December 16, 2011 

As reported and hailed by the American Federation for Children, the state Department of Revenue in Georgia has already approved $50 million in donations for 2011 pursuant to the Georgia Scholarship Tax Credit Program.

This program allows individuals and businesses to receive state income-tax credits for donations to specially established organizations that provide tuition scholarships so that children in the state can attend other-than-public elementary and secondary schools. More than 6,000 scholarships were awarded for this school term.

Individuals in Georgia can receive a credit against their year’s tax liability for up to $1,000 in scholarship-program donations. For married couples, the cap is $2,500. For businesses, the annual maximum is 75 percent of their state income tax liability.

The $50 million represents the maximum allowed for 2011 by the authorizing legislation. It marks the first time the ceiling has been reached, but the program has only a three-year history. As a testament to its success and value, Georgia lawmakers this year passed a modest expansion, which will increase the statewide maximum each year from 2012 through 2018 by the annual increase in the Consumer Price Index.

Georgia’s scholarship tax-credit program is not unique. Similar policies are in place and working in Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Iowa. A newly enacted program is getting underway in Oklahoma.

In Iowa, legislation approved on July 29 of this year increases the cap on available tax credits to $8.75 million for the 2012 tax year, up from $7.5 million. Based on the program’s history, that increase will make available approximately 1,500 more private-school scholarships.

More information about these existing programs is available from websites such as www.edchoice.org and www.federationforchildren.org.

Legislation proposing to establish a tax-credit-supported scholarship program in Nebraska exists in the form of LB 50. It was introduced last January by Omaha Senator Bob Krist. After a public hearing in February, the bill was not acted upon by the Legislature’s Revenue Committee, but, importantly, is carrying over to the 2012 legislative session, still under the committee’s jurisdiction.

LB 50 proposes a state income-tax credit for donations made by individuals and corporations to specially established, state-certified organizations that would be obligated to distribute almost all of their annual revenue—a small portion being reserved for operational costs—as private-school-tuition scholarships. The maximum amount of each credit would be 65 percent of the taxpayer’s qualifying donations during the year. LB 50 proposes a ceiling of $10 million in total tax credits for the first year.

In 2009, an independent fiscal analysis of LB 67—a predecessor of, and similar to LB 50—determined that a savings of $51 million in state expenditures could be realized over a 10-year period, given certain presumptions about program design and usage.

Parents and patrons associated with Catholic schools in Nebraska should get behind LB 50 and take action to achieve Revenue-Committee advancement of the bill to the full Legislature early in the upcoming session, which starts Jan. 4. If the bill does not receive favorable action in 2012, its life will be ended and the process will have to start over with a new bill in 2013.

The Revenue Committee has eight members. They are Senators Abbie Cornett (chair), Galen Hadley, LeRoy Louden, Dennis Utter, Pete Pirsch, Paul Schumacher, Deb Fischer and Greg Adams. An affirmative vote from five of the eight will be necessary for the bill to advance.

Each of these senators can be contacted by e-mail using their first-name initial and last name @leg.ne.gov (example: acornett@leg.ne.gov) or by links found at the Legislature’s website: www.nebraskalegislature.gov.

More information about LB 50 is available by visiting the Nebraska Catholic Conference’s website: www.nebcathcon.org/education or by contacting Jeremy Murphy, the Conference’s Associate Director for Education Issues and executive secretary of the Nebraska Federation of Catholic School Parents: jeremymurphy@neb.rr.com; 402-477-7517.

And finally….

The University of Nebraska Board of Regents did not vote on the proposal to extend spousal-based employment benefits to the cohabiting partners (irrespective of gender) of unmarried employees at its meeting Dec. 8. The matter was postponed until a later meeting, most likely that scheduled to take place Jan. 27.

There is still time for constituents to contact the members of the Board of Regents regarding this proposal, which would treat cohabiting partners the same as spouses, thus manipulating and undermining marriage. One of the points that can be made is that the proposal is constitutionally suspect under Article I, Sec. 29 of the Nebraska Constitution, which prohibits any state recognition of the uniting of two persons of the same gender in a domestic partnerships or "similar same-sex relationship."