I think Republicans have an uphill climb if they are going to keep harping on the idea that HB 174 can legally stand on its own. They are better off following Urquharts plan to create an all new voucher bill in a special session.

A big hitch in your contention that the voucher bills won’t cost Utah’s taxpayers is demonstrated in the text of HB 148. Specifically in the section 53 A-1a-807 “Mitigation monies”

These mitigation funds represent a significant portion of the estimated costs of the voucher program. So in essence you are wrong. The voucher plan not only gives a subsidy to the student going to private school but more money is spent in the form of mitigation monies to “compensate” public schools for five years worth of the money they have lost due to transferred students. This was an element put into the legislation to make it more palatable to the public school crowd. Since my main beef with all of this is that I as a taxpayer don’t want to have to pay more taxes because of this voucher plan I’m not a big fan of this idea. (I’d actually prefer a voucher program that doesn’t include the mitigation funds.)
You are correct that currently enrolled private school students aren’t initially eligible for vouchers but they are phased in over a 13 year period. This is partially where the legislative analyst’s $425 million dollar over the first 13 years figure comes from. As these freeloaders take their tuition subsidies there isn’t any benefit at all for taxpayers. A link to the “recent study” in your Friedman Foundation quote in your earlier comment would be nice. It would be fascinating to see how Utah’s taxpayers come out ahead on all of this even though it is virtually impossible to make it all add up in real life.
I have serious doubts about this program. I don’t think it would be the worst thing to even happen to Utah if it were to happen but I certainly am not going to endorse it.
Even if the voucher plan is a wash fiscally we will have wasted millions on the court costs that will be spent bringing the program into existence then on defending the program in court from the inevitable lawsuits asserting a violation of the establishment clause. When taxpayers realize they are subsidizing students at Warren Jeff’s future private school system in southern Utah most people will understand the objections the ACLU types have to vouchers. I’ve always said that the best path to school choice is through tax credits…not vouchers for this very reason.
I’ve stayed awake way to late answering your comment so I’m going to bed.
Seriously though…thanks for making me do some work on this. It has been fun to do a little extra research tonight!

As a side note, I don’t know the law on this, but I think it would be more likely than not that the Supreme Court will not change the language. Everyone who signed the petition didn’t sign the petition as re-written by the Supreme Court, they signed the petition with the original language. I believe the Supreme Court will keep the currently language because that’s the language to which people attached their signatures.

I believe that one of the reasons you oppose the voucher bill is because you have been given wrong information about who is eligible. Students who are currently enrolled in private schools are not eligible for vouchers. More precisely, HB 174 and HB 148 require that a voucher eligible student meet one or more of the following criteria:
• 6 years old as of September 1
• “enrolled as a full-time student in a Utah public school on January 1, 2007. ”
• not a Utah resident on January 1, 2007
• meet the income guidelines.
The bill language is here: http://le.utah.gov/~2007/bills/hbillenr/hb0174.htm
The most natural reading of the language is that people who were enrolled in private school on January 1, 2007 are not eligible for the vouchers. Admittedly, the language isn’t unambiguous, but the bill’s drafters didn’t intend to allow currently-enrolled private school students to receive vouchers.

As another side note, you have again been given bad information that HB 174 won’t stand on its own. Just compare them side by side. Here’s a link to HB 148: http://le.utah.gov/~2007/bills/hbillenr/hb0148.htm HB 148 contains a section on “Mitigation Monies, ” “Enforcement and penalties, ” and a “Limitation on regulation of private schools” that HB 174 does not contain. If the referendum passes, these will be stuck down. But HB 174 contains the following sections, “Scholarship program created — Qualifications – Application,” “Eligible private schools, “and “scholarship payments” and a couple other sections. This is definitely sufficient for the voucher program to stand on its own.

I can see why you would think that vouchers would cost you money, but that’s only because the voucher opponents have spread misinformation about who is eligible. I can’t find any evidence of the program costing $425 million. Maybe I missed a link to another study or something, but the fiscal note for HB 148 is here: http://le.utah.gov/lfa/fnotes/2007/hb0148.fn.htm. And the fiscal note for HB 174 is here: http://le.utah.gov/lfa/fnotes/2007/hb0174.fn.pdf. The fiscal note for both is a “General Fund appropriation of $9,200,000 in FY 2008 and $12,300,000 in FY 2009. ” If we assume the fiscal note is correct, taxpayers will still come out ahead. The voucher program may cost a few million at year at the state level, but according to the Friedman report, local school districts save $26 million a year. The state may spend money from the general fund (and the Friedman report argues that actually the general fund will save $700,000 a year), but the local school districts will save money.

If the Utah voucher program actually costs taxpayers instead of saving them money, it will be the only program in the country that doesn’t at least break even. This is critical that people who oppose vouchers understand this principle from the Friedman report, “In nearly every school choice program, the dollar value of the voucher or scholarship is less than or equal to the state’s formula spending per student. This means states are spending the same amount or less on students in school choice programs than they would have spent on the same students if they had attended public schools, producing a fiscal savings.” Utah will likely achieve a fiscal savings because the amounts of the vouchers are lower than Utah’s per pupil spending.

