Brian’s Utah Weblog

Out of state corporations invested close to a million dollars to destroy public education in Utah’s 2006 legislative elections.

The Background

Utah has a lot of children. Utah government spends lots of money on corporate welfare instead of education. Therefore, even with high taxes, we spend the lowest amount per pupil on our public schools of any state in the nation.

We have school choice programs within larger districts and a charter school system that provides novel and innovative schools a chance to exist within our public school system.

Some miscreants like Representative Ferrin (R-Utah County) have exploited loopholes in the charter school system to take millions of state dollars in advance payments for the non-binding promise to educate students for years in the future. Most of the advance payments are justified by construction costs and other start-up costs. It is unlikely that any of the schools set up this way will last long enough without any other capital costs to justify the millions given to the corporate welfare collectors.

Most charter schools are not run like that. I’m a proud graduate of a charter high school myself and I’ll work for real choice whenever it is offered. But a system with even more ready cash and less oversight than the charter system we have now is a recipe for disaster and discredit for the very existence of school choice.

The Danger

For years opponents of public education (and opponents of real choice) have worked to create ‘vouchers’ or ‘tuition tax credits’ which would transfer about $3000 per student from our public schools to private corporations running their own schools. Eventually the corporate welfare queens expect even more millions to reward their political pull at the expense of Utah’s children. Existing private schools that will lose autonomy when they have to take public money are just collateral damage to these pirates.

In 2004 the pirates won Jon Huntsman the Republican nomination for governor and subsequently the governorship so any bill through the legislature is likely to be signed and drain scarce remaining public school money away for ‘vouchers’.

The Villains

An organization called Parents For Choice In Education collected and spent between half a million and a million dollars from out of state donors to promote challengers to incumbents of both parties who have voted for public education and against unsupervised vouchers in Utah. That is a giant amount of money within the underfunded world of Utah politics. We don’t know the exact amount because our campaign disclosure laws are weak. But we do know the results.

The Republicans

PCE targeted two Republicans in the primary process. Dave Cox of Lehi didn’t have the support of the public school advocates either as he had upset them with advocacy of an untried process for school district splitting. Sheryl Allen of Bountiful was a long time public education advocate. Cox was eliminated at convention and Allen had to face a primary election. Corporate welfare pirate Ferrin of Utah County was also forced into a primary over his scheming with the charter school system.

Allen won her primary to return to public school advocacy; Ferrin lost his and will have take his bilking to the private sector. So far, no big victories for PCE.

The Election

In the general election, PCE targeted top Democratic advocates for public schools. Reps. Lou Shurtliff (D-Ogden), Karen Morgan (D-Holladay), Jim Gowans (D-Tooele) and Carol Spackman Moss (D-Millcreek) are former teachers and PCE attacked them because they could never be persuaded to betray Utah’s children. Others like Rep. Roz McGee who ran a children’s advocacy group were also targeted. And some like Rep. Carl Duckworth just didn’t vote to help the pirates steal from our kids and they were targeted. All of these Democrats were in swing disricts.

What Did PCE Do?

Every targeted Democrat was attacked with thousands of mailings and flyers accusing them of immorality, cheating disabled children, taking money from sick medicaid recipients for their own use, and worse.

None of the mailings admitted, of course, that the senders wanted to institute vouchers and decimate public schools because Utahns are against that. And PCE knows Utahns oppose their agenda.

PCE couldn’t recruit volunteers for their efforts so they hired temporary workers to do poll watching for all their campaigns and turn out the Republican vote without ever telling the voters or even most of the pollwatchers what they were doing. They hired the largest team of pollwatchers seen in Utah within living memory.

The Result

Every target of PCE survived to serve in another legislature except one.

Carl Duckworth (D-Magna) faced a lot of negative press and criticism these past two years for his work in the House. The criticism was over issues unrelated to education. He also cast some crazy votes like the vote for H.B. 100 of 2006 which — in complete ignorance of the Constitution — asserted the authority of the Utah Legislature over federal courts, especially where environmental matters are concerned. Even Jon Huntsman could see that embarassment needed to be vetoed. And Carl Duckworth may have lost to a PCE candidate by 25 votes. But there are still ballots to be counted and Duckworth could still pull this out.

All the other candidates hit by this unprecedented attack are unbowed and ready to stand again for Utah’s children.

The Future

The last voucher bill lost in a 34-40 vote in the House. This year there will be two or three fewer pro-children Republicans to add to the solid 19 Democrats to reach the needed 38 votes to stop the pirates from robbing our kids.

Find your legislators and tell them to fight for public schools and against ‘vouchers’ or ‘tuition tax credits.’