The hottest debate going on across Nebraska right now is the debate around school choice. Earlier this year the State Legislature passed LB 753 otherwise known as the “Opportunities Scholarship Act.” The Act allows individual taxpayers and corporations to make contributions to scholarship granting organizations and receive an income tax credit up to 50 percent of their state income tax liability.The scholarship monies raised would then be used to send students to private schools with a cap set at $25 million for the program.
The opponents of school choice have launched a referendum petition drive to repeal the Opportunities Scholarship Act, and they have until August 31 of this year to collect 61,000 valid signatures. While leaders of the movement have claimed that the referendum movement has been entirely citizen-led, we now know that they have spent $300,000 to hire paid circulators to meet their goal of collecting 90,000 signatures before the August 31 deadline.
Most of the money being used to pay these petition circulators is money coming in from out-ofstate. According to Accountability and Disclosure Commission reports, the organization called Support Our Schools has raised $1.26 million for the referendum campaign. Of that total, $800,000 came from the National Education Association while 262,000 came from the Nebraska State Education Association otherwise known as Nebraska’s teachers’ union.