As a product (mostly) of Utah public schools, I believe that the schools can be better. As Milton Friedman writes in Capitalism and Freedom, “The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. ” [p. 3] Friedman may be overstating his case, but in general he is certainly correct. Capitalism provides room for experimentation and for the adoption of improved technology much faster and much more efficiently than centrally-ran programs.

For example, this article in Slate, states that a recent study published in Science found that “Montessori students outscored the others on standardized tests of reading and math, treated each other better on the playground, and “showed more concern for fairness and justice.” I don’t know what to think about Montesorri schools, but it may be that they use better teaching technology than general public schools (but to my knowledge, there are no public Montesorri schools in Utah). How long will it take for public schools to learn and accept this (possibly) better teaching technology?

I think we should let parents decide which teaching technology they want used in their kid’s schools. Vouchers help make it easier to have a choice. But vouchers aren’t a silver bullet cure. Voucher won’t change Utah into an education Utopia. Vouchers are a step in the right direction of helping parents to have real educational choice for their children. In places like Iron County, like Emily wrote in the earlier post, vouchers won’t make a difference over night. But a few years down the road they could lead to some real improvements.

I don’t doubt that your public school is a good school. My Mom is a public school teacher. I know that there are some really good public school teachers out there. But just because there are some good schools doesn’t mean that they can’t be better.

The Utah voucher program is win-win proposition. It will help provide some school choice and it won’t cost taxpayers additional dollars.

Utah’s constitution doesn’t grant “UEA’s attorneys” the ability to draft the referendum ballot language. It was drafted by the legislature’s general council. The only people with standing to dispute the ballot language as it is currently written are those responsible for the petition drive. The group behind the referendum petition has announced that they will be petitioning the State Supreme Court for a change in ballot language to ensure an up or down vote on the voucher program in its entirety.

The two bill problem originated when legislative leaders didn’t want to bring HB 148 up for another vote (it had barely passed the first time) when it was necessary to amend it. They instead drafted HB 174 which contained most of the language of HB 148 but not enough to stand on its own. HB 174 was titled “Education Voucher Amendments”. It was never intended to be the trigger for creating Utah’s voucher program and only those who are desperately afraid of allowing Utahns the ability to decide the voucher matter through an election argue in favor of creating a voucher program based solely on HB 174.

The Friedman Foundation hasn’t taken into consideration that the vast majority of students who will be subsidized by the proposed voucher program over the next few years will be from families that are already sending their kids to private schools. They are the only ones likely to benefit from this program with vouchers anywhere from $500/kid to $3000/kid. That costs me as a taxpayer a fortune on top of what I’m already paying in taxes to cover our existing public school system. This is why the legislative fiscal analyst estimated the cost of vouchers over the long term to Utah’s taxpayers will run in the neighborhood of over $400 million.

Sorry Dan…I know voucher represent a great hope to libertarians everywhere for turning away from the current public school monopoly towards a more market oriented solution. The problem is that in Utah the monopoly is doing a great job educating our kids and this program isn’t likely to provide the expected positive results. It is just going to cost me and other Utahns a lot more money.

Didn’t we already cover most of this fiscal discussion in the comments of this post?
http://www.themannings.org/soapbox/2007/04/10/the-final-word/

As for the tax dollar issues, if you are concerned about your tax dollars you should be behind vouchers, not against them. According to a recent study by the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation, “School choice programs have saved a total of about $444 million from 1990 to 2006, including a total of $22 million saved in state budgets and $422 million saved in local public school districts.” http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/friedman/downloadFile.do?id=243
There is no reason to believe that the results of Utah’s program will be different.

From the Friedman report:
In nearly every school choice program, the dollar value of the voucher or scholarship is less than or equal to the state’s formula spending per student. This means states are spending the same amount or less on students in school choice programs than they would have spent on the same students if they had attended public schools, producing a fiscal savings.

When a student uses school choice, the local public school district no longer needs to pay the instructional costs associated with that student, but it does not lose all of its per-student revenue, because some revenue does not vary with enrollment levels. Thus, school choice produces a positive fiscal impact for school districts as well as for state budgets.

Also, what is a scenario where vouchers reduce the quality of your children’s education?

Thanks for your comment. I think you are right that there has been a lot of anger generated throughout this process. Very little of it has been necessary. My blood boiled as the whole argument progressed from “should we have vouchers or not” to “how can we Republicans most easily take away the voters’ right to decide this issue”.

If vouchers make it through the electorate and become the law of the land I can live with it. I’ll think its bad policy but I won’t take personal umbrage at what has been done. If our legislative leaders take the issue away from voters and cram the voucher plan down our throats that is a different story.

Rep. Urquhart’s plan seems to be the only way Republicans can redeem themselves from their outrageous reliance on legal machinations designed to disenfranchise voters on the voucher decision. I hope they take it. They don’t have to…but if they are men and women of character they will. I don’t want to be accused of “hatred generation” but I really detest politicians who screw around like this when my tax dollars and my kids’ educations are at stake. Not to mention the whole idea of constitutional government and democracy in our state.