Senate backs tax credits for private school scholarships

Credit: BOB BROWN/TIMES-DISPATCH

Tax credit supporters Sen. Mark D. Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg (left), and Del. James...

Credit: BOB BROWN/TIMES-DISPATCH

Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling cast the tiebreaking vote after the Senate divided 20-20.

By: Olympia Meola | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Published: February 17, 2012
Updated: February 17, 2012 - 2:03 PM

Corporations could receive a tax credit for paying for low-income students to attend private schools under a measure that narrowly passed the Virginia Senate today on a party-line vote.

Passage came with Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling’s tiebreaking vote, and over the protests of Democrats who questioned the constitutionality of a measure they said will suck money from public schools that will be left with fixed costs.

“This is a war on K-12 education,” said Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, D-Richmond, who predicted a legal challenge. “This is a direct attack on K-12, make no mistake about it.”

Proponents said the measure will give low-income families a choice in their children’s education and will not have a negative impact on public school spending because the state would save the cost of educating the child in a public school.

Senate Bill 131 would allow a tax credit of 65 percent, and cap the total at $25 million. A version by Del. Jimmie Massie, R-Henrico, has already passed the GOP-controlled House of Delegates, but the two bills have differences.

In the Senate version, co-sponsored by Sens. Mark D. Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, and William M. Stanley Jr., R-Franklin County, students would be eligible to receive a scholarship if their family’s annual household income is 300 percent of the current federal poverty guidelines or less. For a family of four, that’s $69,150.

The amount of the scholarships would be capped based on the state funding per student in the district where the child resides. The allocations can range from roughly $2,000 for a student in a wealthier area to $6,000 in a less affluent district.

Corporations would donate to a nonprofit that would distribute the scholarships.

The $25 million in credits contemplated in the bill would ordinarily funnel into the general fund, which pays for things like schools, health care and police.

Democrats have questioned the measure’s constitutionality, saying the state cannot appropriate money to a charity not controlled by the government.

Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, voted against the measure in a committee but supported it Friday “to give it a chance to see if it will work.” The bill would take effect in 2014 and expire in 2017.

“We have got to broaden our view on things like this,” he said in a floor speech that referenced Petersburg schools, which have struggled academically and financially. “We can’t be static. We cannot just assume that because we did it this way in the past, that it’s got to always do it this way in the future.”

Sen. David W. Marsden, D-Fairfax, questioned the bill’s impact on public school costs based on taking one child out of a school.

“We take that child out, have we released a teacher, a custodian, an administrator, a nurse, a librarian, no... all the overhead is still there,” he said. “Are the lights still on? Is the heat still on? You betcha. So we’ve saved almost nothing.”

Obenshain said later that the vote “fell along party lines, but that will not be the end of the story.

“In other states, similar scholarship programs worked so well that members of both parties practically raced each other to get on board.”

(This has been a breaking news update. Check back for more details as they become available. Read more in tomorrow's Richmond Times-Dispatch.)